Emmanuel Thomas, with DPA I Tuesday, April 18, 2023
BERLIN – Germany’s union of professional footballers VDV has voiced concern about the growing amount of internet abuse directed at players and called on state authorities to do more.
“Cyberbullying is a very serious issue for many years now – not only in sport,” VDV managing director Ulf Baranowsky told dpa.
“First and foremost, legislators and law enforcement agencies are called upon to bring about improvements and to better protect the victims.”
RB Leipzig defender Benjamin Henrichs and Bayern Munich defender Dayot Upamecano were the most recent victims of online racial abuse, prompting Leipzig coach Marco Rose to suggest that offenders should be locked up for a few days to show others what consequences they could face.
Bayern players Thomas Müller, Leon Goretzka and Leroy Sané recently drew attention to the problem in the campaign “Together against hate on the net” by reading out insults and abuse against them in a video published on various social media channels.
Baranowsky welcomed the initiative, saying: “When athletes publicly position themselves against hate messages on the internet it is a strong signal and a clear mandate to decision-makers to look more intensively for solutions.”
Baranowsky said that the VDV offers players, especially young ones, prevention training, legal advice and sports psychological support on this issue.
Germany’s justice ministry plans a new “law against digital violence” in which social media platform operators can face civil law suits to close the accounts of offenders.
Marion Sulprizio from the psychological institute of Cologne’s sports university told dpa that footballers are especially vulnerable because because of their large number of followers on social media platforms.
She dismissed suggestions that players could better tolerate such abuse because of the daily pressure in their profession.
“It is the same range as for ordinary people,” she said, with some players made even stronger by it while “there are also those who are preoccupied by it, who then tense up in their actions and are restricted in their body language”.
