The defeat of England’s national football team on penalties against Italy in the Euro 2020 finals threw a shadow on the sport.
Three players, in particular, were attacked and targeted with a horrific, but not surprising, stream of racial abuse: Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho, and Bukayo Saka, who all missed their shots.
In the days that followed, a lot of people used racist rhetoric on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to abuse the three athletes. Several of them have already been identified and humiliated, but Jonathon Best, 52, has been sentenced to 10 weeks in prison by Willesden Magistrates’ Court after posting a tirade on Facebook.
Best, a forklift driver from Feltham in west London, was apprehended when a colleague and Facebook friend reported the 18-second clip to Facebook and the police after he refused to take it down, according to the CPS. Three days later, Facebook removed the video.
Elaine Cousins, from the CPS, said: “Jonathon Best took to Facebook to live stream a barrage of racist abuse at the three players who missed penalties during the game. He used social media to publicly vilify these three young men who tried to score for England. When approached by a Facebook friend asking him to remove the grossly offensive content, Best replied: ‘It’s my profile, I can do what I want.’