Euro 2024: Online abusers cannot 'hide behind keyboards,' says football policing chief Mark Roberts

Individuals who target England players with social media abuse at Euro 2024 have been warned they cannot “hide behind their keyboards” as police will look to clamp down after holding discussions with Gareth Southgate's squad.

Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho all suffered racist abuse online after missing penalties in the Euro 2020 final shoot-out loss to Italy at Wembley.

However, Chief Constable Mark Roberts, the National Police Chiefs' Council lead for football policing, insists improvements in the procedures mean it will be easier to identify and prosecute anyone found to have posted online abuse.

"When we properly started looking at this a number of years ago, we were finding that some of the offences we were looking to prosecute are under the malicious telecommunications act and there is a six-month time limit in effect on those," he said.

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"If you don't issue a summons in six months in most circumstances, it meant we couldn't prosecute.

"At that time we were seeing instances where police were putting requests in to a social media company for the relevant data and the police were not always getting it back in the six-month deadline which frustrates and takes away the opportunity for prosecution.

"We have worked with them (social media companies) since then, we are seeing replies turned around in a matter of days so it is important to get the message out that if people think they can hide behind their keyboards and racially or in other ways engage in hate crimes online, then we will pursue it and we will prosecute people."

Roberts also revealed he and his team spoke to the England squad at St George's Park during the March international break.

"We were conscious after events at the Euros when there was horrific abuse of some of our black players," he told the PA news agency.

"So we responded to that, we did investigations and we were able to prosecute some people arising from that.

"What we were very keen to do was to speak to the squad and make sure they are aware that we are committed to this, we treat it seriously and advise them how to protect themselves.

"But equally it is better if you can deal with something in advance rather than after the event to try and explain what we can do.

"We explained the reporting methods and that if things come in from other routes we will investigate it."