Bukayo Saka, Jadon Sancho, Marcus Rashford: racist abuse after Euro 2020 final condemned by Gareth Southgate

That was an act that caused anger among sections of the England fanbase, with some supporters choosing to boo as the players knelt.

“This England team deserve to be lauded as heroes, not racially abused on social media,” Johnson said on Twitter.

“Those responsible for this appalling abuse should be ashamed of themselves.”

“Gareth Southgate and the players a few weeks ago, about five days on the trot told us that they were taking the knee to promote equality and it was against racism,” Neville told Sky News.

“The Prime Minister said it was ok for the population of this country to boo those players who are trying to promote equality and defend against racism.

“It starts at the very top.”

“The fact of the matter is, there is an issue obviously in football, there is an issue in society where we feel it’s acceptable basically to criticize players for sporting actions because of the color of their skin,” added Neville.

Ahead of Euro 2020, Southgate penned an open letter to the country, outlining why he thought it was important for players to continue using their voice for good.

“We’re disgusted that some of our squad — who have given everything for the shirt this summer — have been subjected to discriminatory abuse online after tonight’s game. We stand with our players.”

‘Social media companies must take immediate action’

Football players receiving abuse on social media is commonplace.

Savills, a real estate service provider in the UK, tweeted on Monday that it is “committed to eliminating discrimination and encouraging diversity amongst our workforce” after one of its employees appeared to be one of those abusing the England players on Twitter.

“A full investigation will be carried out in regards to this unacceptable incident,” it said.

“Savills abhors and has zero tolerance to any form of racism and racial discrimination and is appalled by the racist comments in these tweets. Savills is immediately investigating and will take appropriate action.”

The online abuse has led to calls for social media companies to do more to police their platforms.

Earlier this year, former Arsenal forward Thierry Henry deleted his social media accounts following a spate of online racist abuse aimed at Black footballers and what he said was the inability of social media companies to hold users accountable for their actions. A few weeks after Henry had closed his accounts, English football clubs and governing bodies took part in a three-day social media blackout to protest against abuse.

“Racist abuse of any kind is abhorrent and will not be tolerated on or off the pitch,” tweeted Khan.

“MetPoliceUK (The Metropolitan Police) will investigate the appalling online abuse aimed at England players. Social media companies must take immediate action to remove and prevent this hate.” Facebook, which owns Instagram, said in a statement sent to CNN that it was “committed to keeping our community safe from abuse.”

“No one should have to experience racist abuse anywhere, and we don’t want it on Instagram,” a Facebook Company spokesperson said.

“We quickly removed comments and accounts directing abuse at England’s footballers last night and we’ll continue to take action against those that break our rules. In addition to our work to remove this content, we encourage all players to turn on Hidden Words, a tool which means no one has to see abuse in their comments or DMs. No one thing will fix this challenge overnight, but we’re committed to keeping our community safe from abuse.”

In a statement sent to CNN, Twitter said it removed over 1000 tweets in the past 24 hours for “violating our rules.”

“The abhorrent racist abuse directed at England players last night has absolutely no place on Twitter,” a Twitter spokesperson said.

“In the past 24 hours, through a combination of machine learning based automation and human review, we have swiftly removed over 1000 Tweets and permanently suspended a number of accounts for violating our rules — the vast majority of which we detected ourselves proactively using technology. We will continue to take action when we identify any Tweets or accounts that violate our policies.

“We have proactively engaged and continue to collaborate with our partners across the football community to identify ways to tackle this issue collectively and will continue to play our part in curbing this unacceptable behaviour — both online and offline.”