England Lionesses star sends powerful social media reminder after Jess Carter suffers racial abuse

Daily Mirror

5 days ago

Lucy Bronze has spoken out about social media and football after team-mate Jess Carter bravely opened up on suffering racial abuse during the European Championships
Lucy Bronze has come out firing at social media companies after England team-mate Jess Carter was the subject of racial abuse during Euro 2025. The right-back, who has played in the same back four as Carter for all of the Lionesses ' Euros games, spoke powerfully ahead of Tuesday's semi-final against Italy.
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'No player needs social media, I think that's one thing that we can always remember,' Bronze said. 'We play football because we love the sport, we love playing. We do love connecting with our fans, social media is a great way to do that, but we don't need it.
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'I think that's something that the platforms should be very aware of - nobody needs social media if you want to carry on in sport. We can thrive without it.
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'But it is sad that players are missing out on so many of these great messages, someone like Jess, she's had an amazing tournament, I think she was one of our best players in the Netherlands game. She should be able to see messages from fans and the support and live in that moment, because it's something that you should be able to celebrate. 'So it is sad that players are having to choose between this rollercoaster that social media sends us on.'
Bronze acknowledged some steps have been taken in an effort to tackle racism but said things can go further. 'If you look back 100 years to 50 years to 20 years to 10 years, there's always small steps forward. But that's the problem. It's always a small step,' she said.
'We don't want it to be small steps anymore. We want it to be: this is happening, there is change, and this is unacceptable.'
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Versatile defender Carter has been a regular at the Euros, starting four games out of four. However, in the light of racist abuse which she says began at the start of the tournament, she has opted to protect herself by stepping away from social media.
Bronze is still optimistic about those responsible for the abuse facing consequences, but recornised the growing scale of the online abuse problem. "From an England perspective, I would like to say I'm very confident in our security team that they are wholeheartedly putting everything into finding the people who are doing this," she said.
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"We work very tight with the police, with online securities as well. It's something that we actually had to have meetings about before the tournament, not just with racism, but with online abuse in general because it's such a huge factor specifically in women's football more now than in men's football.
"So it's something that we are very aware of and we have very good security or also trying to work to find the people to rectify this and to hold people accountable because I think that's one of the ways that we can put a stop to this is by making sure that people are held accountable for their actions and what they're doing."
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