THE President of the Professional Football Players Union today defended more education, prevention, more serious measures and the application of justice in the case of insults, hateful messages and threats on social media.
“There must be a reconciliation between education, prevention and more serious measures and the application of swift and fair justice that will allow for a qualitative leap” with regard to insults and hateful messages on social media, defended Joaquim Evangelista.
And he added: “I think that’s where we can make a difference.”
This official indicated that “it is not just in sport, but it is also a social issue, in sport, the main targets are the athletes and referees”.
Evangelista spoke on the panel on “Social networks and hate speech” during the fourth edition of S4 – International Congress Safety, Security, Service at Sports Events (protection, security, and reception at sporting events, free translation), which takes place in Viseu until Wednesday, organized by the Authority for the Prevention and Combat of Violence in Sports (APCVD).
This panel featured the president of the Spanish Commission against Violence, Racism, Xenophobia, and Intolerance in Sport, Raúl Porras, and the former Portuguese international footballer Maniche.
The former athlete highlighted that “there are cases that are threats and that prevent the athlete from entering the next game in the same way, there is not the same mental condition”, in addition to the use of the image in phrases that he never said, as he reported that happened to him.
“In addition to the hate messages, which no person should hear, there are threats such as, and I quote, ‘I know where your children study’. This is to say that players are also people and have families who have the right to live in safety”, defended Maniche.
The president of the Spanish commission, Raúl Porras, highlighted “the link that exists between ‘offline’ and ‘online’, because what happens ‘off’ quickly ends up amplified on an ‘on’ social network where hate messages proliferate”.
“In other words, you, who are only online, are destroying the fair play that takes place offline”, he stressed.
Raúl Porras also defended the “reporting, which is crucial, for there to be legal action”.
Joaquim Evangelista regretted, however, the “absence of tools to combat” these online attacks, despite having highlighted the protocol signed between football entities and social media platforms and which allowed, during the 2026 Football World Cup, to eliminate “thousands of messages almost in real time”.
In this sense, he suggested to the government, “and whoever oversees sport, to look at this matter and create mechanisms that avoid it” and this could involve, “eventually, doing what FIFA did, negotiating mechanisms with the platforms to, in real time, remove and flag abuses” that “have escalated in a very violent way”.
In his intervention, Joaquim Evangelista also presented data from a study carried out between June 9th and July 20th, during the 2026 Football World Cup, and which “has no precedent for monitoring”.
1,606 individuals were covered: 1,248 players, 188 coaches and technical teams, 170 referees and game officials”, monitoring 3,207 accounts on social networks such as X, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.
“The volume of online abuse remains extremely high with 17.1 million posts and comments analyzed; 477,000 pieces of content flagged by AI (artificial intelligence) for review, with 240,676 confirmed as abusive,” he said.
The study identified 812 people who were directly targets of abuse.
Of the main abuses identified, 43% were generalized, 12% were racism, 9% were allegations of corruption, 8% were violence and threats, 7% were xenephobia, 4% were homophobia and 3% were sexual abuse.”
“Key note: excluding general abuse, the most worrying categories are racism, violence, xenophobia and homophobia. Racism continues to be the main structural problem, it was the second largest category of abuse”, he highlighted.
This official indicated that “a single player received more than 10,000 abusive messages, 40% of which were racist” and France, England and Ecuador were among the most frequent targets of racist attacks”
Joaquim Evangelista also said that, under an existing protocol, the union provides “around 400 professionals to provide psychological support to athletes and never, as today, has there been so much demand for help” from male and female athletes.
In fact, social networks and the escalation of violence on them and the false messages that circulate online were, during the day, cited by those involved in the congress as one of the “great current and future challenges with regard to security at sporting events”.
