Ronaldo, Maguire top Premier League abuse table

FT Desk

Updated: 3 Aug 2022 09:20 CDT
3 min read

Cristiano Ronaldo and Harry Maguire in action for Man Utd. — © ProShots

Cristiano Ronaldo and Harry Maguire were among the most abused players on Twitter last year.

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Manchester United pair Cristiano Ronaldo and Harry Maguire received more Twitter abuse than any other Premier League players according to Ofcom analysis in a study conducted with the Alan Turing Institute.

The study focused on the first half of last season, from 13 August to 24 January, and showed that over the period, Ronaldo received 12,520 abusive tweets, which was more than 3,500 more than his Manchester United teammate.

Worryingly for the record English champions, eight of the top 10 to receive such negative treatment on the social media platform were Red Devils players, with Marcus Rashford, Bruno Fernandes, Fred, Jesse Lingard, Paul Pogba and David de Gea joining Ronaldo and Maguire on the list.

A report from Ofcom shows Cristiano Ronaldo and Harry Maguire were the most abused Premier League players on Twitter last year. Graphic via BBC. pic.twitter.com/u8pyD5sZnh
— Jacque Talbot (@jac_talbot) August 2, 2022

Lingard and Pogba have since left the club, for Nottingham Forest and Juventus respectively.

"These findings shed light on a dark side to the beautiful game," Ofcom's group director for broadcasting and online content Kevin Bakhurst said. "Online abuse has no place in sport, nor in wider society, and tackling it requires a team effort."

There were two spikes in the Twitter abuse, according to the report. The first was when Ronaldo - a player with a following of 102.5 million - rejoined United from Juventus on 27 August.

Performance-based

The second was when club captain Maguire took to Twitter to apologise for an abject display following a 2-0 defeat to Manchester City at Old Trafford on 7 November.

Overall, Ofcom analysed 2.3 million tweets, the majority of which weren't negative in tone-

Of that sample, 57% were positive towards players, 27% neutral and 12.5% critical. The remaining 3.5% were abusive.

Nonetheless, Dr. Bertie Vidgen, the lead author of the report and head of online safety at the Alan Turing Institute, stresses that that remainder should be stamped out.

"While tackling online abuse is difficult, we can't leave it unchallenged," he said. "More must be done to stop the worst forms of content, to ensure that players can do their job without being subjected to abuse."

Maguire was recently reconfirmed as Man Utd captain under Erik ten Hag, while Ronaldo has returned to the first-team set-up after missing the pre-season tour of Thailand and Australia, although he went home early from United's 1-1 draw with Rayo Vallecano on Sunday.