Luton Town have revealed that striker Elijah Adebayo was sent a racially abusive message on Instagram while he was playing in Wednesday night’s 2-1 loss against Sunderland
Luton Town have released a statement condemning an individual who subjected Elijah Adebayo to “abhorrent and unacceptable” racist abuse during their Championship fixture with Sunderland on Wednesday evening.
Adebayo, 26, was playing for the Hatters in the match in question when an Instagram user is alleged to have sent the striker a direct message with a racist comment.
The incident, which has been reported to the police and to Meta, comes just 12 months after Adebayo was racially abused by an anonymous social media account on the same platform.
The perpetrator in question has been branded as a ‘coward’ by Luton and ‘dared’ to attend Kenilworth Road in the wake of their vile comments.
The Championship outfit released a statement, headlined “Is it ever going to stop?”, on Thursday afternoon which read: “Twelve months ago Elijah Adebayo was subjected to racist abuse on social media. A wave of vile and disgusting messages pouring into his account from faceless racists. Fast forward a year later and it has happened again.
“At 8.28pm BST on Wednesday evening, an account in the UK on Instagram messaged Elijah with a racist comment.
“After Elijah notified us following last night’s game with Sunderland, in which he scored his first goal of the season, we reported the incident to the Police and to Meta. It is now being investigated.
“Just like we said a year ago, and just like we will do WHENEVER a player or staff member is subjected to abuse, we will stand by and support Elijah unequivocally.
“To the individual who cowardly dropped into Elijah’s DMs: We know who you are and you know who you are. You’re not a faceless account, one which we have sadly become accustomed to reporting in recent years.
“But as if you have the balls to come to Kenilworth Road and say it to his face. We dare you. If you do, you’ll be faced with everyone at Luton Town Football Club, standing side-by-side with Elijah.”
Luton went on to outline the work they have done to try and extinguish discrimination of all kinds, including the fact that two players, Jacob Brown and Mads Andersen, put on anti-discrimination workshop at a local school earlier in the week.
The statement continued: “Abuse of any kind is unacceptable. But does everyone know that? It’s why we are doing our bit to educate everyone that racism and all forms of abuse is abhorrent and unacceptable.
“Last season, as part of the Premier League’s No Room For Racism campaign, we showed members of our staff the racist and abusive messages our players have been subjected to. This is real life with real life effects.
“We are all Luton and we will continue to support and champion these initiatives until such time that the message gets through to the ignorant minority. But the question remains: how much longer will our players, our heroes – fellow human beings for crying out loud – be targeted because of the colour of their skin?
“There is NO room for racism.”
