The Football Association has set up a special unit within the UK police to help prosecute those who abuse England players on social media, and has worked hard for many years to provide evidence of such cases to the authorities, but unfortunately there is simply too much of it.
But as England prepare for their Euro 2024 opener against Serbia on Sunday night, FA chief executive Mark Bullingham revealed the new developments.
“Obviously we’re constantly talking to players about it but we’re now doing things differently,” Bullingham said. “Previously we’ve put together all the data, effectively a collection of evidence, for the police to prosecute. But now we’re going a step further and funding the creation of an actual prosecution unit within the UK police.”
“What we don’t want to do is have a situation where we hand the police a pack to prosecute but they don’t have the resources to actually go ahead with it. So we’re paying for prosecutions to happen and funding the police so that prosecutions are done when there are cases like we’ve seen before.”
Mr Bullingham said the exact funding figure would depend on the number of prosecutions, but a “rough estimate” was “around £25,000”.
