Good Morning Britain’s Susanna Reid says racism against England team ‘breaks her heart’

Bukayo Saka, Jadon Sancho and Marcus Rashford all suffered racist abuse following England’s Euro 2020 loss

Susanna Reid and Richard Madeley spoke out against the racial abuse sent to England footballers in the wake of the Euro 2020 final defeat.

After England lost to Italy on penalties in Sunday night’s (11 July) fixture, Bukayo Saka, Jadon Sancho and Marcus Rashford were sent racial abuse online.

Speaking on Good Morning Britain earlier today (13 July), Reid and Madeley suggested ways in which social media platforms could help reduce the amount of hate that players received.

“It breaks my heart,” said Reid. “My children saw it yesterday. It’s disgusting. It’s absolutely unacceptable that that had got through any social media filter.

“The reports from social media companies that say they take it down immediately is just rubbish. It hurts me as a mum that my children and my children’s friends are seeing it.”

GMB co-presenter Ani Peters said: “We’ve all spent the last month willing on our team to do so well, so yesterday when I watched the show I didn’t realise this [racial abuse] was happening so I went online and had a look and genuinely for the first time ever, I was quite emotional.

“How a 19 year old boy who has done everything for his country can be abused online by people he doesn’t know. I pray that he never sees what was online yesterday.”

Peters went on, saying that he became “obsessed with it” and searched words on Twitter, becoming shocked by what people were allowed to post.

“I’m sorry Twitter, you can take out the N-word from anybody’s tweets, that is an algorithm,” he added. “I could say the word ‘cheeseburger’ and by this afternoon I will see adverts for cheeseburger everywhere.

“How can you then go, ‘We try our hardest’? You don’t try hard enough, because I found it a hundred times in twenty minutes.”

Good Morning Britain airs weekdays at 6am on ITV.