Manchester [UK], July 13 (ANI): Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has said that the criticism of missing a penalty in the Euro 2020 finals against Italy would not dampen the spirits of England striker Marcus Rashford.
Italy ended England's dream to win the Euro 2020 here at the Wembley Stadium on Sunday (local time). Azzurri defeated England 3-2 on penalties after the normal 90-minute action had finished at 1-1 and even extra time was not able to break the deadlock. Rashford, Jadon Sancho, and Bukayo Saka all missed the chance to net goals in the penalty shootouts. The English players were then abused on social media.
"You know the thing is when you step up to take a penalty, I think you have already won. You have taken on the responsibility and I am sure many of the players are hoping I do not want to take a penalty," Solskjaer told United's official website.
"So I think it is a great character trait to step up and say I will deal with it and the consequences. You might be the hero or the one who misses. That is football. You learn from it and definitely come back stronger. I have not seen many people, at this club anyway, who lay down and say I will not take a penalty anymore. I know Marcus is going to put his hand up and say he wants to take one for us," he added.
Rashford also apologised for missing a penalty in the Euro Cup final but said he "will never apologise for who I am" after the England striker was subjected to racist abuse following the Three Lions' loss in the summit clash against Italy.
England's Football Association in the early hours of Monday morning also condemned racist abuse of players. "The FA strongly condemns all forms of discrimination and is appalled by the online racism that has been aimed at some of our England players on social media," an official statement read.
Micro-blogging website Twitter has removed over 1,000 tweets and permanently suspended a number of accounts after they were found engaging in racial abuse of England players as the Three Lions lost the Euro 2020 final against Italy.
"The abhorrent racist abuse directed at England players last night has absolutely no place on Twitter. In the past 24 hours, through a combination of machine learning-based automation and human review, we have swiftly removed over 1000 Tweets and permanently suspended a number of accounts for violating our rules — the vast majority of which we detected ourselves proactively using technology. We will continue to take action when we identify any Tweets or accounts that violate our policies," a Twitter spokesperson had told ANI.
"We have proactively engaged and continue to collaborate with our partners across the football community to identify ways to tackle this issue collectively and will continue to play our part in curbing this unacceptable behaviour — both online and offline," the spokesperson added. (ANI)
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