Arsenal’s Willian gets “scared” checking phone for vile racism and abuse

Arsenal star Willian has admitted he is "scared" to check his phone after matches because of the racist abuse he receives online.

Like many footballers, Willian has been the subject of vile comments from trolls on social media.

The Brazilian ace recently shared some of the racist messages he received on Instagram in February and decided to speak out about the abuse and the pain that it causes him and his family.

"It's really, really affected me when they say about my family," he said. "As I've said before, if they want to criticise me, that's no problem, I will always accept that.

"But when they come to attack you and your family with bad words that I cannot say here, that hurts. That's really affected me and it's a big problem.

"I feel that straight away I want to delete my social media accounts.

"I have seen some people [do that] because of the racism and the abuse and straight away I want to do that, but when you think and take a few minutes and relax a little bit more… but the first action is to delete straight away!

"Sometimes, yeah, to be honest [I am scared to check my phone after a match], because we are human.

"I want to understand who these people are and who they think they are to come to speak like that with us.

"We are professional and we do the best to help the team on the pitch. We want to win and we always want to win.

"We never want to lose, but we have our bad days and sometimes we're not feeling good and having problems like everyone has.

"We have personal problems and families have a lot of problems as well, so sometimes you're not in a good day, you have a bad game and they come and they say these kind of words that hurt you.

"That's why we want to stop it. Enough is enough."

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