Originally published 2021-07-15.
After England lost the Euro 2020 final to Italy on penalties, Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka, the three players who missed in the shoot-out, were bombarded with racist abuse online. Within hours, a mural of Rashford in Withington, the south Manchester suburb where he grew up, was also defaced. What happened next became one of the defining images of that summer: local people covered the wall in hearts, flags and handwritten notes of support.
Rashford answered with a statement that apologised for his penalty but refused to apologise for his identity. This is the story of that week, what the police later found about the graffiti, and the changes in the law that followed.
The final and the shoot-out
The final was played at Wembley Stadium on 11 July 2021. The tournament carried the name Euro 2020 because it had been postponed by a year during the pandemic. For England it was the first final at a major men's tournament since the 1966 World Cup, 55 years earlier.
The match ended 1–1 after extra time. Rashford and Sancho were brought on in the closing minutes specifically to take penalties. Rashford's kick, England's third, hit the post. Sancho's and then Saka's were saved by Italy goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma, and Italy won the shoot-out 3–2.
Saka was 19. Sancho was 21. Rashford was 23. All three are Black, and within minutes of the final whistle their social media accounts were flooded with racist messages and emojis.
The abuse and the investigation
The Football Association condemned the abuse, as did politicians and players across the country. The Metropolitan Police's football unit opened an investigation. According to figures summarised on Wikipedia, police received around 600 reports of racist comments and judged 207 of them to be criminal offences. Of those, 34 came from accounts in the UK and 123 from other countries, and four people were arrested on 15 July in connection with the online abuse.
The figures underline a point often lost in the anger of the moment: much of the abuse came from abroad, which made it harder for British police to act and fed calls for social media companies to verify users and remove hateful content faster.
The Withington mural: what really happened
The Rashford mural in Withington is the work of the street artist Akse and was commissioned by Ed Wellard. In the early hours of Monday 12 July, police were called after it was vandalised with graffiti.
Because the defacement came so soon after the racist abuse online, it was widely reported at first as racist graffiti. That detail needs a calm correction. Greater Manchester Police later said the graffiti was "not believed to be of a racial nature", while adding that they were keeping an open mind about the motive. Whatever the intention, many people saw it as part of the same hostility aimed at the three players, and that shaped the response.
Within hours, residents and fans began covering the damaged sections with paper hearts, England flags and messages of thanks. Children's drawings sat beside notes from adults who said Rashford had made them proud, both on the pitch and through his campaigning off it. Akse soon returned to repair the artwork, and Wellard said the notes would be kept and, where possible, displayed.
A wall of support and a demonstration
On Tuesday 13 July, the anti-racist group Stand Up to Racism held a demonstration at the mural to condemn the abuse of Rashford, Sancho and Saka. Reports described a crowd of several hundred people, with some estimates as high as 700, and many demonstrators reportedly took the knee, the gesture England's players had made before matches throughout the tournament.
The scene mattered because online abuse is usually scattered and invisible. The mural gave people a physical place to show which side they were on, and pictures of the message-covered wall travelled across the world.
Rashford's response
Rashford published a long statement the day after the final. He admitted he had gone into the game short of confidence after a difficult season and said he felt he had let his teammates and the country down. He took full responsibility for the miss and apologised for it, while praising the bond in the England squad as the best he had experienced.
Then he drew a clear line. He wrote that he had grown used to people commenting on the colour of his skin, where he grew up and how he spent his time away from football, and that he would accept criticism of his performance all day. But, he added: "I will never apologise for who I am and where I came from."
He said the response in Withington had brought him close to tears, thanked the communities that had always supported him, described himself as a 23-year-old Black man from Withington and Wythenshawe, and promised that he and the team would come back stronger.
His words carried weight because of who he already was off the pitch. In 2020 his campaign against child food poverty had pushed the UK government into extending free school meals over the summer holidays, his petition passed a million signatures, and he had been appointed MBE that October.
What changed afterwards
The abuse after the final led directly to new legal powers. On 12 January 2022 the Home Office announced that football banning orders, until then used mainly for violence, disorder and racist or homophobic chanting at matches, would be extended to online hate offences linked to football. A person convicted can be barred from regulated matches for between three and ten years, and breaking an order can bring up to six months in prison, an unlimited fine, or both. The government named the racism aimed at England players after the final as the reason for the change.
Common misconceptions
- "The mural was covered in racist slogans." Police said they did not believe the graffiti was racial, although they did not rule out any motive.
- "All the abuse came from England fans." Police data showed many of the criminal messages came from accounts outside the UK.
- "Nothing was done." Arrests followed, and the law on football banning orders was changed.
The Withington wall is still remembered as a moment when a neighbourhood answered hate with something simple and visible: kindness written on paper and taped to a wall.
Sources: Wikipedia: UEFA Euro 2020 final; LBC, July 2021: Marcus Rashford mural graffiti 'not racial', police say; Wikipedia: Marcus Rashford; GOV.UK, 12 January 2022: Racist online trolls banned from football stadiums by new law.
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