Arsenal’s midfielder, Granit Xhaka says he wants to meet social media abusers especially those that abused him and his family.
Numerously, Xhaka has had a chequered relationship with his Arsenal fanbase and his family has also been a target particularly after his stormy departure from the home game against Crystal Palace in 2019 October.
This season as well, there have been issues which the midfielder strongly says those involved are not genuine Arsenal fans.
He said, “I don’t see them as supporters for my club. Of course, you can criticize or say what you want about football but not about the person, not about the family. I think these are two pairs of shoes, about football and about the person. If one guy is a ticket holder for the club and he speaks like this about his own players I don’t think he gets respect from our side first and from other people”.
“It’s not a problem when you win. If you lose everyone hates you, everyone is writing you things where it’s not possible to understand how they’re writing stuff like this. I wish I could meet the people who write these things and sit with them eye to eye. I would ask them, ‘why are you writing things like this?’ Not only for me because it happens a lot in the past few weeks. But only to know what he’s feeling in this moment when he writes things like this”.
“It’s not acceptable. So we have to open our eyes and speak a lot because I think you kill football like this if people start to talk about a family or player or things like this”.
More Online Abuse Victims.
Xhaka, being among several Arsenal players and many in the Premier League to have been online targets, last week, more were victims of the same. Teammates Willian and Eddie Nketiah received racially abusive messages on social media platforms.