Mario Balotelli may not be everyone's favourite footballer but even his detractors must be sickened a the amount of abuse the Liverpool striker receives online.
A new study by Kick It Out, conducted between August 2014 and March 2015, found that the Italian was targeted for online abuse far more than any other Premier League footballer.
Without dismissing the large numbers received by other players, the 8000+ instances that Balotelli was on the receiving end of is simply staggering.
Elsewhere in the study it was found that Chelsea and Liverpool were the clubs subject to the most online abuse coming in at 20,000 and 19,000 instances respectively. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority (88%) of abuse comes via Twitter and Kick It Out they will work with companies such as Twitter to become more proactive about the issue.
[BBC]
