Kane suffers worst

Harry Kane was the most abused England player on Twitter during the World Cup group stages, accounting for nearly three out of 10 negative tweets directed at team members.

England players were sent 1,546 abusive tweets during the group stages, according to analysis by the Alan Turing Institute, accounting for 2% of more than 75,000 tweets mentioning them.

The institute’s online safety team found that 13% of those abusive tweets – or 205 posts – contained keywords that referred to a protected characteristic such as race, gender or sexuality.

The England captain received the most abusive posts, being tagged in 426 abusive tweets that made up 28% of the total of negative posts sent to players’ Twitter handles.

Anger at the decision that Kane should not wear a OneLove armband was a frequent theme in the abuse content directed at him during the 6-2 win over Iran, said the institute. The next most abused players during the group stages were Mason Mount and Harry Maguire.