January 15 – The pitfalls of professional footballers using social media for the wrong purposes have again been underlined after an English Premier League defender was charged with “aggravated misconduct”.
Stoke City’s Robert Huth allegedly participated with a Twitter account that invited users to guess people’s gender after seeing cropped photographs of them.
The 30-year-old German subsequently deleted the tweets and posted a message saying: “Clearly no offence was meant or directed to anyone, but apologies if I’ve offended anyone” but his apology came too late to prevent the authorities taking action.
A Football Association statement said: “It is alleged the comments were indecent and/or improper and/or brought the game into disrepute, contrary to FA Rule E3(1),” read a statement on the governing body’s official wesbite.
“It is further alleged that this breach of Rule E3(1) is an “Aggravated Breach” as defined in Rule E3(2), as it included a reference to gender and/or gender reassignment.
In October, former England captain Rio Ferdinand was slapped with a £25,000 fine and three-match ban for inappropriate remarks he made on Twitter.
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