Embattled Liverpool defender Dejan Lovren took a whole lot of heat on social media during his side’s 4-1 loss to Tottenham Hotspur a couple weeks ago. Lovren’s extremely poor performance saw him subbed out in just 31 minutes.
Heavy criticism comes with the territory when you’re a high profile, well paid public figure, but threats are always, without question, morally repugnant and uncalled for. Today Lovren went on his official Instagram account and posted a direct message he had received from a user which read: “I’m gonna murder ur family u Croatian prick.”
Yes, a death threat, ethnic slur and lazy misspelling, all in just eight “words.” Lovren posted the message in an IG story, with the caption “horrible what kind of people we have.”
He then added a second image and wrote: “I don’t mind when people talk shit about me, it says more about them! But I cannot ignore when my family is threatened. I just can’t and won’t accept that. Disgusting.”
We couldn’t agree more. It’s just repulsive that some people out there are doing just terrible things with the advances in communication technology that society has made.
Liverpool Manager Jurgen Klopp on all the egregious criticism that Dejan Lovren has received:
“I don’t wish one of you to have your mistakes discussed in public. You cannot even imagine how it feels. The boys are in the first place still human beings but you look like you are watching an accident and you are the kind of people standing around with smartphones instead of helping. I’m not this kind of person.
“We had a normal week.”
“Of course it’s not the nicest week in Dejan’s life but it’s only football. People don’t become a better or a worse person through making a mistake in a football game.
“If I think about Dejan, I have much more positive things than negative things.”
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now and Minute Media. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and Chicago Now.
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