Despite England's elimination in the last eight of the World Cup, its overall performance has earned widespread praise and a much more tempered level of anger from fans than at last year's European Nations Cup. According to data analyzed by HateLab, England suffered 168 malicious attacks on social networks during this year's World Cup, a figure that is a significant drop from the more than 3,000 hate messages that appeared in the hours following last year's Europa League final defeat. Captain Harry Carney was unfortunately the main target of the violent cyber attacks.
Looking back at last year's Europa League final, Bukayo Saka, Raheem Sterling and Charles Sinzu were targeted after losing to Italy on penalties, with the trio receiving more than 3,000 hate messages in the hours after the match, many of them racially charged. England, on the other hand, have seen a marked improvement in online violence this year, despite stopping at the last eight, with only 168 hate messages recorded throughout the tournament. Muffy Williams, who was in charge of the survey, noted, "Compared to the European Cup, this World Cup has seen a significant reduction in racist messages, with the majority of them being positive and positively encouraging. This may be due to the absence of triggers like mistakes made by black players."
