The Football Association has confirmed it is aware of the historic racist term Jarrod Bowen used in a tweet published in 2012 when he was just 15.
Bowen’s historic social media post came to light on the platform on Thursday. The West Ham United winger has since apologised for his use of the word.
Leicester City midfielder Hamza Choudhury was fined £5,000 in 2019 and ordered to attend an education course by the FA for “hurtful and offensive” comments he posted on social media.
In September 2016, Watford striker Andre Gray was handed a four-match ban for bringing the game into disrepute over homophobic posts he made on Twitter in 2012. Following an Independent Regulatory Commission hearing, Gray was also fined £25,000, warned as to his future conduct and ordered to attend an FA education course.
While not condoning what Bowen said banning or fining Bowen could create a dangerous precedence with rival football fans digging up any post from footballers in their childhood on Twitter, Facebook or other social media platforms.
Twitter seems to be a gift that keeps on giving.
He was 15, he apologized. Done and dusted.
Teenage brains are not wired in the same manner as adult ones I am reliably informed. Its one of the reasons that sentencing for juveniles is different.
To judge someone’s error as a adolescent when an adult is quite frankly something I would expect from a 1930’s dictatorship but is hardly surprising in the climate we reside in today.
Another witch hunt in this country.
He was 15, regrets it, probably didn’t really understand it.
Tell me a young kid, boy or girl who hasn’t done or said something that they look back on in later life and thought that wasn’t clever or regretted it.
Just about sums this country up, hindsight politics and hindsight criticism.
Freedom of speech is dead in this country.