4 footballers join forces to take stand against online abuse and death threats

There wasn't a particular incident which prompted Daniel Bachmann to take action, more a gradual build-up which eventually reached a breaking point.

Social media abuse had become a part of the Watford goalkeeper's life. Play a game of football. Come off the pitch. Pick up the phone. Open the apps. Let the vitriol wash over you. Such is the life of a modern-day sports person.

"I've had it myself and the things you see online, some of the stuff my team-mates have got, it's unbelievable to think that people sit at home and write this kind of stuff. It's hard to believe that people think this kind of thing is OK," Bachmann tells Mirror Football.

"I've had a case where I've received a death threat towards me and my family and my kids. My wife was obviously quite worried about it, because she's at home on her own all the time while I'm away with football. It's not a nice situation for her to read this kind of stuff - 'your kids are going to get killed', 'you better look after your wife' - it's not nice. We got the police involved and they couldn't make out who it was, or where that person was from at all."

'Abuse on a daily basis'

Sadly, Bachmann's case is far from unique. Most footballers have a similar story, or even a multitude of them. Criticism, even the strongly-worded kind, is nothing new following poor performances, but Bachmann thinks the threatening tone of the messages and sheer scale of them is getting out of control.

High-profile events, like England's defeat on penalties by Italy in the final of Euro 2020, often spark a wave of abuse. Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka, who all missed from the spot at Wembley, were immediately subjected to vile racist messages on social media platforms. Some of those behind the keyboards have since been jailed and fined for their actions.

But the fallout from Euro 2020 was merely the tip of the iceberg, and many argue the punishments simply don't fit the crime. Having borne witness to such disgraceful behaviour all too frequently, Bachmann is one of those people. "For some of the black players at Watford, it's almost after every game that they get racially abused," he says. "It's just not right. We see that first-hand, constantly, almost on a daily basis."

The abuse is bad enough, but for Bachmann it is made worse by what he feels is a complete disinterest from social media companies in tackling the problem head on.

"We feel like there needs to be something done about it, because Instagram, Twitter are certainly not doing anything about it," he explains. "They're more bothered about if you post a video with a song that you don't have the rights for - that will be taken down within two seconds. But if someone racially abuses someone, posts homophobic abuse or death threats, they don't give a s***. That kind of sums it up really. They are more bothered about rights to a song than real peoples' mental health."

A clean slate

Bachmann is far from the only player to hold such opinions. Conversations about the extent of the problem and what could be done about it are widespread in dressing rooms across the country and, on this particular occasion, they led to something concrete.

Discussions with his sister-in-law Danielle Bamber prompted Bachmann to combine forces with his Watford team-mate Dan Gosling, Fulham captain Tom Cairney and Josh Windass of Sheffield Wednesday to try and do something about social media abuse. That was in February 2021. Fast-forward to the present day and OPON is well on the way to being developed and is now seeking £250,000 investment via crowdfunding to launch later this year. Bamber hopes the funds will be raised in the "next few weeks", so the app can be launched in four months' time on iOS and Android.

OPON is a new social media app which is aiming to make online abuse a thing of the past by starting again from scratch with a clean slate. While it will look similar to those which currently dominate the market, it has a unique selling point: ID verification. Users will be required to upload a form of identification when signing up, meaning anonymity is no longer an option.

"It isn't just about football," OPON founder Bamber says. "You come across so many cases where young people have been groomed online, vulnerable individuals have been targeted to get their bank account details, older people pretending to be someone else to meet up with underage people. It's about protecting everyone."

The idea behind OPON is not to censor users, or dictate what people can and can't talk about, but to create a safer online environment. "We would never want to stop peoples' opinions," Bachmann explains.

"In my case, because I'm a footballer, we'd never try to stop people, when I come off the pitch, from saying 'Dan Bachmann's been s*** today'. That's not a problem at all, because everyone has their opinions. I would never want to stop people having a reaction after a game if someone has played badly - but it's that vile abuse we sometimes get after a game, constantly. And it's not just about football, it happens in daily life as well. We've got people on board [the app] who have got family members who are vulnerable and they've had abuse too."

'No one is accountable'

OPON has received backing from the Premier League and Professional Footballers' Association, who revealed in 2020 that 44 per cent of footballers received online abuse, while 36 per cent of those surveyed said social media was the biggest issue to their mental health.

PFA executive Jason Lee has lobbied for some time, asking in vain for social media companies to take decisive action against trolls. He believes that, after years of inaction, OPON and ID verification is a positive step forward for an industry which refuses to tackle the root of the problem.

"There's always been abuse. If you get sent off or make a mistake in a game, sports people know there's going to be criticism," Lee says. "But the fact is when you go online and you're able to post m and banana emojis and quite clearly be racist, or homophobic, the punishments just don't fit the crime. No one is accountable. It takes so long, and shouldn't, for peoples' accounts to be frozen. They should never come back."

Lee is strident in his belief that social media companies are complicit in the abuse. "There has to be competition," he says of OPON. "We're not getting the answers. The solutions are simple. The mainstream, established companies are just not keen to make those changes. They give you little bits and pieces, say they're doing the right things. But if they had made any sort of a difference then we wouldn't be talking about it. The fact that we have to look to create new platforms says that we're not happy with where we are and what we have to deal with. It's about giving people choice."

Players politicising themselves

The past few years have seen a rise in the number of sportspeople willing to use their platform to talk about issues which are important to them. Lee thinks that initiatives like OPON show why the oft-heard argument that sport and politics shouldn't mix is becoming increasingly redundant.

"It's a nonsense to say that," he says. "It's really arrogant to say that. They're trying to dumb you down as a human being, as an individual. 'Stay in your lane, concentrate on what you do'. It's really galling when you hear those sorts of comments because we have got a part to play.

"It's good that players want to politicise themselves. People try to say that you should separate the two, but you can't if you've got things that are interesting and really important to you. Players have a platform and a voice and they want to do more - and why wouldn't you?

"If you've got any sort of following, be more than that. We can all be comfortable and be safe in our circumstances but I think these players that have come forward with a concept, and have got it to this stage, should be applauded for that. They're trying to do something positive and they're trying to implement change."

For Bachman, the fact that he, Gosling, Cairney and Windass are footballers is merely incidental. Social media abuse is something that affects everyone - and it is something they hope might be pushed further to the margins of society by their joint venture.

"We get to play football for a living. It doesn't get better than that. The group we've got together here, we certainly do know how lucky we are, and we do appreciate everything we get through the sport that we love. If we can use our platform to help people, to make a lot of peoples' lives easier then that's a bonus."