Yamal and the Moroccan national team in the line of fire: 55,000 hate messages during the World Cup

The Spanish Observatory on Racism and Xenophobia recorded almost 55,000 hate messages on social media during the period of the latest World Cup, primarily targeting France national team players and the Spanish star Lamine Yamal. It is a worrying phenomenon that exposes how major sporting events are exploited to spread racial prejudice and rhetoric of exclusion.

Spain's Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration announced in an official statement yesterday that 52% of the hate messages recorded between 11 June and 21 July were directly linked to the major sporting event held during that period, a figure that lays bare the scale of the polarisation and hostility surrounding the competitions.

Yamal drew a huge volume of hostile content. The player, of Spanish and Moroccan origin on his father's side and Equatorial Guinean on his mother's side, faced discriminatory comments about his origin and identity. The France national team came under fire over the number of its players of foreign origin or descent, in organised racist attacks across social media platforms.

The World Cup final between Spain and Argentina lit the spark for a dangerous escalation in hate speech. Attacks against Hispanic Americans made up 15% of the total, yet they intensified noticeably during that match, a clear link between verbal violence and decisive sporting events.

North African populations bore the brunt, accounting for 66% of the messages, particularly in relation to the Morocco national team. A further 13% of the reported content targeted Muslims, in rhetoric that reproduced stereotypes and exclusionary discourse aimed at religious and ethnic identities.

Some 74% of the messages contained content attacking the dignity of the targeted groups by dehumanising them, the report revealed. Half used explicitly violent language. Another 14% called for direct aggression, dangerous indicators of the rise of digital hate speech.

Migrants or people of foreign origin were described as a "burden" or "backwardness" on society in 40% of the discourse, the observatory noted, while 15% of it called for the expulsion of these citizens from Spanish territory. This is exclusionary rhetoric that goes far beyond sporting criticism into direct racist incitement.