Ayre says the club would stop players using social media if it could.
Liverpool chief executive Ian Ayre says the club would stop players using social media if it was possible, following the FA’s decision to charge Mario Balotelli for an allegedly racist Instagram message.
Balotelli faces a five-game suspension for putting up a picture of Nintendo character ‘Mario’ along with the words “jumps like a black man and grabs coins like a Jew.”
Ayre, speaking to the BBC, is not happy.
“Given the choice we’d love to keep all our players away from social media because it really is a problem,” he said.
“I can honestly say there isn’t any more we could do as a club to try to educate our players around this, but it still rears its head at least once a season – probably at every club in some form or another.”
Ayre added: “One of the problems that all footballers have had for many a year is that they have too much time to kill.
“In that downtime they seem to put these crazy sort of messages up. It is definitely an issue.
“I don’t think we have got to the point where we would stop people doing it, but we certainly have a very stringent policy that all of our players sign. If they step out of line then we punish them.”
