“It makes me sad that women’s football is sexualised and disrespected,” read Liverpool midfielder Marie Hobinger’s victim statement. “No woman, no matter her job, should have to put up with this type of behaviour.” Mangal Dalal, 42, contacted Hobinger, 24, via social media before waiting for her at the side of the pitch after Liverpool’s away game against Manchester City in February 2025. He was handed a two-year restraining order and sentenced to 18 months of community service in January after
Mangal Dalal, 42, contacted Hobinger, 24, via social media before waiting for her at the side of the pitch after Liverpool’s away game against Manchester City in February 2025. He was handed a two-year restraining order and sentenced to 18 months of community service in January after pleading guilty to stalking the Austria international.
This is only one example that highlights the growing concerns around the safety of Women’s Super League (WSL) footballers. “There is that fear among players that it could happen to anyone,” Fern Whelan, women’s football equality, diversity and inclusion executive for the Professional Footballers’ Association, tells The Athletic.
During the 2025 European Championship, England and Gotham defender Jess Carter spoke out about the racist abuse she received on the internet, later telling the BBC she feared leaving the team hotel. A 60-year-old man pleaded guilty to malicious communications in January. Mark Roberts, the national lead for football policing, called the comments “appalling”.
At the 2023 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, when England reached the final, the Lionesses received fan mail from Australia that contained death threats. The UK football policing unit (UKFPU) conducted a joint investigation, including forensics, with Australian police, but as yet, nobody has been charged.
In January, Arsenal deleted a video on X and turned comments off on Instagram of new signing Smilla Holmberg promoting ticket sales because of inappropriate sexualised and misogynistic comments. Tottenham Hotspur also turned comments off on their X post announcing the arrival of Matilda Nilden, 19, for the same reason. Some of the replies asked X’s artificial intelligence tool Grok to produce sexualised images of the player.
We are delighted to announce that we have reached agreement for Matilda Nildén to join us from BK Häcken in January, 2026 ✍️
🗞️ https://t.co/bLC1QvkmsSpic.twitter.com/xPUfesurS2
— Tottenham Hotspur Women (@SpursWomen) December 31, 2025
“It is really worrying,” says Whelan. “It’s difficult to manage unless it is stopped at source.”
Some players have spoken about their fear of staying in their own homes after receiving rape and death threats online, Whelan told a Women and Equalities Committee held in the UK Parliament in October. Online abuse of women players, she said, has become “alarmingly worse” and “catapulted” since 2024 to the point where it is becoming “dangerous”.
Other areas of concern for players include the control and management of access on matchdays, their safety when off duty, and the amount of contact they have with fans and the general public via social media.
Some player representatives have put preventative measures in place, such as limiting the number of private drivers who can take a player home, to reduce how widely their addresses are known. Another noted that their players expressed no concern at all about their safety.
The UK’s All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on football has recently launched an inquiry into online harms across the men’s and women’s games. “We are clear that the women’s game faces some specific and heightened risks,” said Fair Game, secretariat to the Football APPG.
The Athletic has spoken to stakeholders within the game, including WSL Football, which oversees the top two tiers of women’s football in England; data science company Signify; and the PFA and the UKFPU to investigate how safe WSL players feel. The English Football Association was approached for comment, as were all WSL clubs.
In some incidents detailed below, clubs in question remain anonymous to respect the confidentiality of their security arrangements.
The message may read: “I know where you park your car”, “I know what car you drive”, or “I know where you live”. Whether genuine or not, such messages force players to judge the level of threat.
Women’s football is in a period of generational transition. The increased investment and global broadcast exposure have seen a fundamental shift in the game’s profile, especially in England, following the Lionesses’ consecutive European triumphs in 2022 and 2025. All publicity, however, is not good publicity.
Historically, women’s football has leaned into accessibility — players signing autographs, taking photos and engaging closely with supporters. As the game’s profile has grown, that openness has created tension between connection and safety.
“It is becoming increasingly difficult for elite-level women’s players to embrace fan access to the same levels as has been the case historically,” says Jonathan Sebire, co-founder at Signify, which works across multiple sports and with several WSL clubs to collect, triage and assess the threat online abuse poses to players.
The majority of online abuse players receive contains sexual elements, according to Signify, including sexualised content of the individual player or their partner. Other categories of online abuse include racist and violent threats, the latter of which often contains a sexualised element. Some abuse, particularly from male online users, centres on the quality of the women’s game, but there is another concern, says Signify, that has increased far more rapidly.
“One of the fundamental differences in the women’s game is there are openly gay players, some of whom are in relationships with other footballers, some of whom are at the same club,” says Sebire.
“We see a large number of young women who look up to these players because of their sexuality. They’re seen as openly gay icons and role models in the sport. It starts with a level of fandom that has sometimes tipped over into fixation, infatuation and developed into something more problematic.”
Such behaviour is not exclusively linked to sexuality, but most cases known directly to Signify fall into this category.
In some rare instances, but increasing in occurrence, people have followed players around supermarkets and visited the same bars or restaurants as them. Contact can start online and move offline or vice versa. For example, players have reported people making contact via direct messages online and then seeing them appear in their local surroundings.
“It’s not uncommon,” says Sebire. “If you speak to a group of players, some will almost certainly have experienced it.”
Signify observes that often the behaviour does not involve physical contact or direct interaction. Instead, it centres on attempts to create the appearance of a relationship for others to see — for example, by taking selfies of themselves with players in the background. They then message players later online to suggest a personal connection.
“If they’re doing that every week, that has become an infatuation,” says Sebire. “In most cases, when the club or police warn them and tell them this behaviour is problematic, it stops because they are shocked it has been noticed and received in that way.”
In other extreme cases, players have suspected a person was tracking their car’s movements, as they appeared wherever the players went. Clubs have sanctioned season-ticket holders, and law enforcement agencies have carried out risk assessments in response.
The answer, though, is not for women players to simply abstain from social media. “It is not their responsibility; they are just doing their jobs,” says Whelan.
Many women’s players, after all, earn significantly more through off-field commercial deals than via playing contracts. Social media is a critical tool for connecting with fans, building personal profiles, and securing sponsorship income.
It is also far more likely that women’s players still run their own social media accounts, whereas in the men’s game, certainly among Premier League stars, others tend to manage players’ online profiles. According to Sebire, that is something that needs to and is starting to change.
It is also very different for a WSL player, who may live a relatively ‘normal’ life, to receive a threatening message than perhaps a Premier League footballer who lives in a house with significant security provisions and perhaps access to a private chef or barber. Premier League clubs also have established onboarding processes for their players, with, for example, security briefings including dedicated services for players’ properties.
That does not negate the impact of online abuse for a men’s player, but it is important context to consider, even if some WSL players are now household names.
“In some clubs, the infrastructure around women’s teams’ safety is catching up with the men’s game,” says Sebire. “But it has not been universal. Those are fundamentals that have to change for women’s players to feel safe.”
The nature of the online abuse suffered by women’s players is often different, too. Unlike violent or racist abuse, it does not necessarily fit into a clearly defined category with reporting mechanisms, policies and consequences.
The Online Safety Act, fully enforced as of 2025, means OFCOM, the UK’s independent regulator for the communications industries, can take action against social media platforms, including removing content or working with law enforcement. But there are nuances to the women’s game that need to be considered.
Some platforms do not recognise a lot of the abuse and threat directed at women because universal language, such as “kitchen” — referring, for example, to the misogynistic phrase ‘Get back in the kitchen’ — is repurposed or not seen as harmful without the necessary context.
The AI tool Grok is another example. X has now prevented Grok from being used to edit images of real people in revealing clothing after OFCOM launched an investigation in January. The public body Sport England decided to stop using X last month to stay true to its values of the “mission is to ensure sport and physical activity are safe and inclusive for everyone,” it said in a statement. WSL Football had already scaled back its use of X, and some WSL clubs have said they continue to monitor the situation.
Another growing pain for WSL clubs is the contrast between playing games at the women’s home grounds and the main club’s stadia.
It is easier for the club to use the same security infrastructure at a Premier League ground when their women’s team plays there, but when switching to smaller grounds, there are different security measures around the pitch, players’ entrance, or car park.
“It’s safer in general to be at the Emirates,” England captain and Arsenal defender Leah Williamson told the New Statesman in December. “You’re more accessible. It’s a five-metre difference (between the players and fans).”
Some players have reported concerns of being repeatedly approached by the same people outside stadiums and hassled as they approach their cars.
“If players make themselves accessible signing autographs in the ground with stewards but are approached once they leave the ground, when do they say: ‘No, this isn’t appropriate?” asks one person. “That feels like an invasion of space.”
Supporter interaction has become increasingly challenging as attendances have increased. WSL Football, WSL clubs and the English Football Association are trying to balance maintaining the game’s unique atmosphere and sense of community while grappling with a rapidly changing landscape.
Ahead of the 2024-2025 season, Chelsea changed their player access rules before and after games, citing it was “no longer safe or sustainable” for players to sign autographs or take selfies “in an uncontrolled way”. Many clubs followed suit. Some now have more organised meet-and-greets with season-ticket holders in a controlled environment, while others have close-protection officers pitchside. When on England duty, players walk around the pitch after games but do not stop and sign autographs.
“It would be a shame if it got shut down to the extent that the men’s game has,” says Sebire. “But the risk is there.”
Clubs are taking player safety seriously, according to numerous people, and are investing to try to keep players safe. “Everybody is just trying to find a way through,” comments one observer.
WSL Football’s safeguarding standards require that each “club ensures that physical and online environments promote safety and wellbeing while minimising the opportunity for children, adults at risk and players to be harmed and/or exposed to harmful or inappropriate behaviour, materials or content”.
Each club undertakes its own risk assessments and all clubs in the top two leagues have a nominated police officer. WSL Football has its own safety and security working group and regularly engages with the UKFPU and clubs via monthly safety officer meetings.
The FA and several WSL clubs, including Arsenal, Chelsea, London City Lionesses, Aston Villa and Tottenham Hotspur, say they have robust security provisions and educational resources. Some employ dedicated safeguarding, player care and close-protection measures, alongside partnerships with external monitoring firms, while others have players escorted at matches and events, administer online safety training, and have formal reporting routes.
The biggest barrier to prosecution a few years ago was obtaining player statements. “With the national teams, we’ve certainly broken through that,” Chief Constable for Cheshire Police Mark Roberts tells The Athletic.
Now, the UKFPU prepares players by explaining the reporting process proactively, and before tournaments, officers conduct security briefings and education sessions with the England team to offer advice regarding security and online abuse.
“Don’t just delete it, try to keep it,” says Roberts. “We’ll capture it, try to identify the person, ask for a statement, and give the player support. It’s the shock of receiving something and making sure they know what to do. If you debunk the system, hopefully it makes it easier for people to come forward.”
Signify has found that in some of their education sessions, players may understandably find it embarrassing to talk about their experiences, whether it’s the content of the material or that it has affected them. Often, individuals report incidents in private after group sessions.
“If anything is happening in places that no one else can see, tell someone about it because you shouldn’t be dealing with this on your own,” says Sebire. “It’s not OK.”
Nikki Doucet, CEO of WSL Football, has spoken with Meta’s global head of safety and the Women’s National Basketball Association about the tools they use. She recently met at UK Parliament with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s Women’s Sport Taskforce, hosted by minister Stephanie Peacock, alongside representatives from OFCOM, the police, and other sports leaders to discuss protections for sportswomen online.
“It is top of the PFA’s agenda, including pushing the clubs to see how we can protect the players better,” says Whelan, adding that online abuse is a “massive barrier” to participation for many young girls and parents.
“It is not football that is the problem; it is the perpetrators behind it all,” she adds. “We have to make sure the people who are looking after the footballers are taking it really seriously. I would hate for it to come to a point where those threats become reality, and then we act.
“Everyone is working hard behind the scenes to find a solution. Clubs are aware of the concerns the players have raised. There is a real shift; players are not going to stand for this. The more we see perpetrators held to account, the more they are emboldened.”
Additional reporting: Philip Buckingham
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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Category: General Sports
