Mario Balotelli has suffered racist abuse on Twitter, after poking fun at Manchester United following their 5-3 defeat to Leicester City.
The Italian striker tweeted: Man United…LOL – during yesterday’s game, which did not go down well with a number of United supporters.
Balotelli is already strongly disliked by Manchester United fans, considering he has played for their two greatest rivals in the form of Manchester City and Liverpool.
The strikers tweet was retweeted more than 185,000 times, and received 100,000 favourites.
Police say there has been no formal complaint from Liverpool or the player, but they are “making enquiries.”
Balotelli has suffered at racist abuse previously in his career, most notably during his time in Italy.
He threatened to walk off the pitch when the AC Milan v Roma game had to be stopped last season following racist chanting.
In an interview with GQ magazine earlier this year, Balotelli talked about the racist abuse he had suffered during his time in Italy.
He also said: “There are racists in England but I think they hide it more.
“People are fighting this thing, and it’s important. But in the media every time I have talked about this subject people talk about it for three or four days but then everything goes back to normal.
“So, either there is something really strong for all of us to do, some real movement or real action, and in that case I will be the first guy to participate, but if it’s just talk, I’d rather not.
“We can talk about it as much as we want but things don’t change that way.”
I’m a United fan. Just wanna say that the extremely vast majority are disgusted by this, and apologies to Liverpool fans. Football needs banter yes, but this is not banter and went way way too far.
Fair play to you Mark. Understand it is a small minority that give the rest a bad name.