Jadon Sancho said he is yet to fully recover from the racist abuse he was subjected to following England‘s penalty shootout defeat to Italy in the final of Euro 2020.
Sancho, Bukayo Saka and Marcus Rashford all missed penalties as England were beaten by Italy at Wembley Stadium in July 2021 to miss out on the first major trophy for the country’s men’s team since 1966.
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The trio, all of whom are Black, were subsequently targeted by a barrage of online racist abuse, sparking widespread condemnation and a police investigation.
“This is still something that’s in my head sometimes,” Sancho told CNN in an interview published Thursday. “I don’t think I’ve fully recovered yet on that part, but I’m trying my best to get over that.
“The backlash we got from it, it wasn’t nice. Being in London, not in a million years I would have thought that we would have received [that], especially representing our country. It’s a memory I try to block, but I can’t act like it didn’t happen. So this is one of those memories that you got to try to get past it and be positive.”
