'Ted Lasso' star Jason Sudeikis shows support for England footballers after racist abuse
Jason Sudeikis has shown his support for England footballers Jadon Sancho, Marcus Rashford, and Bukayo Saka following the UEFA Euro 2020 final at Wembley Stadium on Sunday.
Sudeikis, who plays the titular football coach in the Apple TV+ series Ted Lasso, donned a "Jadon, Marcus & Bukayo" T-shirt to the Season 2 premiere at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, California on Thursday.
The three players have faced racist online abuse over the past week after they missed penalties in the 3-2 shootout loss.
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Amid the abuse, people took to Instagram to attempt to drown out racist comments and emoji on the players' pages by posting positive comments of support and love.
Both Rashford and Saka have posted open letters apologising — unnecessarily, we might add — for missing their penalties.
In Rashford's letter, he condemned the abuse he'd received as a Black footballer. "I can take critique of my performance all day long, my penalty was not good enough, it should have gone in but I will never apologise for who I am and where I came from," he wrote.
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"I'm Marcus Rashford, 23 year old black man from Withington and Wythenshawe, South Manchester. If I have nothing else I have that."
Saka also penned an open letter and called out social media companies' inaction on harassment and abuse. "To the social media platforms Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, I don't want any child or adult to have to receive the hateful and hurtful messages that me, Marcus and Jadon have received this week," he wrote. "I knew instantly the kind of hate that I was about to receive and that is a sad reality that your powerful platforms are not doing enough to stop these messages."
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Saka's letter ended on a powerful note: "There is no place for racism or hate of any kind in football or in any area of society."
Quick question, where can we get a T-shirt like Jason's?
Topics Activism Racial Justice
Rachel Thompson is the Features Editor at Mashable. Rachel's second non-fiction book The Love Fix: Reclaiming Intimacy in a Disconnected World is out now, published by Penguin Random House in Jan. 2025. The Love Fix explores why dating feels so hard right now, why we experience difficult emotions in the realm of love, and how we can change our dating culture for the better.
A leading sex and dating writer in the UK, Rachel has written for GQ, The Guardian, The Sunday Times Style, The Telegraph, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Stylist, ELLE, The i Paper, Refinery29, and many more.
Rachel's first book Rough: How Violence Has Found Its Way Into the Bedroom And What We Can Do About It, a non-fiction investigation into sexual violence was published by Penguin Random House in 2021.
