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I wish we could ban players from social media, admits Liverpool chief

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Liverpool FC’s chief executive Ian Ayre has admitted he wishes the club could ban all players from social media after the latest incident involving Mario Balotelli.

The Italian striker was charged by the Football Association on Friday after reposting an image on Instagram containing a racist and anti-Semitic message.

Liverpool chief executive Ian Ayre Liverpool chief executive Ian Ayre

And Ayre claimed the club could not do any more to educate the players about social media, and said he wished he could ban the players from using it outright.

He told BBC 5 live: “Given the choice we’d love to keep all our players away from social media because it really is a problem.

“I can honestly can 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.

“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.”

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