GARY Neville has pointed the finger of blame towards Boris Johnson after England players were racially abused on social media following their defeat to Italy.

Three of the team’s young stars were targeted on social media after missing penalties in the shoot-out defeat at Wembley.

The abuse was condemned by the English FA and is being investigated by police.

The Prime Minister also denounced the perpetrators, tweeting: “Those responsible for this appalling abuse should be ashamed of themselves.”

However, the Tory leader was accused of hypocrisy, with critics highlighting his stance on taking the knee and previous use of racist tropes.

Former England defender Neville said he was unsurprised by the racist abuse and criticised the leadership of the Prime Minister.

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During an interview on Sky News, he said: "I'm just reading your breaking news and it says the 'PM condemns racist abuse of England players’.

"Gareth Southgate and the players a few weeks ago, about five days on the trot, told us they were taking the knee to promote equality and it was against racism.

"The Prime Minister said it was OK for the population of this country to boo those players who were trying to promote equality and defend against racism. It starts at the very top.

"I wasn't surprised in the slightest that I woke up to those headlines; I expected it the minute that the three players that missed missed."

Ahead of Euro 2020, England’s players were jeered by their own fans for taking the knee, an anti-racism protest.

Johnson said he would not take the knee because he “does not believe in gestures” and said he did didn’t want “people to be bullied into doing things they don't necessarily want to do".

Neville continued: "There is an issue in football, there is an issue in society where we feel it's acceptable basically to criticise players for sporting actions because of the colour of their skin.

"It's a well-told story that the social media companies have to come down harder on racist abuse – I think we have to start to isolate these individuals who are attacking the players in a racist manner, and isolate them by writing to their employers, so that ultimately there is total accountability and suffering and consequence.

"But also that there is consequence within the game through the FA, the Premier League and other organisations – Uefa and Fifa – and we start to see sentences and punishments for these incidents that ultimately fit the crime because people are being abused and it's absolutely ridiculous in 2021 we are still talking about this."

England manager Gareth Southgate described the abuse directed at the players, Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka, as "unforgivable".

He said: "It's just not what we stand for.

"We have been a beacon of light in bringing people together in people being able to relate to the national team, and the national team stands for everybody and so that togetherness has to continue.

"We have shown the power our country has when it does come together and has that energy and positivity together.

"It's my decision who takes the penalties, it's not a case of players not volunteering or more experienced players backing out."

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Kick It Out chief Burnett added: "Throughout the tournament, Gareth Southgate and his players have been a credit to this nation. England reached their first ever Euro final and that's something to be proud of.

"The racist abuse however aimed at some of the England players on social media last night, is appalling and completely unacceptable. We understand the police are rightly investigating the abuse and we hope the appropriate punishment is applied.

"We will continue to work with our partners in football to drive discrimination out of the game, but we call on those with the power to act now. The social media companies need to do more to stamp out abuse on their platforms, and the government also need to step up and keep its promise to regulate. The Online Safety Bill could be a game-changer and we aim to help make that happen."

The players were targeted on Twitter and Instagram.

Twitter said it had proactively removed more than 1000 posts over the past 24 hours which violated its policy and also taken swift action to permanently suspend a number of accounts.

"The abhorrent racist abuse directed at England players last night has absolutely no place on Twitter," a spokesperson said in a statement to the PA news agency.

"In the past 24 hours, through a combination of machine learning based automation and human review, we have swiftly removed over 1,000 Tweets and permanently suspended a number of accounts for violating our rules - the vast majority of which we detected ourselves proactively using technology.

"We will continue to take action when we identify any Tweets or accounts that violate our policies.

"We have proactively engaged and continue to collaborate with our partners across the football community to identify ways to tackle this issue collectively and will continue to play our part in curbing this unacceptable behaviour - both online and offline."

Facebook – which owns Instagram – said it tries to remove harmful content as quickly as possible and encouraged people to use the tools it offers to block abuse.

"No one should have to experience racist abuse anywhere, and we don't want it on Instagram," a Facebook company spokesperson said.

"We quickly removed comments and accounts directing abuse at England's footballers last night and we'll continue to take action against those that break our rules.

"In addition to our work to remove this content, we encourage all players to turn on Hidden Words, a tool which means no one has to see abuse in their comments or DMs.

"No one thing will fix this challenge overnight, but we're committed to keeping our community safe from abuse."