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London - The police have been called to investigate claims that Manchester City's Ivory Coast midfielder Yaya Toure was racially abused within hours of re-activating his Twitter account on Monday.
The 31-year-old left Twitter five months ago to focus on the World Cup but within hours of sending his first tweet on the social network site since then, he was subjected to racist insults, the Anti-Discrimination group Kick It Out said in a statement.
Toure, tweeting about City's derby win over Manchester United on Sunday, wrote: "Great to be back on twitter after a good win yesterday. Now my focus is on the next game... Happy Monday everyone!!"
But shortly after posting the message Toure was sent abusive and racist messages from other Twitter users.
Kick It Out was so appalled by some of the messages they contacted the police.
A Kick It Out spokesperson said: "At this stage we have received complaints about two separate tweets of a racist nature aimed at Yaya Toure and now we are informing the police.
"Yaya Toure has been on Twitter for a matter of hours and he has already received abuse of an appalling nature. We are disturbed by the fact that someone can be treated this way.
"It makes footballers start to question why they should use these platforms. We will offer Yaya Toure our full support."
Last year Toure allegedly faced racial abuse from Russian fans when City played CSKA Moscow in a Champions League match in Moscow.
CSKA denied any abuse took place, but UEFA ignored their protests and closed part of their ground for their next Champions League game.
At the time Toure called on African players to boycott the World Cup in Russia in 2018 unless the never-ending instances of racism at Russian soccer stopped.
