Former English footballer Joey Barton, who played for Manchester City and OM, was sentenced to six months in prison for offensive messages published on the networks.
Former English footballer Joey Barton, who notably played for Manchester City and Olympique de Marseille, was given a six-month suspended prison sentence on Monday for publishing “seriously offensive” messages on social networks.
The sentence made public on Monday by a Liverpool court would turn into a firm sentence if the 43-year-old former midfielder were to reoffend in the next eighteen months.
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On November 7, a jury ruled that Barton had “crossed the line between freedom of expression and crime” in six publications on X targeting British presenter Jeremy Vine and two commentators, Lucy Ward and Eni Aluko.
In one of the publications for which he was convicted, during a televised FA Cup match in January 2024 between Crystal Palace and Everton, he called Ward and Aluko the “Fred and Rose West of football commentary”, in allusion to two of Britain’s most notorious serial killers.
He also published a message likening Aluko, a former England international, to “the category of Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot”, accusing her of having “murdered the ears of hundreds of thousands, even millions of football fans”. The court did not condemn him for the comparison, but for the illustration which accompanied his message.
The ex-footballer with 2.5 million subscribers on X was also condemned for a publication in which he wrote that Aluko, born in Nigeria, had only been recruited in the name of ethnic diversity.
In another of his messages, the former Marseillais established an analogy between the presenter Jeremy Vine and the American sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.
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Joey Barton, acquitted of six other charges, was released on bail pending sentencing on Monday.
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