Ryanair have faced backlash after a tweet it sent to footballer Jadon Sancho following the England World Cup squad announcement. Yesterday (November 11) Gareth Southgate revealed his 26-man England squad for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, with Manchester City and United players making the cut including Jack Grealish, Phil Foden, Harry Maguire and Marcus Rashford.
Despite being called up for the Euro 2020 last year, Manchester United 's Jadon Sancho has unfortunately been left out of the 2022 Three Lions squad. But whilst the footballer was presumably gutted after hearing the announcement, budget airline Ryanair took it upon themselves to send Sancho a message that has since received backlash.
After the England squad was confirmed, Ryanair tweeted the United player to offer him a flight. The tweet read: "@Sanchooo10 we'll still fly you somewhere," alongside an emoji blowing a kiss.
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Since the tweet has gone out it has had more than 69,000 likes with some finding it humorous, but many others have slammed the tweet as 'disgraceful'.
Amongst those to hit out at the airline is businessman and entrepreneur Steven Bartlett, 29, who made history this year for being the youngest ever dragon on the BBC reality show when he signed up at 28.
The founder and former CEO of social media marketing agency The Social Chain, which he set up from his bedroom in Manchester, also hosts the successful podcast, Diary of a CEO, and published his own book, the Sunday Times bestseller Happy Sexy Millionaire.
The star, who has more than 2 million followers on Instagram, wrote on his LinkedIn page: "Ryanair have absolutely no class. Here’s a tweet of them mocking a young English player (Jadon Sancho) who didn’t get called up for the World Cup…
"There’s something really disturbing about a global brand using the misfortunes of a young talented man, who’s tried his best but has just missed out on his dreams, with no consideration of his mental well-being, as a way to try and get cheap attention for themselves.
"You might expect this from a faceless Twitter troll, but not from a global brand that wants to be trusted.
"I understand some people will say “but he’s paid X so it doesn’t matter”… but I don’t think a young person's salary - high or low - is justification for global brands to single them out and publicly mock them while they’re down.
"Having personally heard about some of the mental health challenges young players face because of this kind of thing (that the public don’t hear about) and how devastating this has been for some of them, I’m particularly passionate about this topic."
And Steven Bartlett is not the only person to have some thoughts on the tweet, with many people responding to it with complaints.
@M4ttNoodles tweeted: "Sancho is quite possibly absolutely devastated to not have been picked, and you lot think it's ok to mock him in public having no idea what state of mind he's in?"
@jone36064964 wrote: "Wow this is soooo insensitive."
@ilyas1856 said: "Just because Sancho didn’t get picked doesn’t give you the right to mock him absolute disgraceful."
@MrRiordan44 agreed: "Disgraceful tweet, should be ashamed."
The Manchester Evening News has contacted Ryanair for comment.
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