'Racist abuse' against Balotelli after mocking Manchester United in tweet

Mario Balotelli was racially abused on Twitter today after he mocked Manchester United's 5-3 defeat at Leicester City.

Hate-filled social media users targeted the Liverpool and Italy striker after he goaded the Red Devils fans with a tweet which simply read: 'Man utd ... LOL.'

One vile tweeter, known only as iMonko, wrote: "Monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey."

Another, using the Twitter handle Maroc, tweeted: "You're a f*****g monkey. Oo Oo ah ah."

And one particularly disgusting tirade read: "@F**k you Mario you f*****g n****r. Go eat some bananas and get ebola you dirty monkey."

Many others came to Balotelli’s defence and some screengrabbed and retweeted some of the vile messages, and forwarded them on to police.

Manchester United led 3-1 at half-time before conceding four second-half goals in 21 minutes against newly-promoted Leicester.

A spokesman for Merseyside Police said: 'If someone reports racial abuse then we will investigate it but there has been nothing reported to us yet as far as I'm aware.'

The 24-year-old, born to Ghanaian immigrants in Italy before being fostered by an Italian family, suffered from racism throughout his career in Italy, and was even racially abused by fans at a national team training camp ahead of this Summer’s World Cup.

In April 2009, Inter president Massimo Moratti said he would have taken his team off the pitch following the abuse the 18-year-old received at Juventus.

During the summer of 2009, he had a banana thrown at him in Rome in the city centre.