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Liverpool FC star Mario Balotelli suffered a barrage of vile racist abuse after mocking rivals Manchester United on Twitter.

The Italian striker tweeted “Man utd ... LOL” shortly after the Red Devils went 5-3 down away at promoted Leicester City this afternoon, having led 3-1 earlier in the game.

The post has since been retweeted more than 100,000 times.

But a stream of racist abuse was also aimed in his direction by Twitter users responding to the message.

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

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.