England international Karen Carney was subject to a series of abusive messages, one of which ‘wishes her cancer and leukaemia’, in the wake of Chelsea’s last-16 Champions League win against Fiorentina on Wednesday night.

Carney, capped 133 times by England, converted from the spot at Kingsmeadow for a 1-0 win ahead of the second leg at Stadio Artemio Franchi in Florence on 31 October.

German midfielder Stephanie Breitner was adjudged to have handled Erin Cuthbert’s attempted cross from the right, before Carney kept her composure to score under the dive of Fiorentina goalkeeper Stephanie Ohrstrom.

But after Wednesday’s win, Carney revealed via her Instagram Stories, and shared by England manager Phil Neville, that she had received a number of abusive messages.

The first of the messages, sent by user ‘dzo09’ at 9.22pm on Wednesday evening, read: “How many chances you need to score in second half stupid b******”

It was then followed by “I wish you cancer and leukaemia” then “and I hope someone will rape you to death”.

In response to the messages, Carney wrote: “Wow some people...”

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Neville called for Instagram to take action against his player’s abuser.

In a post to his 447,000 followers, he said: “A message sent to one of my @lionesses players last night absolutely disgraceful – @instagram are you going to do something about it!!!!!”

Instagram subsequently removed the abuser's account. A spokesperson for the social media platform said: "We do not tolerate threatening or abusive behaviour, and the account that sent these messages has been removed from Instagram.