Southampton left-back Luke Shaw donated £3,800 to Children in Need on Friday night.
At around 11pm, the 18-year-old sent out a tweet to his 111,000 followers, claiming that for every retweet he received before midnight he would pledge 10p to the BBC's UK-based charity.
After his message was retweeted 38,000 times by the Twitter community, Shaw issued a follow-up statement to announce the final amount and to confirm that his donation had been made.
The teenage star later removed his tweets after receiving abusive messages from online trolls, who accused him of 'seeking attention' and being "cheap".
However, Norwich City midfielder Elliott Bennett was quick to jump to Shaw's defence.
Bennett tweeted: "Why is it people love when footballers do wrong? But when they do good there seems to be another motive?! Just except it."
Shaw's donation, along with millions of other contributions, helped Children in Need rake in a record-breaking total in excess of £31m.
Robert Summerscales
