A "irresponsible" Facebook gambling ad has been banned by the advertising watchdog for featuring young footballers .

Images of Manchester United's Marcus Rashford and Manchester City's Raheem Sterling were both used alongside pictures of Jadon Sancho, Callum Hudson-Odoi and Kylian Mbappe in a paid-for ad for gambling app BetIndex Ltd in May.

A complaint about the post was made to the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) who have found that it has broken the advertising code as the players featured are under 25.

The code states that no-one who is, or appears to be, under 25 years old should play a significant role in gambling marketing communications.

The banned ad was promoting an app through which users could play on a virtual football stock market called Football Index and replicate buying and selling shares in particular players.

Four England players were used in the ad including Rashford and Jadon Sancho

The text on the ad, alongside a picture of England and former City player Sancho, read: "Jadon Sancho is now the football stockmarket's third most valuable player, with many traders seeing handsome profits."

It also labelled him as: "Sancho The Big Mover".

ASA stated: "The ad had not appeared in a place, such as the advertiser's own website, where a bet could be placed through a transactional facility, nor had the players been used to illustrate specific betting selections where they were the subject of the bet offered."

BettIndex Ltd argued that the images used were solely used to show the platforms 'functional features' and gave consumers an idea of what they would see if they used the app.

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The firm also added that no player was featured gambling.

ASA branded the post as "irresponsible" in its use of players under 25 and said that the ad must not appear again in that form.

They also told BetIndex Ltd to ensure they did not feature under-25s playing a significant role in marketing communications unless the ad met the exception to the advertising code.