Beware of the ice

The ramifications of John Terry’s utterances towards Anton Ferdinand at a QPR-Cheslea match continue to rumble on.  It was a strange defence where Terry did not deny the racial nature of the comments, but claimed it was a matter of intonation, where the insult was punctuated by a question mark, shocked that he should be accused of saying this, he alleged.  Yet it was the only possible one available and the magistrate refrained from charging Terry guilty along with 1% of his weekly wage, on the grudging acceptance that the England defender could be proved beyond doubt that he was lying at the trial.  Had he been found guilty (and lost a subsequent inevitable appeal), he may have fallen back on the Luis Suarez defence, that he said something racist in an error of judgement but was not a racist himself.

Still, it was an acquittal.  Given the animosity between Terry and Rio Ferdinand that has arisen from this incident and Terry being the man in possession regarding an England squad position, it probably signals the end of the elder Ferdinand brother’s England career.  It will also be interesting if the Football Association and the Premier League insist upon the Ferdinands shaking Terry’s hand in the traditional pre-match niceties, whenever Chelsea FC play their respective clubs (and Terry is in the starting line-up).

Now, Rio is under investigation by the FA for tweeting - or re-tweeting, as he put it – a term that can be construed as racist, namely that Ashley Cole defending Terry made Cole a ‘choc-ice’.  This phrase is usually applied to imply that a non-white person is black (or brown) on the outside and white inside and so commits race treachery.  Rio has claimed that he only was making out that Cole was ‘a fake’ – which surely is the same thing!  Unless, that is, Rio is denigrating the very concept of the choc-ice, infuriating ice-cream makers up and down the country.

This ‘lapse’ is a gift to the cavemen in the terraces and the trolls on the Internet.  It’s up there with being so focused on retail therapy he forgot to take a drug test (suffering a ban of eight months as a result) or making the Beckhams think they were being kidnapped in a ‘hilarious’ prank.  Also but less damagingly, it also adds to the stereotype that footballers aren’t the brightest tools in the box. 

The idea that he can explain it away as a ‘re-tweet’ falls down on all counts. Ryan Babel was charged with improper conduct in January 2011 when he tweeted a mocked-up picture of the referee Howard Webb wearing a Manchester United shirt; his manager at the time, Kenny Dalglish, tried to excuse it, saying “I don't think he's clever enough technically to have drawn that up himself.”  It didn’t save Babel though and this is far worse.  The FA have to act.