Manchester United’s stalwart defender Rio Ferdinand is not having a good year so far.
Firstly Manchester United missed out on the Premier League title, one of the football trophies he will be used to winning and he has a large collection of Premier League football medals at home.
Then he missed out on the chance to extend his time in the England football kit after he was passed over for Roy Hodgson’s Euro 2012 squad for ‘footballing reasons’. Something which was much deliberated over but it turns out the partnership of John Terry and Jolean Lescott at centre half works very well.
So well in fact that I wouldn’t be surprised if he was dropped permanently in favour of the younger Lescott. A bitter pill to swallow will be that Lescott was part of the team that Manchester United lost out to.
Then there has been the John Terry saga, which involved Rio’s younger brother Anton Ferdinand in a nasty racism case which cast a shadow over the footballing world.
Not only was there speculation that the ‘footballing reasons’ cited by Hodgson were to keep Ferdinand and Terry separate to avoid friction in the squad, there were also personal relations at stake.
Terry had served loyally next to Ferdinand as England’s defensive foundation for years, together they have protected England’s football nets from countless footballs and done a very fine job of it too.
But the rift that will certainly have opened between them after the allegations involving his brother will have damaged that relationship, perhaps irreparably. Blood is thicker than water after all.
Yesterday Rio found himself subject of a sanction by the Football Association for improper conduct in relation to his remarks made on twitter.
Towards the end of John Terry’s trial Ferdinand sent a tweet referring to Chelsea defender and Terry’s team mate Ashley Cole as ‘choc ice’. This is a term that is understood to be slang for black on the outside and white on the inside, insinuating that Ashley Cole wasn’t a real black man or something equally as offensive.
This was prompted by Cole saying in court that he did not hear Terry using racist language towards Anton Ferdinand, even though the FA has charged Terry for improper conduct. Considering he was under oath it’s not likely that he Cole would lie, especially given the high profile of the trial.
It’s not worked out well for Rio though. Although clearly a casual remark it was spectacularly silly to use a racially offensive term towards a witness in a trial looking at racism in football. Rio has since taken to twitter again to insist that the term is not racist but is used to indicate that someone is just ‘being fake’, although the terminology and associated slang definition seems an unlikely coincidence.
It’s safe to say that Rio’s football merchandise sales will suffer, as well as his reputation as a role model for the game and as a respectable player.
The FA have said Ferdinand has to clear his name or face a large fine and possibly suspension for his remarks.
