Anton’s tears at racism 9 years after Terry slurs
THE FA JOKED WITH THEIR SKIPPER... BUT PROBED ME
WHWHEN Anton Ferdinand weeps in his racism documentary, black footballers across the country will fully understand his tears.
Monday’s BBC One film ‘ Football, Racism and Me’ is not a character assassination of John Terry – the ex- Chelsea and England captain found guilty by the Football Association of calling Ferdinand a “f****** black c***”.
It is a devastating portrait of football’s racism crisis. A damning indictment of how the game’s authorities do more to look after the reputations of big stars than it does to protect black players from racist abuse.
Footage of Chelsea’s 1- 0 defeat by QPR in 2011 captured Terry mouthing the racial insult at Ferdinand.
When this documentary is broadcast the FA will wince at the difference between Terry’s treatment by their investigators and Ferdinand’s own feelings of being under interrogation.
“I was sitting in the room with two FA delegates,” recalls Ferdinand, who was 26 at the time. “And they were probing me. Probing me. They started to make me feel like I was in the wrong, that I’d done something wrong. All I know is that I didn’t feel like the victim in that room.”
Ferdinand’s former QPR boss, Neil Warnock, adds: “I knew they wanted to put it to bed straight away because it would cause them an embarrassment.
“All the questions, I thought some were irrelevant. Some of them were out of order. I said to them, ‘ Is it Anton you are prosecuting here?’”
The FA claim that a recording of the interview was never taken.
“I’ve tried to get my interview with the FA,” says Ferdinand. “But turns out they didn’t record interviews with alleged victims.”
Just a four- minute section of Terry’s interview has ever been made public – during the criminal trial at which he was cleared.
In that extract, a female investigator jokes with the then England captain about the referee in the west London derby as she gently asks Terry to record his own version of events. Ferdinand says: “Hearing that confirms for me that he was treated differently. It was just the sharing of a joke.
“That says it all for me. It takes me back to a place of anger and I hate it.”
For viewers hoping that times have since changed, Ferdinand reads out the comments of Charlton forward Jonathan Leko, who in March criticised the FA for taking nearly six months to find Leeds keeper Kiko Casilla guilty of calling him a ‘ n*****’.
The film examines the impact of such racist abuse on players’ mental health and their families.
Ferdinand – who received a bullet in the post at the time – recalls: “In the middle of it all my Twitter feed is going crazy. Abuse after abuse. Where does that go?
“I can be macho and say that I wasn’t traumatised, but I was.”
Football, Racism and Me is on BBC1 on Monday night at 9pm.