Rio unhappy with England fans

Rio Ferdinand pulled out of the England squad due to his 'pre-planned' training programme
29 March 2013

Rio Ferdinand has hit out at the fans who sang abusive songs about him and his brother Anton during England's win over San Marino last week.

A number of England supporters joined in the singing of a song suggesting the brothers should be burned on a bonfire - it has been suggested the song had racist overtones because Anton Ferdinand was the target of racist abuse from former England captain John Terry.

Anti-racism body FARE have reported England to FIFA over the chants and the Football Association is awaiting official notification regarding the complaint.

"You expect+accept banter from fans on the terraces as its part of what makes the game great, but racism is not banter,& from ya own fans. WOW," Ferdinand tweeted. "Always a small minority who ruin it for others.

"Let's not jump to conclusions + assume though as it might just have been banter. We'll see after the investigation."

The Manchester United defender was vilified by fans after withdrawing from the England squad to play the game because it did not fit in with his "intricate" and "pre-planned" training programme, although he then travelled to Qatar to commentate on England's 8-0 victory.

FARE's executive director Piara Powar told the Press Association on Thursday: "Although we did not have observers at the match we have pulled together evidence sent to us including media comment and have passed that on to FIFA.

"I think that it's one of those things that is very subtle. We would say racism and other forms of discrimination is not always banana throwing and monkey chants. It can be very subtle and the people collating the reports believed it is strong enough to send on to FIFA.

"From the reports we have seen I personally think there was an undercurrent of race there, and other people have thought that it has been imbued with racist overtones.

"Whether FIFA think that is strong enough to take action is another question entirely and we accept that it is certainly an unusual report."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in