What worried me more in those first few days was the reaction further afield. I was shocked by how much sympathy there was for Suarez. Huge numbers of people in the media and social media were saying: ‘Poor Suarez, maybe there’s nothing racist about it. Maybe in Uruguay this is inoffensive. Poor lad, he’s culturally confused, and he’s getting punished for nothing.’ Nobody even talked about the pressure on Pat. How could it get turned around so that racism was being defended and drawing attention to racism was being attacked? How could that happen in our game in this day and age? I didn’t understand it. People paid lip service to the idea that racism was a bad thing. But they obviously didn’t have a clue what racism actually was, or how its victims felt. It was a real shock to discover racism had never actually gone away – it was just much better hidden than before. We’d been lulled into a false sense of security. It had been swept under the carpet all these years. Just one little paper-cut of an incident made it clear it was all still there, just below the surface.
I’d only been a few feet from that conversation between Patrice and Suarez. It never occurred to me that racism was just about to come a whole lot closer.
2. ANTON
Six days after the Evra–Suarez incident I was sitting at home watching on TV as QPR played Chelsea in a league match. QPR were winning 1–0, and my brother Anton was having a great game in the QPR defence. About five minutes from the end, Anton and John Terry had an argument in the QPR penalty area. We then saw John jogging back into his own half before the television director cut to a close-up. You didn’t need to be a professional lip-reader to see that John Terry, captain of England, my defensive partner in the national team for the last six years, had just said: ‘you fucking black cunt.’ And he seemed to have said it in Anton’s direction. In less than a minute my phone began to go crazy. My mates, my family, practically everybody I knew were texting and calling to say: ‘Did you see that?’ Within minutes Twitter was going nuts and the clip was on YouTube.
The consequences of that moment were confused, disastrously drawn-out and are still felt. The matter could and should have been sorted out cleanly and quickly in a way that would have allowed everyone – including John Terry – to emerge with dignity. Instead, it festered horribly for nearly a year and caused great harm.
For those who didn’t follow the formal proceedings case, these were the main points. The police, acting on an anonymous complaint from a member of the public, eventually charged John Terry with racially abusing Anton. John Terry denied the charges and at various times offered different explanations. After a five-day trial, in July 2012 – 9 months after the incident – he was acquitted. The magistrate found that John Terry had indeed said ‘you fucking black cunt’ but couldn’t say if he had done so with racist intent. Two months later, in September 2012, an FA disciplinary committee took a different approach. It found him guilty of ‘using abusive and/or insulting words and/or behaviour’ and imposed a four-match ban and a £220,000 fine.
At this point, John was still maintaining his innocence. But two weeks later, he issued an apology of sorts ‘to everyone,’ saying that while he was ‘disappointed’ by the FA’s decision ‘with the benefit of hindsight my language was clearly not an appropriate reaction to the situation for someone in my position.’ But he never apologised to me or to Anton. And he has never hinted that he has ever had a moment of understanding over the damage his stupidity had inflicted on everyone. Meanwhile, amid all the uncertainty and bad feeling, my England career had been wrecked while John’s lurched on in a confused fashion until it, too, hit the buffers. At first, he carried on playing. Then he was stripped of the England captaincy. Then he played. Then he retired. As I’ll explain later, this too could have been avoided.
While the case was going on Anton’s lawyers told us we couldn’t speak about it publicly – and we didn’t. This I now feel was a mistake. If we had spoken out some of the distress and pain might have been avoided. The case damaged football and race relations in Britain. Anton, the innocent party in all this, had his career damaged and was subjected to death threats, bullets in the post, and unending racist abuse. My mum had her windows smashed and bullets put through her door, and ended up in hospital with a virus because of the stress. I felt that the legal and football authorities made mistakes all the way through. The criminal prosecution was misguided and FA dithering made things worse. Indeed, few people covered themselves in glory. Some of the elder statesmen among black British footballers were conspicuous by their absence in terms of speaking out publicly. We disagreed with people who wanted to use the case to advance a political agenda, and we weren’t impressed when Kick It Out paid lip service to the idea of taking a strong stand and then went missing when it counted.
The FA was confused and indecisive. Caught between wanting to protect the England captain and realising they would have to punish him, they ended up sending mixed messages. Chelsea, who seemed to have no thought beyond wanting to keep their captain in action, added fuel to the fire. Ashley Cole, who’d been a good friend of mine and had known Anton since he was a kid, betrayed that friendship. The biggest idiot of all was John Terry who could have saved everyone a lot of pain by admitting immediately that he had used the words in the heat of the moment but was no racist. I think that’s probably what happened and what the truth is. We would have accepted that but he never gave us the chance.
There’s one point I’d like to stress. People think Anton took John Terry to court. That’s completely wrong. Anton actually urged the police and the Crown Prosection Service (CPS) not to prosecute. He knew a court case would generate more heat than light, create antagonism and make people take sides. But neither he nor I ever had a say in the matter. What happened was that a member of the public made an anonymous complaint, the police investigated and then the CPS decided to prosecute. Then the trial was delayed so John could play at Euro 2012.
Anton always made it clear he hadn’t heard the words on the pitch. It was John Terry’s lawyers who summoned Anton to court, not the other way round. That’s what people need to understand. I can’t stress it enough: Anton was not the instigator of any of this. He never heard the offending words and did nothing to justify the hostile treatment he received from the FA and John Terry’s lawyers. Their cross-examination of him in court almost amounted to character assassination. Many people, especially Chelsea fans, seem to think that Anton ‘grassed’ on John Terry. Anton didn’t ‘grass’ on anyone!
3. WHO YOUR FRIENDS ARE
I no longer talk to Ashley Cole or John Terry. With Ashley it all ended the day he decided to go to court. He didn’t even warn us: we had to hear from the lawyers. Anton rang me and my head nearly blew off. ‘What do you mean Ashley’s going to court? Is he going to speak or you?’
‘For John.’
‘What? Are you winding me up?’
Unfortunately, it was no wind-up.
Looking back, I know Ashley was under pressure. I’ve thought long and hard about this and wondered how Ashley could have played it differently. What he should have said to John was: ‘please keep me out of this because it’s going to ruin my relationship with Rio if I go with you, or ruin my relationship with you if I go against you, and I don’t want either of those things.’ At that point, as a man, John Terry could have said: ‘I respect that – thanks,’ or ‘But Ash, I’ve not fucking done anything! Please can you come on my side and speak to them?’ At that point Ashley could have come to me and said: ‘Ri, he ain’t said it, man,’ and I’d have believed him. Just have the conversation like a man! We’ve known each other since we were kids! He should have come to me as my friend and explained that he was in an awkward position. But he never did any of those things.
Instead I had to call – and he still didn’t understand. In fact, he reckoned I was out of order for contacting him. I said, ‘Ash, what are you doing? My little brother’s going through hell, there’s bullets through my Mum’s letter box, windows getting banged in, and you think I’m out of orde
r for ringing you? What world are you living in?’ I tried to get him to see it from my perspective. ‘What if your brother was going to court, and getting hammered in the media, and his career was on the line? Don’t you think you would be upset with me if I was going to court against you? I’d expect you to call me.’ But he just didn’t get it. Or he did get it but wasn’t strong enough to take himself out of the equation. He kept saying: ‘I don’t want to be a part of this.’
I said: ‘Well, you are part of it, you’ve made yourself a part of it.’
The FA panel eventually decided Ashley’s evidence ‘evolved’ over time to help John’s case. That was a polite way of putting it. Ashley refused to give me a coherent explanation; he never gave me a definitive yes or no. All he kept saying was ‘but I don’t want to be a part of it. I don’t want to be here. I don’t know what happened, I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to go to court.’ I was like, ‘well in that case why the fuck are you going to court?’
Our final communication was by text. Just before the trial started at Westminster Magistrates Court, I sent him a message telling him he had a choice: ‘You’re my mate and you’re John Terry’s mate. You know both our families. So either go into court and tell the exact truth of what happened, or don’t go in there at all. You have to make a choice.’
‘I’ve not got a choice,’ he said. ‘I’ve been told I’ve got to go.’
I said, ‘well, if you do go just know this: we will never talk again. You know what happened. You saw it with your own eyes. It’s not rocket science. I know you never wanted to be involved. Just make your decision.’
‘You think I want to come off my holidays to come to court and go through this shit?’ was his reply. ‘To be involved in it when I don’t have to? But that’s what I’ve been told to do.’
I said, ‘alright, then. Go. Do it.’ And that was it.
I was furious and so disappointed with him. That’s what I was feeling when I re-tweeted a comment somebody made on Twitter about Ashley being a ‘choc ice’: black on the outside, white on the inside. I look back now and think maybe I shouldn’t have done it, but it’s what I thought and felt at the time. That’s the problem with social media: if you’re impulsive, you can’t turn back the clock. The sad thing is that Ash had always been a good guy and I’d always got on really well with him – he’s a nice geezer. We’d been on holiday together; I was at his stag do. We’d both had our problems in the media over the years and found each other’s shoulder to lean on. But this one moment has ruined that relationship because I simply could not see my brother go through shit and have one of my so-called mates going to court against him.
I think one day Ashley will understand it properly and feel bad. He’ll realise his mistake. And we’ve all made mistakes. I certainly have. There are things I look back and I think I could have been more decent in that situation. So Ashley will get to a certain point in his life, and realise he should at least have rung me to tell me he was going to court. I would have respected that a lot more. If he’d said: ‘This is how it is, I’ve got no choice,’ I’d have said ‘well, you’re a fucking idiot, but at least you’ve rung me and told me.’ He’ll look back and be gutted; he’ll regret the way he handled it. I can see it was difficult for him and I think the person or people who put him in that position are as much to blame.
As to my relationship with John, there has been a lot of misunderstanding about that as well.
He, too, could have come to me or to Anton. If John had said: ‘I think I made a mistake, can we sort this out?’ we would have been the first to say: ‘you know what? You’ve been an idiot, but we all make mistakes. I’m not perfect myself. Just don’t let it happen again, man.’ John would’ve made a public apology or whatever and the case would have been quickly forgotten. The problem was that he tried to run away from what he’d done. I can’t forgive the way he allowed that to ruin friendships: his friendship with myself, my friendship with Ashley … all gone to waste.
I’ve never actually spoken to John about the case. What was the point? I’d seen what he’d done. We’d been teammates with England for years. And we could have been again. We weren’t close but we’d had nights out, texted or spoken on the phone every now and then. I thought there was always an edge to him, but we got on OK. John certainly never showed himself to me to be racist. I take people at face value. I’ll always assume that people are alright until proved otherwise. I never had anything bad to say about John. Of course, there was a club rivalry, but we got on fine on the pitch. Then this happened. But I’m still not convinced he is a racist or was even being racist.
John obviously handled the situation badly. He should have just rung my brother and said, ‘I’m sorry, man. I said it. But I ain’t a racist. If I could take it back I would.’ I’d have thought: you know what? He’s a fucking stand-up guy. I’ll shake his hand. I’d have told him: ‘I think you’re a prick for saying it, but you’ve actually come and manned up.’ I’d have said, ‘yeah, alright.’ And I’d probably have got hammered for it. Some people would have said I was a sell-out for even shaking his hand and accepting his apology. And I wouldn’t have cared. But John was never man enough to say any of those things.
The whole thing has made me look at Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela with even more admiration than before. Mandela is one of my heroes because of the way he forgave people. One of the highlights of the trip to South Africa in 2010 was meeting him just before the World Cup. The whole team went, and I remember John being as impressed by the great man as any of us. One of the things I always think is: this business was nothing compared to what Nelson Mandela went through in South Africa. He was treated like shit for decades. He went to prison for 27 years. And yet he found the strength to forgive the people who did that to him. How did he do that? Because I find it impossible to forgive or forget the pain John put my family through. That was the heart of the matter. Whatever he had or hadn’t said became almost a sideshow. I sat there thinking: he was my mate, my teammate, we played 30 or 40 games for England together. We’d competed against each other for years. We weren’t best mates but we were football buddies. And he just sat there and watched as my brother went through all this because of his stupidity. That was the betrayal.
I would still have been happy to play for England with him. But that possibility got lost in the grey areas of my relationship with the FA. We’ve had good and bad times over the years, the FA and I. They banned me for eight months over missing a drugs test in 2003; they fined me £60,000 for my ‘choc-ice’ tweet. But they eventually did the right thing by banning John for four matches. Personally, after everything that happened, I thought he should’ve got the same punishment as Suarez. But at least the FA showed they weren’t happy with what happened. In fact, giving Terry a ban at all was quite a strong and bold considering he hadn’t been convicted in the court case.
But then it got confusing again because the FA let him play for England. What message did that send? What I didn’t like was that people then automatically assumed that if he played for England, then I couldn’t play for England. They seemed to think we couldn’t be on the same pitch together. But it wouldn’t have been a problem for me. I’ve played with people I didn’t like for years. There were people at Manchester United I wouldn’t go for a drink with, would never call or text. But I played with them. You’re professional about it. If a person can help me win, I’ll play with him no problem. It’s not like we have to go for dinner together. I would probably have gone to see John and said: ‘Listen, we’re never going to be mates again, but let’s just work together to make England a better team.’ We would have had a working relationship, and it would have been fine. But no one ever asked.
I found that pretty extraordinary because I’d let it be known. People around the club would ask: ‘Would you play with him?’ and I’d say: ‘Yeah. I ain’t got a problem.’ I wanted to win and play for England. Hodgson should at least have asked: ‘Could you play with John Terry?’ I
f I said ‘No,’ then, OK, they’ve established that Rio is out of the equation – or John Terry is out of the equation. Then they can pick one of us. But that conversation never took place!
I just think it could all have been handled much better. But I never showed my hand over it because I don’t want people to see I’m feeling bad. People think I’m happy-go-lucky. If people asked how I was feeling I would go: ‘I’m alright, man. I’m cool.’ Then they’d go: ‘but don’t you think John Terry is a better player than you?’ That shit hurt. I want to play for my country and I should have had 100 caps. Then, eventually, when I sorted out my back problems, and I was playing really well, a clamour started for me to be back in the England squad. At that point, at the very last minute, just before Euro 2012 Roy Hodgson comes and says he wants me be in the squad!
That was another case of bad communication – and bad timing. I’d had an injury that almost finished my career but had managed to sort it out with a regular course of injections. I then had to schedule those injections and, since I was no longer being picked for England, I’d chosen the international break. Just before one of those, all of a sudden, Roy Hodgson asked me to come back to the England squad. At that moment I had to say no because of my treatment. People said I rejected England but that wasn’t the case at all.
#2Sides: My Autobiography Page 5