Saddened! wrote:
You aren't the judge nor the jury however. What evidence do you want? The evidence is clearly available and has been all along. Suarez said Roddy's favourite Spanish word 'negrito'. The case was only ever about the interpretation of the meaning behind that. It's either a vile, racist put down or a banterish bit of camaraderie depending on who you talk to or which context it's in. The context in question was a highly pressured professional football match between two rivals teams who are full of spite for each other. Evra took offense to it and Suarez admitted saying it, claiming it was the latter of the two interpretations. The FA's panel clearly disagreed and at the end of the day it's probably right to be Evra's call as to whether he's offended by it. It's clearly a word with racial conetations and he admitted using it. Whether he meant it racially only Suarez will know, but it's not like anyone can take his word for it.
The article linked above is a good one, the Liverpool smear campaign against Evra is absolutely pathetic and totally out of order. It's a complete character assasination with precious little proof behind the allegations they make against him.
Suarez has made his point now, he says he didn't mean it racially, everyone knows that now. So why not just publically apologise to Evra and take the ban on the chin? Given how the FA behave these days they will probably increase it.
Evra accused the ref of racism when he was being booked. Evra accused Suarez of racially abusing him 10 times during the match. I think Evra instigated the whole situation when he threw himself to the deck to get a free kick rather than give away a corner. Evra inflamed the situation by confronting Suarez over it afterwards. When Suarez offered his arm in conciliation, Evra withdrew it with a remark about him being a South American. Evra has supposedly made far nastier comments towards Suarez.
I don't know the context of the phrase that Suarez used. I don't know the other word he said when he said negro. I haven't seen the context explained.
I think it's a massively slippery slope that one racist comment can get an 8 match ban, but a player can make hundreds of vile, disgusting comments based on other things without any recrimination whatsoever. I think that it gives players of other ethnic origins a licence to make nasty comments continually to rile their opponents, and if the player bites and replies with one sentence with the word black in it then they're sitting out two months of the season.
From the reports of the incident that I've read so far I actually think that Evra was at least 50% to blame for the situation, and actually much more to blame than that. But because he has the race card he's now the innocent victim and Suarez is a convicted racist who is having his season destroyed.
That just doesn't sit with me.
If Suarez had just racially abused Evra without any provocation then I'd say the ban would be justified. But from the reports released so far I don't think the ban is a fair and just punishment.
