PARIS – For fans of soccer, Feb. 1 promises to be a sad day.
John Terry, one of the most rugged, fearsome and admired defenders anywhere in the world, a natural leader who captains his club, Chelsea, and his country, England, will appear at a London courthouse to face a criminal charge that he abused a black colleague with a torrent of vile, racially insulting language.
Terry insists the whole affair is a misunderstanding. Born and raised in the ethnic melting pot of east London, he has played with or alongside black players all of his sporting life. Yet video from an Oct. 23 Premier League match appeared to show him shouting, “You ——- black —-” at Queens Park Rangers defender Anton Ferdinand, whose brother, Rio, has long been Terry’s partner in the England defense.
Terry was quick to issue a statement: “People have leapt to the wrong conclusions about the context of what I was seen to be saying.” He vowed to “fight tooth and nail to prove my innocence” at the West London Magistrates’ Court.
Still, this and other incidents in England and elsewhere in Europe are raising questions about whether efforts to stamp out racist behavior in the world’s No. 1
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