Following penalty misses from Ashley Young and Ashley Cole in England’s defeat to Italy at Euro 2012, Twitter was littered with England fans racially abusing them.

All the tweets have been deleted and some users have blocked their accounts but the police are investigating complaints made.

The FA have today released a statement condemning the behaviour of these fans. It read: “We are concerned at the reports regarding allegations of abuse aimed at England players Ashley Cole and Ashley Young on Twitter. They have just given everything for the national team at Euro 2012 and it is appalling and unacceptable that messages of an abusive type are being posted. We support any police investigation in identifying who is behind this.”

That is great. They need to come out with a strong message saying racism is wrong. But maybe they needed this sort of clarity before now.

Video footage was spread across the internet of John Terry appearing to racially abuse Anton Ferdinand, with it looking like he said: “You fucking black cunt! Fucking knob head!”. Terry gave an interview with The Daily Mail in which he claimed he didn’t call Anton a “fucking black cunt”, he was merely asking Anton whether he thought he had called him such a thing. He also claims he went to see Anton after the game to clear up the “misunderstanding”, something Anton denies. Make up your own mind.

Terry was due to have a trial in February but it was requested by his club that this trial was moved until the end of the season. Bizarrely, this request was granted and Terry was allowed to see out the season. If a teacher had been charged with racially abusing another member of staff, would their request for the trial to be moved to the summer holiday be granted as they continued to work? How about a busy plumber with a lot of jobs on? Regardless, the trial was moved and the FA decided they couldn’t possibly go to Euro 2012 with a captain who had a racial abuse charge hanging over him. Apparently though, they had no problem with going to Euro 2012 with a starting player who had a racial abuse charge hanging over him and Terry was selected. Anton’s brother, Rio Ferdinand, missed out because of this, despite Roy Hodgson’s laughable claims that “footballing reasons” saw Martin Kelly selected ahead of Rio.

So, it’s great that the FA are trying to make a stand on racism, but they have been so wishy washy over the racism issue in regards to Terry that it’s a tad rich for them to try and tackle it now. Let’s have a look at what some of the offenders actually said:

@lukedavidwarren Ashley young is a black cunt

@johnbcfcmillman: It’s all youngs fault you dirty black CUNT!!!!!!

@Lapwnage as John Terry would say, Ashley Young is a FUCKING BLACK CUNT, BLACK FUCKING CUNT!!!!

Let’s kick racism out of football.

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Captain, Leader… Liar