Man United captain Patrice Evra has accused Liverpool forward Luis Suarez of racist taunts during the two sides’ 1-1 draw at Anfield on Saturday.
The pair were seen exchanging heated words during the second half of the match, and Evra eventually received a yellow card from referee Andre Marriner.
French media report Evra as claiming Suarez repeatedly using racist remarks.
Writing on his social network sites, Suarez said;
“I’m upset by the acusations of racism. I can only say that I have always respected and respect everybody. We are all the same. I go to the field with the maximum illusion of a little child who enjoys what he does, not to create conflicts.”
An FA statement read: “Referee Andre Marriner was made aware of an allegation at the end of the fixture and has reported this to the FA.
“The FA will now begin making enquiries into the matter.”
Evra has somewhat of a history when it comes to racist claims. As the LFC site ‘Liverpool Offside‘ explain;
In 2006, a pair of deaf Manchester United fans claimed to have lip-read Liverpool’s Steve Finnan targeting Evra with racial abuse. Evra himself would neither confirm nor deny these claims, which led to the case being investigated by the Manchester police who in the end dismissed it as pure nonsense with no grounding in reality. He also rather famously talked before World Cup 2010 about being the target of racist chants from Senegalese supporters who resented him choosing to play for France instead of the nation of his birth, claiming he had been targeted as a “monkey who grovels before the white man.” The idea of black supporters targeting a black player for abuse by calling him a monkey seems, at least on the surface, to be rather surreal and more than a touch ridiculous, and in the end no evidence of such chanting was ever found.
The best documented case of Evra and racial abuse, however, comes from 2008, when Manchester United accused a Chelsea groundsman of such in an attempt to have Evra’s four match ban for physically confronting said groundsman overturned. In the end their challenge would be labeled “inconsistent and unreliable,” the groundsman would be cleared, and Evra’s four match ban and £15,000 fine would be upheld.
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