SOCCER:THE NOT guilty verdict in the trial of John Terry was greeted with anger and bemusement by the black community within British sport last night. The Chelsea captain admitted to using deeply offensive language towards Anton Ferdinand, but senior district judge Howard Riddle based his judgment on there being sufficient doubt over the precise context of the words within the row between the players.

Amid fears that the decision would deter players who have been racially abused from coming forward in future, sources close to Ferdinand, whom Terry was cleared of racially abusing, wanted to see the Football Association conclude its own investigation into the allegation that Terry had brought the game into disrepute.

The former British basketball player John Amaechi described the verdict as a travesty. “Thanks football,” he said on Twitter. “You set the entire country back a decade. ‘Black c**t’ now officially ok to say.”

Further angry tweets came from black players in the Premier League. Fitz Hall, who played alongside Ferdinand at QPR last season, described the decision as a joke while the Stoke City striker Cameron Jerome tweeted: “Say no more about the UK justice system then. May as well go behave how we want, people. May as well go rob a bank and when I get caught just say was only banter and they started it by calling me names.”

Ferdinand was on board a plane with his QPR team-mates bound for Malaysia, where they begin their pre-season tour, when the verdict was announced at 2.23pm.

In the court in Westminster, his mother Janice and some of his family were visibly distraught. Ferdinand received death threats before the trial and Mrs Ferdinand had threatening correspondence sent to her. She had to involve the police and seek personal security.

Lord Ouseley, chairman of the anti-racism group Kick It Out, warned that the verdict could dissuade players who had been racially abused from making complaints. “There is clear evidence we know that players are reluctant to come forward and raise this issue,” he said. “There is a culture in the dressingroom which has to be tackled, people are very fearful and do not come forward.

“We’ve got to work hard now to try and establish some credibility about the complaints processes. That means that in future, the Football Association will have to carry out its own investigations, conclude its deliberations, irrespective of whether the police get involved. And I am afraid the police involvement in this case has not helped it whatsoever.”

The FA had opened an investigation but it was cut short when the Crown Prosecution Service took the decision to bring criminal charges against Terry.

There is now pressure on the governing body to reopen its inquiries and bring its own charges, as it did last season against the Liverpool striker Luis Suarez, whom it found guilty of racially abusing Manchester United’s Patrice Evra. An FA tribunal banned Suarez for eight matches and fined him £40,000 (€50,800). The FA said in a statement that it would “now seek to conclude its own inquiries.”

A disrepute charge for Terry and Ferdinand regarding the language they admitted using during QPR’s 1-0 defeat of Chelsea at Loftus Road is one possible outcome from the FA’s inquiry. Terry could also still potentially be charged with a racially aggravated offence. Yet while it is difficult to second-guess the governing body’s independent commission, it is understood that as a court of law found Terry not guilty there may be difficulty in the FA finding he still has a case to answer.

No decision regarding what course of action it will take is expected before the end of next week at the earliest.

Garth Crooks, the former Tottenham Hotspur footballer who is an anti-racism campaigner, said: “If the FA don’t act on the undisputed facts, and find Terry guilty of bringing the game into disrepute, a lot of good people are saying to me that there’s no point in getting involved in the game at a senior level. If the Football Association does nothing, on the evidence it already has, then the impact on the game will reverberate for years to come.”