For those thinking the silver lining in all this is that players will think twice about "saying anything remotely racist"...Think again. This case means one player can now succesfully prosecute another, not through the criminal court, but through the FA Panel procedure, with only his word against the defendant. All he needs to state is he heard abuse and it offended him. That is the only objective basis of Evra's case against Suarez. Evra's allegations were deemed too insubstantial (one man's word against another), to take the case to criminal court. The FA Panel made several linguistic and subjective somersaults to come to the conclusion that Suarez is not racist, and even agreed he could reasonably be believed to have not made a racist comment with his claimed one use of the Spanish version of the word negro: "the use of negro as described here by Mr Suarez would not be offensive. Indeed, it is possible that the term was intended as an attempt at conciliation and/or to establish rapport. (Para 190). But instead they disregarded this and chose to find him guilty anyway, belieiving Evra's claims, uncorroborated by video, audio or other independent means, that in his view Suarez had made additional comments to the agreed one use of negro in its spanish context. The only black player to be involved in a recent high profile racism allegation case was Evra, again. That allegation was made on his behalf by Mike Phelan, but Evra did give testimony and his testimony was dismissed by that FA Panel as "exaggerated and unreliable". Why this panel chose to view Evra as suddenly being a model witness for his word to be worth more than Suarez's is not explained at all by the Panel.