Rio Ferdinand today accused FIFA of going soft on racism after failing to dock Croatia points for the abuse aimed at Emile Heskey during England's World Cup qualifier in Zagreb last month.

The Croatian Football Federation were fined just £15,000 for their fans' racist chanting just three months after they were ordered to pay £10,000 for a similar offence committed during the Euro 2008 quarter-final against Turkey.

Ferdinand was dismayed by the punishments and the England centre-half urged FIFA to get tough.
“The football authorities need to look at themselves,” said the Manchester United star. “They make a lot of comments and say they are going to do this or that but they never back up the words with actions, Croatia were fined a few thousand pounds. What good is that going to do?

“They will just keep doing it. If they keep doing things like this you have to take points off them. Then the punters will start thinking if they do it, the team is going to be punished.”
When announcing the fine, FIFA insisted they would continue “deploying all of the means at our disposal to eliminate this form of discrimination”.

But Ferdinand added: “These people at FIFA and UEFA seem to like talking about a lot of stuff that is fashionable at the time. They don't deal with the important things in the right manner.
“I would love to see them stand up and dish out the right punishments for these incidents. Sepp Blatter likes to speak up about things that are good for FIFA's image. It would be nice to see him do the same about racism.”