Trial of Soccer Star Terry Revolves Around Foul Language - NYTimes.com

Trial of Soccer Star Terry Revolves Around Foul Language - NYTimes.com: LONDON — When a soccer player named Anton Ferdinand took the stand in the trial of John Terry, an opposing player who is accused of racially abusing him in a game last year, he seemed embarrassed to tell the court what he himself had said first.

“Please do not worry about the language,” the prosecutor, Duncan Penny, told Mr. Ferdinand. “What did you call Mr. Terry?” 

There followed the first of many paint-peeling profanities, as Mr. Ferdinand, 27, and then Mr. Terry, 31, tried to lay out for the bemused spectators at London Magistrates’ Court what constitutes acceptable on-field chat in a typical professional soccer game. 

If it was an odd spectacle, hearing such language in a sober British courtroom full of sober British lawyers, so was this an odd case, one seemingly without precedent in British soccer history. Mr. Terry, captain of the Premier League team Chelsea, and captain of the England national team before his arrest, is charged with committing a racially aggravated public order offense — using a racial slur — against Mr. Ferdinand, a defender for Queens Park Rangers, in a game last October.