UEFA Spokesman William Gaillard:
"If you look at the facts, football is moving forward faster on this issue than society.
"I have a lot of sympathy for Rio and it is truly horrible that any individual should be singled out just for being the person they are.
"But I ask him to look back 25 years, when no-one did anything about racism, to the present day, when punitive measure are taken across Europe to try to stamp out, not just racism, but sectarianism and homophobia as well.
"I hope Rio Ferdinand plays for a long time but I truly believe, before his career is over, we will have dealt with this problem."
"We have imposed sanctions in tens of hundreds of thousands last year. We have banned stadiums for up to four games, have closed sections of stadiums in a number of countries. I think Uefa have been relentless in its fight against racism and we are always willing to do more. We need sanctions from politicians in some countries to protect us from the wrath of clubs who are hit with these sanctions. And we also need players to get involved and we can't have a situation where players are insulted on the pitch, they know they have been insulted but when we ask for witnesses, there is silence. We need players to stamp out the phenomenon"