Rio Ferdinand still has the power but is cast out by Roy Hodgson's England

Rio Ferdinand has never revealed the identity of the footballer he once heard racially abusing one of West Ham's players. A seasoned professional, very well‑known, with a good reputation, is all that Ferdinand has been willing to give away. Someone who "comes over as quite a nice bloke" and is still involved in the game. "If I named the player, no one would believe it," Ferdinand writes in his autobiography. "I guarantee, you'd be astonished."

Ferdinand was a teenager at the time, establishing himself in the West Ham side, and when he spoke to his team-mate afterwards he discovered the player who was shouting the abuse came out with the same stuff every time the teams played each other.

Looking back, Ferdinand thinks his team-mate did the wrong thing by not reporting it. He regrets not complaining himself, but he was young, not sure anyone wanted to listen, and he considers it pointless now because, legally, there is nothing he can do to prove it. Which is a pity, because there is at least one witness, and potentially others, and if more players are outed this way maybe the message will get through to the people running the game that offences of this nature warrant appropriate punishments, Kazinform has learnt from the Guardian.

Nobody expected the FA to put John Terry in stocks, find a busy spot on Oxford Street and start chucking rotten tomatoes at him, but what a dysfunctional system we have when calling an opponent a "fucking black cunt" is worth one more game out than, say, Lee Cattermole's red card at MK Dons on Tuesday. Where Ferdinand has let himself down is the "choc-ice" message he posted on Twitter, meaning black on the outside and white on the inside, after Ashley Cole had given evidence on Terry's behalf before the Chelsea captain was acquitted at Westminster magistrates' court.

What nobody can dispute, however, is that the Manchester United player has done his bit over the years. Ferdinand was the driving force, alongside Thierry Henry, behind the Stand Up, Speak Up campaign. He has been a powerful voice for Give Racism the Red Card and was part of a European parliament campaign a few years ago to put pressure on Uefa into take racism more seriously and get out of this ridiculous cycle whereby offenders are punished with crumby, almost inconsequential, fines.

It cannot have been easy digesting the news that his England career has been brought to an end because of someone else's racial insults. Which is how Ferdinand sees his exclusion in the first four months of the Roy Hodgson era, convinced he is being left out because he happens to be the elder brother of the player the FA has now decided was racially abused when QPR played Chelsea last October. Hodgson chose Terry and sacrificed Ferdinand, and Sir Alex Ferguson is correct to say there is probably no way England's manager can bring him back now.

Full story