Manchester: The Liverpool top brass and Luis Suarez have been urged to apologise to Patrice Evra by anti-racism campaigners who have welcomed the club's decision to accept the eight-game ban handed out to the Uruguayan international for racially abusing the Manchester United defender.
Show Racism the Red Card officials have called on the club and the striker to say sorry to the French left-back after Liverpool decided not to fight the ban and a 40,000 pounds fine handed to Suarez by the Football Association for his racist remarks to Evra during United’s visit to Anfield last October.
"An apology would certainly help things because hen people do apologise it certainly moves things on," Show Racism the Red Card chief executive Ged Grebby told Goal.com.
"I think that it would help the situation no end if he accepted that he had done wrong and personally apologised to Patrice Evra. If there was an element to this that he did understand the language differences then the easiest thing to do would have been to apologise.
"I think that Liverpool Football Club owe Patrice Evra an apology. They raised this issue about him having previous over the Chelsea incident when, if you look at that, it was two members of Manchester United's staff that reported it. It was a legitimate incident. It wasn’t a red herring."
That was a reference to the revelation that Dalglish spoke to the match referee Andre Marriner following the players' altercation and said "hasn't he done this before?".
That was perceived to refer to Evra complaining about an alleged racist comment made by a groundsman following a match against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge.
Liverpool may have accepted Suarez's punishment but remain defiant over the incident and have not shown any sign of contrition, but Tyneside-based Grebby is pleased that the club have decided not to contest his suspension that kicked in just before the 3-0 defeat at Manchester City.
"It is a sensible decision and hopefully Liverpool can now move on and reinforce the anti-racist message which is something they have always done year in, year out with our campaign and also with Kick it Out," Grebby added.
"We will certainly be looking forward to our event at Anfield this year and I am sure the club will engage in a number of anti-racist initiatives in the course of 2012.
"The professional level has been key to our campaign and has shown the role model status of footballers. Things can move forward but things can move backwards as well and this case had the potential to send things back.
"That is why I am very glad that Liverpool have accepted what I think is a thorough review of the events at Anfield and something that has enabled the FA to emerge with a lot of credit."
Grebby praised the FA for sending out a powerful message on racism.
"The FA have sent out a really strong message to say that it is not acceptable in the game for there to be any kind of abuse where you are using people’s skin colour, religion or culture," Grebby continued.
"What I thought was very interesting about the document is that they could have imposed a bigger ban and while I think they got it about right."
Within the document think there also is a warning that if there are two more offences then there would be a permanent ban from English football for Suarez.
"That is not just a very strong message to Liverpool Football Club but a message to anyone who thinks they can get away with racism within the game," Grebby added.
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