Blatter is criticized over Rio ban
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Ferdinand is certain to appeal against eight-month English FA ban
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MANCHESTER, England -- Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has sided with Manchester United adversary Alex Ferguson over FIFA chief Sepp Blatter's role in the Rio Ferdinand affair.
United's England defender Ferdinand was banned for eight months and fined 50,000 pounds ($88,400) by the English FA for missing a drugs test.
Blatter had called for severe action but Wenger said the president of football's world governing body FIFA should not have made pre-emptive comments on the case.
"You have to give the freedom to every country to judge the cases. Only if the country cannot judge the cases should FIFA sort it out. That's how it has worked well in the past," Wenger told the BBC.
"Every country has its own rules. Until the rules are harmonised throughout the world you have to respect the rules of each country. FIFA have an authority and a responsibility to world football.
"But FIFA is not Sepp Blatter - he is the president. I don't know if he completely knows the case of Rio Ferdinand. I don't know exactly what happened, because I'm outside the case."
Wenger's comments - they came before the verdict was announced - echoed the views of United manager Ferguson.
"It is very unfortunate that a man in his position (Blatter) should have interfered in the way he has done," Ferguson had said.
Ferdinand, who was back in training with United on Saturday ahead of the Premiership trip to Tottenham, will appeal the ban which has been branded "savage and unprecedented" by his club.
The world's costliest defender has been rocked by the sentence which starts on January 12th.
He will miss the remainder of the current campaign, the first month of the next Premiership season, next summer's European Championships and almost certainly the first two World Cup qualifiers.
After learning his fate, Ferdinand stood in shock alongside United director Maurice Watkins who said an appeal was "inevitable."
The 25-year-old, who cost 29.3 million pounds when he signed from Leeds 18 months ago, heard his fate at the end of a two-day hearing.
After 18 hours' deliberations, the independent three-man panel, headed by Barry Bright, on Friday imposed the punishment on Ferdinand who has until January 5 to lodge an appeal.
If there were no appeal, he could play on for United up to and including their Premiership match at home to Newcastle on Sunday January 11.
While the judgment was considered too harsh by some, the World Anti Doping Agency considered Ferdinand lucky not to get the full two-year suspension for such charges.
WADA chairman Dick Pound not only was convinced of Ferdinand's guilt, but felt it unwise of him to appeal against the ban.
"Somebody should be thinking fairly carefully about this," Pound said. "An appeal is a two-edged sword. The sentence can be increased as well as decreased.
"It looks to me that he has dodged a bullet in some respect because he has been given a sentence which is only one-third the theoretical maximum. I should have thought he'd done pretty well from his perspective."
Two-time Olympic 1,500 meter champion Sebastian Coe, who is now an advisor to the FA, said Ferdinand had only himself to blame for the suspension.
"I think it's inevitable that if you fail to turn up or willfully refuse a drugs test, that is a doping offense, then it is likely the you are going to be made an example of," Coe said.
"It would happen in track and field, it is only the third of the sentence that an athlete would have got under similar circumstances."
Blatter, who was unhappy that United fielded Ferdinand while he was under suspicion, is yet to give a reaction.
