The English FA has found Manchester United's Rio Ferdinand guilty of improper conduct and fined him $70,000 for comments on Twitter. The FA concluded that Ferdinand's response to a tweet describing Chelsea's Ashley Cole as a "choc ice" did not make him a racist, but it was ruled that he had brought the game into disrepute.

Ferdinand tweeted: "I hear you fella! Choc ice is classic hahahahahaha!!" in response to a message from @carltonEbanks which stated: "Looks like Ashley Cole's going to be their choc ice. Then again he's always been a sell out. Shame on him."

Choc-ice is a vanilla ice cream bar covered by chocolate and the term is understood to have racial connotations meaning a person is "black on the outside" and "white on the inside."

Cole gave evidence at teammate John Terry's racism trial, which cleared Terry of abusing Ferdinand's younger brother Anton during a Premier League game.