REAL MADRID COACH Jose Mourinho says John Terry is not a racist after the Chelsea defender was banned for abusing Anton Ferdinand.

Terry was handed a four-match suspension and a £220,000 fine by a Football Association commission on Thursday, despite having been found not guilty of a racially-aggravated public order offence by Westminster Magistrates’ Court in July.

The charges related to comments Terry is alleged to have made to opposition player Anton Ferdinand during an English Premier League match between Queens Park Rangers and Chelsea last season.

Former Chelsea manager Mourinho, who coached Terry at Stamford Bridge from 2004 to 2007, said the club captain could have made an inappropriate comment in the heat of the moment but declared he was not a racist.

“He is not a racist,” Mourinho told CNN.

That’s 100 percent. We (Chelsea) had a squad where we had 12 African players in the squad. It was a fantastic squad and he had always a great relation with every one of them.

But in football it can happen, and I know it can happen, that during a football match because sometimes it’s more than a game and sometimes you have reactions that don’t represent what you are really.

Probably, he had a racist comment or a ‘racist’ attitude against an opponent and, sometimes in football, we look to our opponents in the wrong way. But to pay, he has to be punished.

But please, don’t say that he is a racist because I know what I am saying … (Didier) Drogba will say, Geremi will say, (Claude) Makelele will say, all of them will say that he is not a racist.

Mourinho claims he has never witnessed or felt any forms of racism in the dressing rooms of any of the clubs he has managed.

“I never felt it,” he said.

“Never. In a dressing room, I have never felt it, and I’ve always had African players in every one of my teams.”

John Terry banned for 4 matches, fined £220k for Ferdinand racial abuse

Friday’s Independent (UK) front page describes John Terry as ‘racist’