England have made an official complaint after West Ham's Anton Ferdinand and Manchester City's Micah Richards received racist abuse during the under-21s' 2-0 win in Germany tonight.
Peter Taylor's young lions - captained again by West Ham's Nigel Reo-Coker - won tonight's second leg 2-0 thanks to two late goals from Arsenal's Theo Walcott*, giving them a 3-0 aggregate win that puts them into next summer's European Under-21 Championships.But the victory was marred by the racist incidents during the game, which in Ferdinand's case followed a seemingly innocuous tackle on the edge of England's penalty area.
Although the specific comments made are as yet unknown TV coverage showed that Ferdinand was visibly angered by the exchange of words, although no action was taken by Czech referee Jaroslav Jara.
The Hammers defender refused to talk about the incident after the game, telling reporters: "it's in the hands of the FA and I don't want to say anything about it at this stage."
However an FA spokesman confirmed that a complaint has been made by the England party:
"Two of our players have complained of racial abuse from German players," he said.
"We have raised that with the UEFA delegate after the game and will be formally communicating with UEFA in the next couple of days."
Both sides finished the game with ten men after Germany's Markus Brzenska was sent off for a professional foul - after just 12 minutes - and Newcastle's Steven Taylor had been dismissed in the second half for a second bookable offence.
Victiorious captain Nigel Reo-Coker, speaking after the game which saw England through to next summer's finals in Holland, said:
"It was a very hard game. We know we didn't play as well as we did on Friday tonight but we have a win and that's the sign of a great team."
* See Theo Walcott's goals from tonight's game here: # 1 | # 2
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