Footballers in Uruguay hit back at FA for giving their team-mate, Luis Suarez an eight-match ban and a £40,000 fine for racial abuse.
An FA independent regulatory commission found Suarez guilty of racially abusing the Manchester United player Patrice Evra during the Premier League match at Anfield on 15 October.
The six-day hearing was told that Suarez used "insulting words" that made reference to Evra's skin colour.
Footballers in Uruguay came out in support of the Liverpool striker following the news, implying the incident was a cultural misunderstanding rather than a racist slur.
"They're making a big mistake. It's obvious that in England there's a racism problem they're trying to eradicate, and that's good, but this sentence has no solid arguments," the Uruguay captain Diego Lugano, who also plays for Paris St Germaine, wrote on his blog.
Lazio winger Alvaro Gonzalez also stuck by Suarez. "All of us who know Luis, we know that if he made this remark it wasn't (meant to be) insulting," he was quoted as saying in the Montevideo newspaper El Pais.
"We Uruguayans, and more so in football, use terms that can be wrongly interpreted by people from other places...it's not a reason to call a Uruguayan a racist. Uruguayans often call friends 'negro' affectionately," he added.
"Maybe we end up paying for entering other, perhaps more closed cultures and which surely have discriminated against Evra at some moment for him to feel attacked in this situation."
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