The racism flashpoint between Luis Suarez and Patrice Evra remains one of the most unsavoury moments in Premier League history.
The pair clashed way back in 2011 and the Uruguayan was subsequently found guilty and banned for eight games by the Football Association.
Clearly, there was no love lost when the pair came face to face again shorty thereafter, as the Frenchman celebrated directly in front of Suarez as they left the Old Trafford pitch.
Now Evra has lifted the lid on the moment that they almost came face to face again on the streets of Manchester.
“One day I was walking in Manchester in Deansgate and my brother said: ‘It’s Luis Suarez over there’. I was with two of my brothers,” he said on the The Diary of a CEO Podcast, cited by MARCA.
“I looked at him and I was like ‘that’s it, this is the moment’.
“And he walked, and behind him I saw his kids and his wife. I turned my back. I was like ‘if you do something to him you can’t do this in front of his family’.
“So I don’t regret it because I think it would have ended up bad. I did nothing that day.”
Evra’s right in the sense that it was neither the time or the place for him to seek any sort of retribution. It would’ve sullied his good name and that of Manchester United.
Fortunately, incidents of a similar nature are few and far between, even if they still haven’t been completely eradicated from the game.
As long as the game’s authorities continue to come down hard on the perpetrators, we should reach a point where racism in the game is stamped out entirely.
That, and not just lip service being paid to the problem, is surely the situation where everyone wants to get to.