Rio Ferdinand has no choice but to shake hands with John Terry before Manchester United play Chelsea on Sunday. Not if the United player wants to go to the European Championships with England in June. Not now the hearing of the allegation that Terry racially abused Ferdinand's brother Anton has been deferred until July.
The Football Association and Premier League have rightly indicated that the pre-match ritual, abandoned when Chelsea met a Queens Park Rangers side including Anton last weekend, must go ahead this time and Fabio Capello insists that his captain will be treated as innocent until proved guilty.
So Rio's hand has been almost forced by the bizarre decision of Westminster magistrates to delay the case because footballers might be too busy to attend as witnesses during the season. Why did Chelsea put forward this risible argument? Surely the club's priority should be the securing of justice for Terry, who denies the charge with vigour.
The sooner the case was heard, the fresher in the mind would have been any player's evidence.
Now it will cast a cloud over the England campaign. Racist abuse is too important a matter to be subjected to the whims of football clubs or the careerists they employ.
But so is the process of justice, which is why Capello and the FA are right to presume innocence, ignoring those, including campaigners for Terry, to be excluded immediately.
It was fundamental to the conduct of this case that it be concluded before Terry represented his country in Poland and Ukraine.
The courts, widely praised for rising to the challenge of the riots, have shrunk from this one and Rio Ferdinand is not alone in feeling awkward.
