The minimum is ten games. The final sentence says it is not.

The story

Players found guilty of discrimination face minimum ten-game bans under enhanced Football Association rules. Suspensions of between six and twelve games were previously recommended for aggravated breaches. The rules also apply to managers and officials. Harsher or lesser punishments remain possible where mitigating factors are present.

The reframe

Read those four sentences in order and the third one undoes the first. A minimum that can be departed downwards where mitigating factors apply is not a minimum, it is a starting point, and the difference is not pedantry. Under the previous framework a panel choosing eight games was applying the recommended range. Under the new framework a panel choosing eight games is exercising discretion in the presence of mitigation. The outcome is identical. What has changed is the paperwork required to reach it and the headline available to describe the rules.

That is a real change, and it is not nothing. Departing from a stated minimum requires reasons, and reasons can be scrutinised in a way that a choice within a range cannot. But the announcement being made is that the punishment has hardened, and what has actually hardened is the burden of justification, which is a different thing and lands on the panel rather than on the offender. The person subject to the rule still cannot say, before the hearing, what ten games means for them. They can only say that the figure is now the number quoted in the press release.