Goodbye John, but no thanks for the memories

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Goodbye John, but no thanks for the memories

Submitted by David Gold on Sunday, 7 February 20108 Comments

(c) Paulblank

In 1956 it was Suez. 1982 brought the conflict in the Falklands. Fast forward to 2010 and England has been rocked by the great John Terry affair. Young man allegedly sleeps with an ex-team mate’s ex-partner. Big deal? Well, yes. Whilst some have questioned why we should be either shocked at the indiscretion of a footballer or indulging in someone’s personal life, the reality is that Terry has betrayed the trust a captain must have. Yesterday, Fabio Capello finally axed Terry from the role as England’s captain. Well done Capello, I say.

Last week, Terry failed in his attempt to buy the right to defend this most treacherous of civil libertarian balancing acts, when his super injunction was thrown out of the courts. The Chelsea and England captain is one of the most iconic of role models – Chelsea have a worldwide following of millions and England can expect to attract audiences climbing into eight figures should they manage to get beyond the group stages of this summer’s World Cup in South Africa. Terry, whether he likes it or not, has responsibilities that come with his position. In a society where we have come to know all of our rights whilst wilfully casting aside our responsibilities as though they are somehow mutually exclusive concepts, it is of great credit to Capello that he has taken a firm line with Terry.

The worst case scenario was that the Italian, entrusted by the Football Association with the right to make this decision over Terry’s future captaincy of the England side, passed the buck to Manchester City left back Wayne Bridge. Bridge is of course the wronged party, whose ex Vannessa Peroncell was allegedly made pregnant by Terry and who has a young son that he is eager to protect. And Bridge is a popular player, evidenced by his team mates’ public support of his cause yesterday when City beat Portsmouth in the Premier League. But Capello has shown himself to be the leader we need, unlike Terry, by not shirking his responsibilities.

Bridge is of course just a left back, the understudy to another beacon of morally irresponsibility, Ashley Cole, a man by his own self admission prone to almost crash his car if offered a paltry wage increase to say, £55,000. But Bridge is dispensable in footballing terms. If this was a cynical, harsh case of footballing expediency, Terry is worth a hundred times what Bridge is. It was important that an issue which was to do with far more than just football didn’t come down to a case of cynical working out of the percentages.

So what has Terry done that is so bad? It goes beyond simply this latest shocking revelation. In the past Terry has committed a number of indiscretions, as The Guardian listed yesterday. On the pitch, he is the captain of a Chelsea team that built a reputation for harassing and bullying referees. A prime example of this behaviour was last year in the European Cup semi final against Barcelona. After some questionable refereeing, Didier Drogba swore at TV cameras and was seen intimidating the referee. Terry defended the Ivorian striker after the match. And he has admitted to cheating on his wife in the past, and once said “I really regret what I’ve done to Toni. I’m not going to cheat on her ever again.”

Terry held Chelsea to ransom last summer, refusing to commit his future to the club as Manchester City publicly courted and attempted to sign him. By refusing to comment for weeks, he was able to negotiate a pay increase, to a reported £160,000. Because this is clearly necessary.

It is vitally important that Terry was removed. He has failed moral tests on every step of the way – from the attempt to subvert the freedom of the press through a super injunction, to his alleged offer to pay Peroncell not to talk to newspapers, and now, if reports are to be believed, he will refuse to do the decent thing and resign from the captaincy voluntarily. But as the leader of a group of people, disloyalty of the sort he has been accused of makes such a position untenable. Any moral authority he had to lead the England team disappeared out of Peroncell’s bedroom window when he decided that it would be a good idea to sleep with a once close friend’s wife.

Of course he isn’t the only England captain of recent times to have committed the faux pas of lying back and not thinking of England, following in the footsteps of David Beckham and the Rebecca Loos scandal. Yet Beckham was a very different case. He did not betray his team, the very people he was meant to lead and besides, it was a blip on Beckham’s otherwise highly admirable character. Terry seems to lack the very thing that a captain must command, loyalty.

Perhaps though, this is not the worst sin of all. In attempting to block these revelations, he not only tried to have an injunction placed, but a super injunction, thus preventing it even being public knowledge that there was an injunction placed. This attempt to subvert the freedom of the press and freedom of speech is insulting to all of those who have fought for hundreds of years for these most basic of civic freedoms. For that, Capello was right to show Terry the red card.

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8 Comments »

Michael said:

I have to say this article doesn’t particularly add anything to the reams of information about this particular issue.

Personal conduct should not be such a key arbiter of who is captain of a sports side. If this was a lesser known sport there is a good chance no one would know what was happening and that a captain might have remained in their role. The media intrusiveness in to lives is at absurd levels and an article about that might get more sympathy from me.

Whether a player gets a pay rise or not is irrelevant to us. He didn’t hold Chelsea to ransom last summer and Chelsea didn’t have to pay any money, he asked for it and Chelsea believed he was worth it, this is a free market economy in which football operates. The other element that needs consideration is the cost of replacing the captain of a club in his best years, never an easy task and costly.

Comparisons to Beckham are also unfair as he has also been criticised for the amount of money he demands and is paid by MLS. Beckham was also a cheat and the way he left Man Utd also led to questions about his character and loyalty to those around him, these comparisons are unfair when you highlight Beckham’s ‘admirable character’. We only see of these people what the press publicises and in recent years his only indiscretions have been related to infidelity, something a lot of people are guilty of. A lot of people would highlight the good character of Frank Lampard but surely everyone remembers his film from about a few years ago on holiday with other football friends, Steven Gerrard punched a guy in a club, Kieron Dyer had lots of character questions and Cristiano Ronaldo crashed a Ferrari while likely speeding.

By bringing up Drogba’s actions last year you are also contradicting yourself as you highlight the loyalty and trust Terry has in his team mates by defending his actions, you can’t have it both ways.

No one has ever said Terry was a ‘nice guy’ but his only real problem is that he has a problem being faithful. Is this flaw really so important that it should be the key to whether he remains captain of a football team?

- 7 February 2010 at 1:51 pm

David Gold (author) said:

Beckham has moved to Milan where he has taken a significant pay cut! I’d be amazed to see Terry do a similar thing. Beckham was a cheat? When?! And you can be loyal and criticise team mates – look at Roy Keane. But Didier Drobga’s own eight year old son told him that he was wrong to swear on TV – if an eight year old is capable of realising such things it’s incredible that the England captain can not.

Terry has more indiscretions than simply infidelity. No one is judging him for having an affair, it’s the nature of what he did – sleeping with a good friend’s ex wife and mother of his child. That’s beyond the pale and genuinely threatens the harmony of the England dressing room – which is completely disloyal to his country, whom he is meant to be serving. The newspapers reported his apparent breach of contract over the selling of a box at Wembley to third parties, he along with team mates drunkenly mocked grieving American tourists on 9/11. The thing is that Terry has long been known to be a fairly vile character, and the reason this has received so much attention is because it’s an opportunity to finally get rid of him for many who already felt that he was a terrible choice as captain in the first place. If he was squeaky clean then it wouldn’t have been a big issue this one incident.

- 7 February 2010 at 7:51 pm

Michael said:

Well Beckham has taken a pay cut to play in a real football league again after previously being exceptionally greedy to play in the MLS. He cheated on his wife and let down Man Utd with his big headed and arrogant actions. I don’t see how he has such a high standing with his character.

My point about Terry’s character is that no one else actually makes any better headlines. The incidents over 9/11 are wrong but were 9 years ago when he was 19/20 years old and immature. As I said Lampard had indiscretions when he was younger, Rio Ferdinand was banned for failing to take a drugs test which questions whether he is a cheater, Steven Gerrard punched a guy in a club and Wayne Rooney went to a brothel. I know that Terry cheated on his wife and it was with a supposed friend but how is that worse than the previous incidents. Footballers in general are badly behaved idiots at best and Terry is the king of them, make him captain!

- 7 February 2010 at 8:11 pm

David Gold (author) said:

Michael, how did Beckham let United down? Was it that one time when he didn’t turn up at training because his son was ill and he wanted to be with him in hospital?! You’re going to need to give an actual example of Beckham’s ‘arrogance’, because otherwise it is presumably a false accusation. Beckham was vilified after the World Cup in 1998, and his reaction wasn’t to moan like some, but to work hard and play well. The same at Madrid when Capello dropped him; he worked exceptionally hard and professionally and got back in the team, and the same with England. He is the model professional. Never moans, never complains, takes responsibility and is a fine role model. He cheated on his wife once, that counts as an abberation on an otherwise impeccable character.

Ferdinand/Lampard/Gerrard/Rooney are all guilty of isolated incidents, they generally have all matured and grown up. I agree none are particularly fine examples, but all are better than Terry, surely! Terry said that he regretted cheating on his wife and never would again years and years ago…if he can’t show loyalty to her how is meant to do so to England? The business with Bridge and Wembley stadium just proves that.

- 7 February 2010 at 9:08 pm

Jenni Summers said:

I understand your angle David, and can see that the dressing room atmosphere would likely be strained, but my overriding concern about this story is not about Terry’s conduct, but what it demonstrates about the ugly media culture today.

Melanie Phillips et al spouting rubbish about how he is a role model seems hypocritical to me, because if these people really cared about corrupting young minds they would not expose this conduct in their pages. Back before the hyper-mediatised age, there was a great deal of dodgy goings on with some of the great leaders and social figures in our society implicated, but they were left alone by the papers who saw the damage they could cause (Churchill being a prime example)which would outweigh any ‘public interest’ in the matter.

How can it possibly help anyone to splash people’s private lives all over the paper (apart from of course boosting papers’ ailing sales), it makes one wonder why anyone would possibly want to go into public life, when it rids them of any shred of privacy they have.

This puts me in the uncomfortable position of agreeing with Max Mosely, but the truth is there seems to be a need for carefully thought out privacy legislation, rather than the current situation in which almost nothing is sacred, so that pioneering judges like Mr. Justice Eady are forced to be ‘innovative’ with the law.

If such a law applied to Terry, his public conduct – like that on the pitch, would be subject to public scrutiny, but his private affairs would remain between the protagonists in the matter, where they should be.

- 9 February 2010 at 5:19 pm

Michael said:

I’m just identifying that to highlight Beckham’s impeccable character is as flawed as to highlight Terry’s faults. No one knows everything that happens in a dressing room but from all the stories Ferguson had become fed up of the media circus surrounding Beckham and his constant clamouring for the spotlight taking over from the importance of the team. He also did cheat on his wife, which puts him in the same boat as Terry, like it or not! The Tiger Woods incidents of late also have the same connotations but would that prevent people cheering him at the Masters if he sunk an 18 footer? There just seems to be a ridiculous double standard on the level of decency expected from people.

In regards to the other players I don’t understand your argument. What is worse, being strongly implicated in performance related drug taking or cheating on a spouse? I personally think the former is worse for a potential England captain. I also don’t understand what loyalty to a country has to do with this argument, surely the loyalty is to Terry himself in performing admirably on the pitch (which he does more consistently than most players) and winning games.

I also agree with Jenni that the major problem is the public and press intrusion in personal lives. As a sportsman is it justified that this should happen? Should anyone have this much intrusion into their personal lives? That is the real story and debate in this, not whether he is deserving of being captain of a sports team.

- 10 February 2010 at 1:29 pm

David Gold said:

Michael, Fergie becomes fed up of a lot of players. Stam, Vidic, Beckham, Sharpe…he is also a manager who bans Sky from press conferences because their footage is used to charge his players. He bans reporters, questions, etc, basically, Ferguson is a bit of an autocrat. I wouldn’t base a judgement of Beckham’s character on the authoritarian, autocratic way Ferguson treated him. And there being a media circus around Beckham is hardly a character flaw. So he craves the spotlight a bit – what’s wrong with that?

Terry has an endless list of crimes allegedly committed against his name. Beckham has one. The two are not comparable in any way. And Rio Ferdinand wasn’t necessarily guilty of taking drugs; he was guilty of missing a drugs test. That’s pure conjecture. Which is worse? Well, what Terry did damages the dressing room. What Rio allegedly probably didn’t do would not. That’s the point. Terry betrayed all the trust placed in him.

I generally agree about the press intrusion into people’s lives. However, Terry craves the media; uses it to his advantage to gain these multi million pound sponsorship deals, and then he decides he doesn’t like it when it turns against him. No. You can’t have it both ways. Either you accept press intrusion or you don’t, and if you don’t, you don’t use the media to your advantage as he does. I have almost never seen Giggs or Scholes, top players, on the front pages. It’s not that difficult, and Terry wouldn’t be on the front page unless he courted it. And if he doesn’t want press intrusion, he shouldn’t be the England captain. You must accept the responsibilities that come with the role and the fact that the benefits of a £160,000 wage packet also come with the caveat that your life will be scrutinised publicly.

- 11 February 2010 at 7:39 pm

Michael said:

There is nothing wrong with coveting the limelight but Beckham was also a cheat. You can’t identify an impeccable character when there has clearly been a flaw. We also don’t know everything that goes on in Beckham’s private life all the time, Terry might just not be as good at using the press to his advantage. I am only highlighting the sweeping statement that Beckham is so morally sound as a completely false comparison in the first place.

Rio Ferdinand was banned for not taking a drugs test, as was Christine Ohuruogu, which highlights one of two things; he cheated and didn’t want to get caught (his play since coming back shows a diminished level), or he is immensely stupid. Either way I don’t see any positives for him as England captain over Terry.

The headlines in recent years for JT have been positive and about his footballing achievements, he has played in a very high profile position and teams for a long time. He is (or was) Chelsea and England captain so gets in the press for those reasons. Scholes was in the press a lot in 1998 when he was seen as they key player for England, he has now retired and is a bit part player for Man Utd. Giggs has had a lot of press, particularly in the 1990s, and had incidents at the same time Sharp was booted out of United. Again you are selective on who you are picking as examples. How about looking at current examples such as Gerrard and Rooney, who are in the press a lot, not all for positive reasons. No one should have the intrusion into their private life as people currently do and the amount of money they earn, unless it is public money, shouldn’t have any bearing on that fact.

- 17 February 2010 at 11:41 pm