Terry's not such a big deal after all

Who could be regretful or surprised that John Terry has been deprived of the England captaincy? More and more skeletons are falling out of his cupboards by the day.

The affair with the French fille du regiment, who appears to have bestowed her favours not only on her former boyfriend and ex-Chelsea leftback Wayne Bridge, but on various members of the team was what triggered the scandalous accusations.

Yet such was Terry's long-as-your-arm record, well before he was ever made England captain at all, that you wondered why he was ever appointed. Still, the Football Association (FA) in recent years has itself had a series of scandals.

Think of Faria Alam, the FA secretary who was involved both with ex-Tranmer Rovers player Mark Palios, who was then the FA's chief executive, and with the amorous England manager Sven Goran Eriksson.

Palios outrageously tried through his chief publicist Colon Gibson to persuade the News of the World to impugn only Eriksson in exchange for his giving them information. They refused. Eriksson stayed in office while Palios went out with an explicably large pay-off.

Turn back in time to 1990 and the World Cup in Italy, and we find the tale of two Robsons. Bobby, the manager who by the time of his death had surprisingly been installed as a kind of latter day saint, was retrospectively accused by a tabloid paper of erotic excesses, which in fact, belonged to a distant past.

Escapades

As for his captain, that dashing midfielder Bryan Robson, he had been accused in another ‘red top' paper of following a young woman into the ladies ‘rest room' after England played an early season friendly in Aylesbury and molesting her. The story was denied, but nothing came to court.

So Terry, though his tale is also one of abysmal greed demanding £4,000 a time for the use of his Wembley box or £10,000 just to show misguided fans round the Chelsea training ground at Cobham is hardly a single offender.

One thinks also of those England players who a few years ago were caught on holiday in Cyprus in the sordid midst of an orgy.

However, there is another relevant question. Do soccer captains matter, either at club or international level? I doubt if they do. Cricket captains however matter very much. In the field, they position their fielders. In addition, they decide on the choice of their bowlers.

Captain's role

Terry is under the aegis of his manager Carlo Ancelotto. Who, pray, makes the substitutions when the game is on and who devises the tactics? For Terry, captaincy means money.

It is significant that the Italians have never set much store on who captains the national side. When I lived there in the 1950s, the job was a mathematical affair, which simply went to the player with the most caps.

Hard, across the years to remember an outstanding British captain other than Northern Ireland and Tottenham's Danny Blanchflower. Razor-sharp in games, he knew just what tactics needed to be changed.

Before the 1963 Winners Cup final against Atletico Madrid, Spurs' manager Bill Nicholson gave a team talk in which be eulogised almost every Atletico man. Danny saw the heads going down so he gave a kind of anti team talk, boosting the qualities of his own team who then went out and won 5-1.

Nor should we forget the torrid after match of a 1950 drawn game in Belfast between Northern Ireland and Italy, which became a friendly because the World Cup referee Istvan Zsolt was blocked by fog. At the end, Irish fans swarmed on to the pitch to attack the Italians. However, Danny entrusted each one of his players with the guardianship of an opponent, and the Azzurri were saved!

The writer is a soccer expert based in England.