Retiring from England duty may be John Terry's best option now that the wolves have been sent to his door
If Fabio Capello is furious about losing his captain while his back was turned he will be incandescent on discovering that John Terry can never even play for him again, which will be the inevitable upshot now that the pack has tasted blood.
The campaign will not stop here. Either Terry will decide for himself that he does not need any more public humiliation and retire from international football, or the drip of speculation and Twitter comment over how divisive a presence he has become within the England dressing room will force the FA to make his pariah status official before his trial in July. The latter may seem an unlikely course but we have all just seen how the bandwagon effect works. The FA has just won praise for acting correctly and decisively, for goodness sake, so almost anything is possible from now on.
Other countries must wonder why England goes in for this sort of thing. When kicking footballs we remain clueless at the game the rest of the world is playing ? England failed to even qualify for the last European Championship and stank out South Africa in the 2010 World Cup ? but when it comes to kicking our own backsides we are second to none. It is hard to feel too much sympathy for Terry over his latest demotion, the supply of public goodwill started to run dry several misdemeanours ago, though anyone with a sense of fairness must view the events of the past few days with unease. It is even possible to admire the player's sheer stoicism as he attempts to rebuild himself all over again after another painful knockdown.
Terry is a footballer, not a politician or a monk. He has never misbehaved in an England shirt, has proved a popular member of the side with players and management, and when he went through this process before he displayed a dignity and professionalism in picking up the pieces of his captaincy without complaint. He may never win any contests for being spotless and pure, and like every England captain since Bobby Moore may find it impossible to live up to the almost mythical standards we fondly imagine were set in 1966, but no one deserves to be stripped of the same honour twice, just as no one ought to be unlucky enough to be the victim of two successive witch-hunts over alleged offences that remain unproven.
Only in England could such a peculiar situation come about, and having sacked Terry once and seen him reinstated the FA had a duty to be more careful the next time. Yes, the charge he faces is a serious one, but on this occasion the FA could have afforded to stand by its man and stand up for the principle of innocent until proven guilty. Terry's guilt or otherwise is a matter for the court to decide. The risk of him being pictured running round Kiev's Olympic Stadium brandishing a trophy the previous week is in fact a very small one, as anyone as close to recent England performances as members of the FA ought to know.
Yet the FA was compromised in its turn by Chelsea successfully asking for the trial date to be put back until after the European Championships, meaning that the alleged insult that Anton Ferdinand never actually heard or complained about will take almost a year to process. If Chelsea were interested in their player remaining England captain their intervention proved unhelpful, as did that of the police in the first instance by prolonging proceedings. Sepp Blatter was roundly and rightly ridiculed last year for suggesting that such disputes could be swiftly resolved by a handshake at the end of the game, though he had a point in stressing the need for speed. Allowing them to fester for almost a year is palpably even more ludicrous.
Unless the game can find a way to administer its own justice more quickly and efficiently the law of unforeseen consequences will continue to wreak havoc with the best laid plans. As a result of this episode one of England's best defenders may not appear in Poland and Ukraine at all in the summer, while a thoroughly disillusioned Capello could end up flinging his FA badge into the east European dust in the manner of Gary Cooper at the close of High Noon. Unfortunately both men must concede that England's plans have not been particularly well laid. Capello made his own bed when he reinstated Terry as captain despite being made fully aware of his record, while the player himself appears to have been blithely confident his position would insulate him against the most damaging accusations.
With hindsight, the best course of action would have been for Terry to offer his resignation as soon as he became embroiled in a court case. The FA could usefully make it clear to all future England captains that that is now the unwritten rule. A wonderful thing, hindsight. But foresight is what an England captain really needs.
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2012/feb/04/john-terry-fa
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