John Terry

Should John Terry remain England captain?

This is the question discussed over breakfast on the Sunday Supplement, and I couldn’t disagree more with some of the answers given.

According to Rob Beasley, there is no argument whatsoever. “Absolutely” is his one word answer to the question, as if there’s not even an issue to be discussed. He draws a distinction between John Terry the man and John Terry the football player, as if the two can be separated. They can’t, Mr Beasley. John Terry the man is John Terry the football player. You can’t talk about one person as if they are two different people. What next? Gary Glitter the man and Gary Glitter the musician? Shun the man, embrace the musician? It is this kind of thinking that leads people to say things like “Well, it wasn’t rape rape”.

Now I’m not out to condemn Terry. But it is unhelpful to all involved if we start drawing lines down the middle of a person that don’t exist in real life. To simply say that John Terry is the best English defender and therefore case closed is naïve to the extreme. It trumps the individual over the collective. How do the rest of the Chelsea players really feel about the whole thing? One wonders if they would have been quite so congratulatory had Wayne Bridge been playing left-back against Burnley yesterday evening. Their attitude resembled a “football at all costs” mentality, which is dangerous for player and fan alike. Now I’m not saying the Chelsea players should have turned their backs on Terry, but show some decency to a former teammate. Terry did so by shrugging away the embracing arms. What possessed Cech to apparently run 40 yards to jump on Terry’s back? Three points? Superficial support of a teammate? We all lauded van der Saar for staring down the United fans who threw objects at Craig Bellamy. Would the proper footballing conduct actually have been to show support to the fan who threw the coin by, I dunno, jumping on his back after the game screaming "We won! We won!"? Beasley seems to think Cech’s behaviour a good sign. I think Wayne Bridge wishes Terry hit him with a coin instead. I know I would.

Beasley mentions the Terry-Bridge ultimatum, and he’s quite right to point out that there’s only going to be one winner. But that’s all a bit irrelevant when it comes to England captain. The captain is more than the best player; he’s more than the guy who would put his head where others wouldn’t put their foot. We can all agree on that, otherwise we’d be left scratching our heads as to why Paul McGrath wasn’t Ireland’s captain.

But what more should a captain be? A pillar of morality? One who fights for truth, justice and the American way? Someone who doesn’t cheat on his wife with the mother of his friend’s child?

As Pete Gill points out, the Burnley crowd seem to think so. They booed Terry during yesterday’s game, and probably represented much of the football watching public who would have done the same. Then again, if a Burnley player was in the same position as Terry, would they have booed him? Not likely. Football fans, like football players, are fickle. The disapproving noises would surely cease if England were to rampage through the World Cup under the captaincy of John Terry.

The question is, Is Terry the man to lead them? Has his position become untenable? I’m sorry to say, but there are no easy answers to this question. One thing we can be sure of though:

“JT’s not a quitter”.

It’s sentences like that that make me want to hurt somebody.