Terry: Some header
The Chelsea and England captain’s representatives have been in and out of court this week and Terry has again found himself in the tabloid’s crosshairs as another unseemly chapter is added to the off-field shenanigans of this son of Barking, a tough area of East London once notorious for its criminal fraternity.
While the front sections of the newspapers are busy with the where and how many times of his not-so-secret twist with Vanessa Perroncel, the former partner of Wayne Bridge, we in the toy department get our knickers in a twist (metaphorically, of course,) regarding the impact this latest scandal will have on Terry’s football career.
Judging by the thumping header with which he secured three points for Chelsea on Saturday at Burnley – and the abandon with which his colleagues celebrated alongside their skipper – it would seem he has little to worry about at Stamford Bridge. Visits to away grounds may test his resolve a little more if Saturday’s ditty of ‘Chel-sea, wherever you may be, never trust your wife with John Ter-ry...’ is a taste of things to come.
For some, the England captaincy is another thing – presuming, that is, that you believe there is a strict moral code to uphold for that genre in the first place. That FA chief executives and England managers have found themselves suckered by kiss and tell exposes in the past isn’t necessarily relevant on this occasion – neither has to cross the white line and play alongside a wife-cheating, back-stabbing colleague and captain.
Should it matter? In isolation, not necessarily so. There have been captains stripped of the armband – William Gallas at Arsenal an example from last season, but that was as a consequence of behaviour on the field (the sulk at Birmingham) which could have precipitated a deeply divided dressing room. Despite Wayne Bridge’s alleged assertion that he won’t travel to the World Cup with a Terry-led England, one can’t conceive of a scenario where an outbreak of indignation in the England dressing room will force the hand of manager Fabio Capello. Glasshouses, stones and all that.
However, for those of a Three Lions persuasion, there is a troubling and seedy pattern developing in relation to Terry, who, in the best journalistic vernacular, could be described as coming from a “disadvantaged background”.
Whatever the explanations, any Chelsea captain with a weekly payslip of €200,000 who allegedly resorts to guided tours of the club’s Cobham training facility at ten grand a pop has some serious issues going on behind that man’s man, no-nonsense facade.
In all probability, Capello won’t worry about such piffling matters. The practicalities of the situation are that England need Terry at the heart of their defence in South Africa – with or without the armband. Does anyone really think it will matter to John Terry whether he or Frank Lampard leads out the team?
That Terry was prepared to go to the point of a “super injunction” to prevent the redtops outing his affair with Ms Perroncel underlines precisely what motivates him off the field of play – namely his bank balance.
He hardly needs to worry himself though about defamation by the tabs – the definition of which is lowering his reputation in the eyes of right-thinking members of society.
He’s done a damn fine job at that himself.
