The trouble with... Terry
But there is one thing the FA can never take away from him, and that is his position as the iconic English player of his generation.
No player personifies the trouble with English football to quite the same extent as Terry.
Whether renting out his box at Wembley or touting tours of the Chelsea training ground, having an affair with the mother of a team-mate’s child, leading an abortive World Cup mutiny against Fabio Capello, or apparently forgetting that opponents could not be offside from a goal kick, Terry has consistently stood for greed, poor judgement, the fetishisation of physical force over intelligence and the triumph of the individual ego over the team ethic.
If you were making a list of reasons why England consistently fail at international level, these would all feature near the top.
Terry is not wholly to blame for what has happened. His behaviour has been encouraged by a system that has repeatedly reinforced his bad habits.
At Stamford Bridge he plays beneath a banner reading “JT: Captain, Leader, Legend“, the fans’ tribute to his supposedly inspirational character. There was no permanent banner for Ricardo Carvalho or Claude Makelele, whose intelligence masked the weaknesses in Terry’s game and, for a couple of years, allowed him to look like a world-class central defender. Instead Terry is encouraged to think of himself as a kind of footballing Churchill whose leadership qualities have been the decisive factor in Chelsea’s years of success.
The FA have been no less guilty of encouraging bad habits. Given the respect Terry has been accorded by the international set-up, you would assume he was a player of totemic significance. Yet Terry’s record with England is mediocre. They have never been past the quarter-finals with him in the team, and in his first campaign as captain they failed even to qualify for Euro 2008.
Terry’s World Cup campaign in South Africa was memorable for three reasons. He created an unforgettable image by launching himself head-first at a ball on the ground during the match against the Slovenia. He then created a stink by confronting Fabio Capello over England’s tactics and training camp set-up, without first ensuring that he had the support of his teammates, who seemed to desert him at the moment of truth. It was the kind of thing it was hard to picture Bobby Moore ever doing. Finally, he was caught out by a long goal kick by Germany goalkeeper Manuel Neuer — a goal kick — and was beaten to the bouncing ball by Miroslav Klose, who stabbed in the opener in what was to become a crushing 4-1 win for Germany.
And how did England respond to this Terry tour de force? By reinstating him as captain.
At Euro 2000, Germany lost all three group matches in embarrassing circumstances. Their response was a long-term restructuring of their approach to youth football. Partly as a result of this, they go to Euro 2012 as favourites with a team full of extravagantly talented, tactically intelligent young players.
England had an opportunity after the World Cup to clean out the proven failures who had botched the last four tournaments. Instead they chose to reward failure. Now they’ve decided, largely due to pressure from the media, that Terry is no longer a suitable front man for Brand England. In fact he is the most representative man they have.
