Bridge out of troubled waters

IT’S one thing for Fabio Capello to lose Wayne Bridge. But his bigger worry should be that he has lost John Terry as well.

Of course, barring injury, Terry will be in South Africa, albeit without the captain’s armband. But that’s not all he seems to have mislaid in recent weeks. The Chelsea man might have brought all of this madness down on his own head – and his touching reconciliation in Dubai, an intimate family moment conveniently hidden in plain view, won’t have won him any extra sympathy – but it’s clear that, though more villain than victim in the whole sorry saga, it hasn’t come without a personal cost in terms of his performances on the field.

Certainly, Terry has been a shadow of himself in recent games, a sequence of uncharacteristically error-ridden displays culminating in the ease with which Diego Milito left him floundering to score Inter Milan’s opening goal in the Champions’ League clash at the San Siro on Wednesday night. It was only the latest evidence that Terry’s focus and concentration have been seriously eroded by recent distractions