Chelsea defender John Terry suits the modern ideals of the England captaincy
All too seldom does a football manager actively welcome an injury to a valued member of the team, let alone one as bereft of world-class talent as the England football team.
Leader: John Terry looks set to regain the England captaincy but the post's significance is somewhat debatable Photo: AFP
By Matthew Norman 11:00PM GMT 17 Mar 2011
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But Fabio Capello could be forgiven for going even further than that, by sticking pins in a Rio Ferdinand voodoo doll in the hope that the central defender’s calf injury ends his career.
Anything, Don Fabio must feel today, to spare himself the self-inflicted agony of deciding whether to strip Ferdinand of the English captaincy and restore John Terry to that great office of state.
God alone knows why the Italian dug himself into this hole – he must be aware how meaningless international captaincy is from his homeland’s World Cup triumph in 1982 when led by its goalkeeper, Dino Zoff – but there is no more irrelevant honorific position in national life, including Silver Stick-in-Waiting, than this.
Yet whenever this debate explodes, as it does every few years, the passion with which the candidates are discussed lies in mystifyingly inverse proportion to the post’s significance.
What exactly is it, apart from receive immunity from Premier League red cards, that an England captain does? Casting the mind back over 40 years of watching England with the usual emotional cocktail of fear, misplaced hope, nausea and disgust, I cannot recall any captain influencing any of them in the minutest way.
With a rugby union XV, on the other hand, a captain is evidently crucial, because he has genuine authority over his colleagues in terms of both selection and tactics.
England, who may miss Mike Tindall’s unflamboyant leadership in Saturday’s Grand Slam match in Dublin, might not have won the 2003 World Cup without Martin Johnson’s Agincourtly rhetoric.
Yet, outside the West Ham United dressing room, a football captain doesn’t give sinew-stirring team talks.
With Test cricket, meanwhile, the captain is almost as pivotal to his team’s chances as a coach is in football.
In 1981 it took Mike Brearley no time to revive Ian Botham and general team morale after the latter’s dismal spell floundering out of his intellectual depth in the deep waters of Ashes captaincy.
Andrew Strauss quickly resurrected a team being similarly slaughtered on the altar of Kevin Pietersen’s narcissistic dimness.
As Strauss confirmed with his brilliant management of his bowlers and inspired field placements against the West Indies on Thursday, when he somehow nursed a travel-weary side (God and South Africa willing) into the World Cup quarter-finals, even during a 50-over game the captain makes a clutch of potentially decisive judgments.
All the England football captain need decide during his entire tenure is whether to trouser that extra £150,000 per annum from a ghost- written column in the Sunday Mirror or the News of the World.
In one narrow area, Don Fabio is probably correct to reinstate Terry, assuming he still intends to do so. If one sovereign duty of any national leader is to represent a paradigm of those he leads, Terry is ideal.
A braggart, a boozer, a lout and a gambler, a flat track bully who invariably chokes in the biggest games, and a man whose brazen disloyalty has ranged from cuckolding a friend to launching a one-man mutiny, however brief, in the midst of a World Cup, no one – not even Ashley Cole – better exemplifies the mores of the Premier League during its descent in the Eurotrash can of sporting life.
To this extent Terry is as well suited a captain for his age as Bobby Moore, who remained in his Essex semi and spearheaded a TV advertising campaign for a pint and a game of darts down the local even after 1966, once was for his.
That apart, what is it that an England captain does to warrant the fascination? He stands at the front of the line when he and his compadres take to the field of battle, and from time to time he bravely shoulders the responsibility of bearing a pennant.
Give the armband back to as horny a devil as John Terry, in fact, and who could easily distinguish the England football captain from a regimental goat?
world cup triumph, england football team, fabio capello, mike tindall, inverse proportion, voodoo doll, rio ferdinand, silver stick, matthew norman, dino zoff, rhetor, calf injury, grand slam, central defender, england captain, john terry, red cards, football manager, goalkeeper, disgust
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