Undermining the boss: John Terry appeared to be
leading an uprising against Fabio Capello during the defenders
press conference
Four months after being stripped of the England
captaincy, John Terry tried to assume the role of player-manager
here on Sunday. At least that was how it looked, how it
felt.
Terry appeared to be leading some kind of coup — an uprising
against Fabio Capello that would challenge the Italian’s authority
and see the players take control before it was too late.
Another disappointing performance against Slovenia on Wednesday
will probably see England fail to progress from what was supposed
to be an easy group in this World Cup.
Terry was made available at a morning Press conference during
which he stunned FA bosses and team-mates by revealing plans for a
crisis meeting on Sunday night. He suggested what would be said,
even if Capello did not want to hear what the players had to
say.
On a day when Terry’s Chelsea clubmate Nicolas Anelka was sent
home for indiscipline by France, the former England captain even
accepted that players might run the risk of being kicked out of an
unhappy camp.
‘Maybe a few of us will be sent home after this evening,’ he
said. It was astonishing. The most extraordinary England press
conference since Kevin Keegan announced in 2001 he had just
resigned as manager in a Wembley toilet
It had echoes of Italia ’90, when the players responded to two
draws in their opening two games by going to Bobby Robson and
informing him of their desire to switch to a 3-5-2 formation that
took them to the semi-finals. Robson always insisted it was his
idea. From the players, however, came a conflicting version of
events.
Here in South Africa, there would be no such doubts. If England
now switch to the 4-5-1 formation that Terry endorsed on Sunday — a
formation that would see Wayne Rooney play as a lone striker with
Joe Cole on the left and skipper Steven Gerrard in a central
attacking role — it would be because the players had demanded as
much.
‘If it upsets him [Capello] then I’m on the verge of just
saying, “You know what? So what, I’m here to win it for England”,’
said Terry.
The players, he suggested, were going to rip up the Capello
rule-book and have a beer when they fancied one; tell the
celebrated Italian manager how they now wanted to play; tell him
that things were going to change. Even that they wanted a man ‘at
the near post’ on set-pieces.
Like it or lump it, Fabio. This is our World Cup too. And he
said he was speaking for everyone.
‘I’m here on behalf of the players,’ he insisted. Only he
wasn’t. He was not acting on behalf of the players but committing
what, for Terry this year, amounted to yet another serious error of
judgment.
A performance that was impressive but only because it was so
wonderfully Machiavellian. On Sunday, Terry succeeded in backing
the manager while completely undermining him in the same
breath.
‘I have 100 per cent confidence in the manager,’ he declared
even though pretty much everything else he said suggested
otherwise.
Within a couple of hours of Terry’s meeting with the media came
communication from within the England hotel. The players were
furious that he had dragged them into such a situation, just as
they were incredulous that he had disclosed the details of their
drink after the dismal goalless draw with Algeria on Friday
night.
It was quickly being referred to as the ‘Cape Town Coup’ but
that was not an interpretation that was shared by those, Terry
aside, who were there.
‘I went to see Franco (Baldini) after the game and said, “Look,
let everyone have a beer and speak to the manager. Flippin’ hell,
let’s just switch off”,’ he revealed.
‘Eight players sat there talking about the game. It was good to
get things off our chest and express how we felt. The discussions
between the players will stay private but it was really nice to
unwind and get things off our chest.
'There was me, Lamps, Wazza, Aaron Lennon, Jamo, Crouchy,
Johnno, Jamie Carragher, Stevie, probably a couple more. I’ll
probably get in trouble for saying this.’
He was right about that, and soon an alternative take on Terry’s
performance was being presented. The story of a man driven by
bitterness and a desire for revenge.
The story of a player who had proved difficult to manage from
the moment he arrived here in Rustenburg. Always moaning, always
angry.
‘He is angry because he is not the captain,’ said one
insider.
Terry claimed he had spent a couple of hours on Sunday morning
reading newspaper websites, ‘to get a sense of what the fans are
feeling back home’.
He clearly sensed that Capello was vulnerable, that there were
problems in the camp; problems that he could exploit and then use
to his advantage. Payback time, perhaps, for the manager stripping
him of the captaincy back in February over his affair with Wayne
Bridge’s former girlfriend Vanessa Perroncel and that story,
revealed by Sportsmail,
about his private box at Wembley.
According to sources here, Terry has been a hugely disruptive
influence. One spoke of an incident during training when Terry
clashed with the fitness coach, Massimo Neri, over some shuttle
runs he was being ordered to do. Terry refused, Capello intervened
and told him to keep running and after one more sprint the Chelsea
defender claimed his hamstring was sore and walked off the
pitch.
Another time Capello reprimanded him for not paying attention,
screaming: ‘Focus, focus!’
Terry made a mistake on Sunday. Sensing that Capello needed him
more than ever, that he was the only top-class centre half still
standing after the loss of Rio Ferdinand and Ledley King to injury,
he thought he was untouchable. That he could say what he liked.
He thought he was as powerful with England as he clearly is at
Chelsea, where such full and frank exchanges have taken place.
After the 2008 Carling Cup final defeat with Avram Grant, and after
losing to Inter Milan last season with Carlo Ancelotti.
‘It’s the same at Chelsea,’ he said. ‘I might say something to
Carlo in a meeting in front of the players that he doesn’t like,
but we walk out the meeting and it’s forgotten. I’m doing the best
for Chelsea, and if I say something tonight, and I probably will
and a few others will, then I’m doing the best for England. As I
said before, I’m doing it for my country.’
Only there is a difference, and not just because it involves a
stuttering England team at a World Cup. Terry only spoke of such
meetings after they had taken place. Not beforehand and not with a
64-year-old manager who does not take kindly to having his
authority challenged.
In the end, Sunday night’s meeting passed as Capello had
originally planned it, with a review of the Algeria game.
Chit-chat: Terry let slip about a meeting with senior
players after the Algeria match
On Sunday afternoon, Terry was intercepted by senior figures
from the coaching and playing staff and told to abort his idea to
confront Capello. Realising he did not have support, he responded
accordingly.
But this remains symptomatic of this era of modern millionaire
footballers. Of bloated egos that are simply out of control. The
France squad is disintegrating amid clashes between the management
and players and such problems are undermining England’s effort
here.
Capello is not blameless. He, too, has made mistakes that have
damaged his reputation in the eyes of the players as well as the
supporters.
There was the Capello Index; an act of desperation in trying to
drag Paul Scholes out of international retirement as well as Jamie
Carragher; the handling of his three goalkeepers; the flirtation
with Inter Milan before signing a newly drafted contract; an
unspecified role for David Beckham, not to mention a selection
policy that some players believe leaves them insufficiently
prepared.
He does need to make changes to his team, and to the formation
that Terry spoke of on Sunday.
Joe Cole has to play and Rooney needs to be deployed in the lone
striker position in which he excelled at Manchester United last
season.
Capello also needs to stop blaming everyone and everything else.
If it’s not the ball it’s a team he does not recognise, a team that
has gone back two years, or a star striker who seems to be wrong in
the head.
Rather worryingly on Sunday, there was still talk of him
starting with Jermain Defoe on Wednesday.
But Rooney, like Terry, is part of the problem. A player,
insiders say, who is strutting around like a pitbull prima donna,
is acting like one of the best three players in the tournament but
not playing like one. All he has succeeded in doing is putting
himself under enormous pressure while leaving many of his
international colleagues distinctly unimpressed.
Capello knows he has a problem, with both Terry and Rooney. But
he also went into Sunday night’s meeting believing he still had the
complete support of 20 of his 23 players.
Terry has emerged as the Anelka of the camp; England’s answer to
Roy Keane without the direct confrontation and without the
walk-out. Well, not yet anyway. Terry is a winner, and there is no
doubt that much of what he said on Sunday was driven by a desire to
succeed, driven by a desire to see England have a successful World
Cup.
But his view of Capello has been distorted by that meeting at
Wembley when the Italian took away something that was precious to
him and he is deluded enough to believe he can now push the manager
to one side and become England’s saviour.
‘I was born to do stuff like this,’ he said. ‘If I feel
something needs changing, that’s a discussion I’ll have with the
manager tonight in the meeting.
‘If we feel things need to be changed, whether he needs to
change personnel or change his ways, we’ll say so. Everyone needs
to voice their opinion and we hope he then takes it on board. But
it’s the manager who has the final decision.’
Team selection, said Terry, was the manager’s responsibility but
that did not stop him giving his opinion.
‘There’s enough time to look at formations, a system, and
whether the manager changes it to go with five in midfield, Wayne
up front on his own, I don’t know,’ he said.
In a rare display of humility, there was one moment when he
recognised what a difficult job Capello has.
‘It certainly wouldn’t be a job I’d take,’ he said. ‘Mind you, I
probably wouldn’t be given it.’
But on Sunday he did attempt to take control, and in the end he
succeeded only in making himself an isolated figure within the
England camp.
At a time when England need to rediscover some form — and fast —
when the players need to stop whining about being bored and take
some responsibility on the pitch, it is not exactly what Capello
would have wanted.
Instead he was left with a squad divided by dissenters and
struggling with a crisis of confidence. What a
mess.
