Fabio Capello's ruthless clarity over the John Terry
saga contrasted sharply with the laissez-faire approach of the
past. Photograph: Lindsey Parnaby/EPA
In the vast mediasphere we see the moral absolutists going over
the top to demand a crucifixion, then the moral relativists ride in
to cut the absolutists down. The ironists usually win in the end
because they have the best jokes and can float above the fray,
claiming detachment, parading superior intellect.
It is just a game, like football: a journalistic, blogtastic
game of sanctimony versus cool. England's is a
culture talking itself to brain death. Outside the circulation war
and its website equivalent most English folk positioned themselves
between extremes. They thought John Terry was
a wild man, a slave to his appetites, but mistrusted the assertion
that an England captain should be sacked for having extra-marital
sex, which this saga was never really about. At its heart was
persistent misuse of the leader's role: the latest being the
allegation that an associate of Terry's management team offered the
use of his skipper's subsidised Wembley box for £4,000
in readies.
A picture formed of Terry as a desperate opportunist who will
take you round Chelsea's training ground for £10,000 in £50 notes,
park on a disabled space and hawk access to the England captain in
the run-up to a World Cup. Of course, these cravings, this
recklessness, contradict the image he projected of himself on the
pitch. The indomitable warrior, the East End enforcer, turned out
to have no control at all.
All the way through this frenzy it was impossible to stop
wondering how Sven-Goran Eriksson would have handled it. It is safe
to assume the phrases "zero tolerance" and "not on my watch" would
have been far from Eriksson's lips as Terry went through the gamut
of mortifying scrutiny and censure and finally lost the armband at
Wembley on Friday.
During Svennis' spell in the radioactive tracksuit there were
many tense Saturday nights at the Football Association's
headquarters as press officers awaited the thud of the red-top
first editions. One imagines the fire-dousers playing Texas Hold'em
and glancing twitchily at the clock in the hope that there would be
no fake sheikh or Ulrika Jonsson, no cry of "action stations!"
Jamie Carragher in his autobiography describes Eriksson's
response to a newspaper story about women sneaking into the England
billets. Carragher writes: "'There's no need to have girls in the
team hotel,' Sven told us. 'If you see someone you like, just get
her phone number and arrange to go to her house after the game.
Then we will have no problems.'"
You can even hear him saying it. Until Fabio Capello
acted with ruthless clarity on Friday afternoon we were back to
those days of fearing the News of the World's power to
make people rich for kissing and telling, as the FA rifled its
media contacts book to find out what today's prints might carry. Is
there any other country, one wonders, that is run by Sunday
revelation?
At least it was only a player this time, not the manager. From
laissez-faire the FA ran with their pants on fire to the other end
of the spectrum, where rectitude and righteousness reside. There
they found Capello, who commendably insisted that Terry motor to
Wembley for their debrief rather than join him in some
paparazzi-evading caper round the shires. We knew some kind of
clash was coming, from the day the Don was appointed, but no one
could have expected such a spectacular collision of order and
chaos.
So what have we learned from this excruciating modern tale of
the insatiable in pursuit of the unallowable? First, that there are
thousands of saints in Burnley and Hull. The blameless multitudes
who booed the Chelsea captain in games last week are presumably all
close friends of Wayne Bridge as well as defenders of the public
good who have never sinned.
Second, that actions have consequences with Capello, who barely
sees the names on England shirts, only the duties the crest
confers. We thought Capello's decision would be hard. He made it
look easy. Terry had confronted a kind of stern Italian referee who
limped over to him, pointed to the three spots on the pitch where
he had already fouled up and showed him the red card. You don't
need to be Norman Tebbit to feel that parking in disabled spaces,
urinating on dance floors and using the role of England captain to
do deals for cash is unbecoming of the role.
The World Cup will be rammed with compromised household names.
Terry joins a distinguished cast. For starters there is Thierry
Henry, who double-cheated France past the Republic of Ireland with
his two-stage handball. And let's not leave out Diego Maradona,
Argentina coach, fisted-goal artiste, performance-enhancing drug
cheat and tax amnesiac during his time in Serie A. Is there a place
in the hills where we can escape what we are?