Terry's no traitor - he's one of England's last hopes

By Oliver Holt

Published 23:03 22/06/10

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You don’t like John Terry much by now, do you?

Don’t blame you really. Not after Vanessa Perroncel and poor Wayne Bridge.

Not after the dastardly revolt he tried to foment, single-handed, at the England training ground the other day.

Not after you heard he’s as devious as Lord Haw-Haw, as mutinous as Fletcher Christian and as manipulative as Rasputin.

The amount of plotting he’s supposed to have done, you’re probably surprised they haven’t flown him home and chained him to Traitor’s Gate.

Well, that’s fine, but what if you knew a few other things. What if you knew a different side to the story?

What if you knew that the vast majority of the players in the England squad felt the same way as Terry about the spartan regime they have been living under for the last five weeks?

What if you knew that one of the reasons they’ve been playing like shadows of themselves in their first two games is because they’re eaten up by Cabin Fever?

What if you knew that most of them have been moaning and griping about it but that Terry was the only one who had the guts to speak out about it? And when he did, most of rest of them melted into the background so fast a few tweaked their hamstrings as they ran for their rooms.

Does that make Terry worse than them? Not in my book, it doesn’t. It makes him better. It makes him one of the only ones prepared to say what he thinks.

If that’s seen as unhealthy or mutinous or treacherous, then that’s an indictment of the regime he’s playing under, a regime that has turned a collection of good players into a bad pub side at this World Cup.

It’s a regime that stifles ­responsibility and individuality. And that is being reflected in England’s performances on the pitch.

What if you also knew that at least one figure within the England hierarchy is actively trying to undermine Terry with private briefings to the media because they see him, wrongly, as a threat to Capello’s authority?

What if you knew that the story that appeared this week that said Terry had been causing trouble by refusing to finish a training session was planted by that figure?

What if you knew that on the day in question, the Sunday after England played the USA, the truth was that Terry and Frank Lampard were the only players who had been involved in the game who were doing any running at all?

What if you knew that the rest of the team were doing light ­exercises and swimming and that Terry only stopped when he felt his hamstring tighten?

What if you knew that the same figure in the England hierarchy also regularly briefs against other players known as ­independent spirits, like David James?

What does that say about Capello? That he likes weak players, players who won’t say boo to a goose, players who bottle it on the big occasion. Apparently, a couple of them were upset because Terry mentioned that they had had a beer at the team hotel the night after the game against Algeria.

Really? Capello was sitting on the next table, for heaven’s sake. It wasn’t as if Terry was divulging some terrible secret and dropping them in it.

Capello’s turned some of them into men scared of their own shadows. What are the odds some of them ask his permission before they take a leak?

Maybe that’s why they all looked so utterly petrified at the Green Point Stadium in Cape Town last Friday. Maybe that’s why ­everything they did was shot through with fear.

It looks more and more as if Capello is trying to break Terry, not motivate him.

First he strips him of the captaincy because of a problem in his private life, then he hangs him out to dry because Terry says the players might benefit from getting a few things off their chest.

So let’s get this straight: Capello slaughters Terry for speaking about problems in public and then 24 hours later, he, er, speaks about problems in public.

“When you speak, you have to speak privately,” Capello said, in front of an audience of millions on ITV.

He suggests Terry likes talking to the media too much when, er, the FA had asked Terry if he would speak to the media that Sunday. Terry was hardly begging to attend the press conference. He knew it was a hospital pass.

Interesting tactic, don’t you think, slagging off your first choice centre-back 48 hours before you need him to play at his best?

Lesser players than Terry might fold. Lesser players than him might feel they were being ­systematically undermined.

He’s not an apostate or a regicide or a traitor.

The truth is a lot more banal than that. The truth, in the midst of Capello’s World Cup shambles, is that John Terry is one of England’s last hopes.

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