Sacking Terry made Capello our Sleaze Czar, so what will he now do about Ashley Cole?

By Oliver Holt

Published 23:03 16/02/10

• 

So, now that Fabio Capello has been appointed the guardian of the nation’s morals, what does he do about Ashley Cole?

Now that Capello has set himself up as the moral majority’s favourite authority figure, what does he do about a bloke who spends his free time at the England team hotel taking pictures of himself in his underpants and sending them to a woman other than his wife?

My own opinion is that what Cole does in the privacy of his own room has no bearing on his status as the best left back in the world but we know by now that Capello doesn’t separate a man’s private life from his football so easily.

He’s our Sleaze Czar. When it comes to punishing moral turpitude, he’s a one-man lynch mob, football’s version of Judge Fenton from Hang ’Em High.

So Capello has to do something, surely. The last time one of his players’ private lives got messy, he sacked him, remember.

He’s a bright man, Capello. So he must know he will make himself look like a fool and a hypocrite if he does not discipline Cole in some way.

It was Capello, after all, who appeased frothing traditionalists everywhere when he sacked John Terry because of transgressions in his private life.

He stripped him of the England captaincy, it has been said, because his appearance on the front pages had become a distraction for the rest of the squad.

That was the absurdly tenuous justification for firing the England skipper even though he is, by common consent, the best leader our national team has.

Even though everything that was happening in his private life had absolutely no effect on his performance on the pitch.

So what happens now that another of Capello’s best defenders is also on the front pages day after day because of transgressions in his private life? Transgressions, by the way, that were committed when he was in Capello’s care.

It’s not the first time this has happened, after all. Cole has been down this road before. The relationship with his wife, Cheryl, has turned into a soap opera.

So presumably even though Cole’s broken ankle means he is touch and go for the World Cup anyway, he can expect a summons to Wembley soon for a 12-minute meeting with the human guillotine called Fabio.

Well, can’t he? If Capello kills Terry for what he does off the field, he has to treat Cole the same way doesn’t he?

This is the problem Capello created for himself when he bowed to public and media pressure by sacking his captain.

When he acted the way he did, most people praised him for his decisiveness. They said the matter was now closed and England would move on.

But it has already become apparent that Capello has not got away cleanly from the way he dealt with the Terry situation.

When he attended the League Managers’ Association dinner at Wembley last week, he looked thoroughly uncomfortable when he was asked on to the stage for his agreed question and answer session.

It was clear that any mention of Terry had been banned. When former England managers Terry Venables, Sven Goran Eriksson and Graham Taylor took part in a group Q and A, the Terry issue was off limits for them, too.

If it was such a simple and obvious decision to sack the captain for cheating on his wife, why is Capello so touchy about justifying it?

And why did so many of the managers and former managers at that dinner voice their dismay that Capello had abandoned his skipper over an issue that was nothing to do with football?

Maybe, for once, Capello didn’t think things through properly.

Maybe, because he is all starched shirts, iron discipline and wedded bliss, he didn’t realise what lurks below the surface of some of his players’ private lives.

But now Cole has stepped out of line, too. And soon, before the World Cup, another England player or two will be the subject of similarly lurid headlines.

And if Capello does not treat them all with the same brutality with which he treated Terry, then he will be exposed as a man of double standards and muddled thinking.

It does not help him that Terry’s wife appears to have forgiven him for whatever he may have done.

Shouldn’t that have been all that ever mattered in this sorry mess any way? Wasn’t it a purely private matter?

Wasn’t it always an issue that should have been absolutely none of Capello’s business?

The England manager should be spending his time worrying about issues like why every one of his leading goalkeepers apart from Joe Hart is making an error a game.

He’s got enough to occupy himself without poking his nose into the private lives of his players.

If he had really wanted to be decisive about Terry, he would have announced he was captain until the summer whatever anyone said about his private life.

But Capello chose another path and it has led him into a world of pain.

****************************************************************

At the risk of dwelling too long on Ashley Cole’s predilection for taking pictures of himself in his underpants in his England hotel room, the whole affair tells us something about Fabio Capello’s regime.

The fact is that for long periods of England get-togethers under Capello, the players are banished to their rooms and bored out of their brains.

After lunch, they often spend seven hours cooped up in their rooms before they are called for their evening meal. Capello treats them like children so it’s little wonder that some of them behave like children.

None of this matters particularly when Capello is leading England to victory after victory but it will be interesting to see how quickly discontent starts to spread the first time the team encounters a setback in South Africa

Fancy winning £3,000 for FREE this month? Play Mirror Football Streak for your chance to win cash prizes! Start predicting now!