An Ignominious End for Fabio Capello?

When I previously wrote about the John Terry situation, I suggested that the FA had four options:

1) Terry is stripped of the captaincy but allowed to play for England.
2) Terry is stripped of the captaincy and banned from selection until the conclusion of the trial.
3) Terry is allowed to play, given that he is innocent until proven guilty.
4) Terry is dropped altogether for "footballing reasons."

Whilst realistically 4) is a bit of a stretch, I'm sure we can all agree that 1) is the least sensible option on the above list, and unsurprisingly that's exactly what the FA opted for. Or so we thought until Wednesday, when it became apparent that the FA had instead selected 5): Terry is stripped of the captaincy against England manager Fabio Capello's wishes but remains available for selection, and "oh, look, we don't have a manager anymore. How about that?"

Having mooted (but not, admittedly, wholeheartedly embraced) the idea that keeping Terry as captain was the right thing to do (in that removing him implies that he has done something wrong, when nothing of the sort has yet been established), I'm going to follow another unpopular path and suggest that the way the affair was handled (and mishandled) left Capello with no choice but to quit. He was clearly right to claim, in the aftermath of his resignation, that the FA damaged his authority, and that taking the Terry decision out of his hands (or not properly discussing the issue with him, at the very least) critically undermined his leadership, which in turn made his position untenable.

He did what any good manager did and fought for his player, defending Terry against those who seem intent to cast him as a guilty party before a verdict has been rendered. In a sense, his loyalty was admirable, and it would be harsh to condemn him for it, as some seem ready to. Would it have been so hard for the FA to stage a proper meeting to discuss the issue, listening fully to Capello's arguments as to why Terry should remain as captain before amicably overruling him and asking him to support the decision? Perhaps such an approach would have prevented his departure.

It's also worth remembering that Capello's win percentage as England manager is better than any of his predecessors. Better than Ramsey, Greenwood, Robson, Venables, and Eriksson, yet in terms of available talent I'd argue that he's had less to work with than most of the managers before him, and that he inherited England's recognised world class players (Ferdinand, Terry, Ashley Cole, Lampard, Gerrard, Beckham) at a point when most of them were in the midst of their inevitable decline.

At the same time, however, it goes without saying that Capello was his own worst enemy, and that choosing to express his displeasure to the media once the decision had been made was arrogant (and unnecessary) folly. The disastrous 2010 World Cup campaign rests largely on his shoulders, and since taking over he's struggled to win over the press and the public. If his principles can be admired, his decision-making skills when under pressure have been exposed as questionable at best; if we applaud his loyalty, we must also ask how much of his stance was born out of stubbornness; and if we acknowledge that progress has been made since the South Africa debacle, we must also admit that none of it has occurred on a stage that truly matters. At this point, a parting of the ways was probably the best for both parties.

The Plight of John Terry

Being a figure of hate is nothing new for John Terry. The entire nation seemingly ground to a halt following the January 2010 revelations concerning his supposed affair with the ex-girlfriend of ex-teammate Wayne Bridge. The newspapers and the public in general were obsessed with the story, calling for his resignation as England captain and all but calling for his head, all while greedily devouring every bit of information or mis-information that was printed about him for months on end. Few people were interested when later that same year both the Mail on Sunday and the News of the World offered apologies to Vanessa Peroncell, for breaching her privacy and for printing a story that was untrue.

That furore temporarily cost him the England captaincy, but Rio Ferdinand's injury problems and general decline meant that within little over 12 months Terry was reinstated. The clash with Anton Ferdinand followed a few months later, however, and with it a whole new controversy.

Unlike his previous form the current situation is no minor frivolity. The accusation is serious; serious enough that the Crown Prosecution Service saw fit to charge him with using racist language. The Suarez incident was contained within the confines of football; Terry will be dealt with by the courts.

Wednesday's decision to delay the trial until July 9 was a curious one, seemingly made so as not to disrupt Chelsea's season, and indeed England's European Championship campaign. Not that the affair hasn't already caused ample disruption. Terry has been on the receiving end of plenty of unpleasant chanting, and here we are in February and the debate about his suitability to represent his country is already raging, with the tabloid newspapers once again leading a crusade. To delay the trial seems at best incredibly shortsighted, at worst a deplorable concession to the demands of a game that is apparently more important than justice being delivered in a timely fashion.

Mentioned in passing in a previous paragraph, the shadow of Rio Ferdinand looms large over the whole affair, and not just because he and Anton are brothers. Jason Roberts and many others have cited the 2003 incident that saw Rio left out of an England squad pending the investigation into his failure to attend a drug test, claiming that it should be held up as some kind of precedent. How exactly the two cases are related remains a mystery, given that said investigation was to determine whether or not his reason for missing the test (which was, quite simply, that he forgot about it) was an acceptable justification; in other words, Rio was guilty of the offense he was accused of, and the only question that remained was whether his explanation mitigated his guilt (the answer, unsurprisingly, was a resounding "no").

Roberts also mentions the situation involving Jonathan Woodgate and Lee Bowyer, both of whom the FA banned from international selection until the court case relating to the pair's alleged assault of an Asian student was concluded. As far as precedents go, that would appear to be a rather important one, although one suspects that if the FA were going to impose a similar restriction this time around, it would have done so already.

In the meantime, where does that leave the humble football fan, the men and women who just want to cheer on England in the European Championships? No-one is going to feel comfortable cheering on a team captained by a man who may or may not have used racist language in a hurtful manner; then again, is anyone going to feel better about cheering on a team only starring said man, rather than led by him? To wit: if Terry can't captain England, surely he can't play for England in any capacity? To strip him of the captaincy and still name him in the squad would be a frankly ludicrous decision, a declaration that we're against the sort of behaviour John Terry is accused of, but only up to a point.

Another question worth considering is to what extent should Fabio Capello and the FA be expected to pander to public sentiment? In this country, our entire justice system is predicated upon the fact that an individual is innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt. Any sanction against Terry would be a punishment, and to punish a man who has not yet been found guilty of anything would be an injustice, a bizarre acceptance of "there's no smoke without fire" as a binding legal argument. In many respects, keeping him as captain is the right decision, even though it certainly wouldn't be a popular one

Finally, we must ask whether or not Terry's recent form has been so great, so magnificent, so reminiscent of past glories that simply leaving him out of the squad is a possibility not worth considering. Great player though he remains, he's clearly lost a step or two in recent years; Fabio Capello could choose to be bold, selecting four younger defenders (Cahill, Richards, Jones, and Smalling, for example) and passing it off as an attempt to give valuable tournament experience to players who may prove to be the future of the national team. Such a line would fool no-one, of course, but it would put a contentious issue to bed swiftly and effectively. Whatever happens, any solution to the current situation will more than likely carry an air of uncomfortable compromise about it.