Oh dear, John Terry doesn’t seem to be flavour of the month with the press does he?
Then again, you’d have thought the Chelsea captain would be keeping his head down for a while after the revelation of his dad’s sideline in Bolivian marching powder and his mum’s affliction with kleptomania. But alas no, John Terry’s ‘hush-hush’ tours of the ground have put paid to any chance he had of laying low.
The News of the World – whilst pointing out he already earns £160,000 a week – claim the Chelsea captain accepted a £10,000 payment for tours of the training ground. He’d apparently asked an undercover reporter for £8,000 of this to go to the ‘Make A Wish’ charity for children, and the remaining £2,000 is alleged to have gone to a middleman.
Chelsea immediately issued a statement denying any wrongdoing on the captain’s part, stating “Chelsea FC host a large number of visitors at the training ground throughout the year, the majority of which are made up of club sponsors, our charity partners and supporters. The players play a big part in these visits and John Terry naturally has a leading role, hosting a significant number of children and their families this season through our partner charities ‘Help A London Child’ and ‘Right To Play.’ John has also organised a number of visits for families with sick children as a result of personal correspondence. Contrary to media reports and the appearance of edited video this morning, the club is confident that at no time did Terry ask for or accept money in relation to visits to the training ground.”
Mind you, despite the club’s insistence that JT’s really an all round good guy, it seems they’ll be a little more careful who gets the benefit of his hospitality in future, because the statement added “Chelsea FC gives our players room to exercise their own discretion when contacted personally with regard to visits and the club keeps security and access to the training ground at Stamford Bridge under constant review. However, as a result of the security breach highlighted by today’s article we will be further reviewing access to our facilities and clamping down where there are gaps in the process.”
Naturally, some of the other members of the press weren’t appeased with what the club had to say and the Daily Mail have suggested Fabio Capello will be reviewing the England Captaincy in light of recent events, although the FA CEO insists “I see our role as appointing the manager and his team in this case. Having appointed Fabio and co, it’s their call on all matters to do with the playing side and the captaincy. It’s as simple as that. From the club’s point of view, they have to take up whatever issues they think are relevant. But from our point of view, he’s eligible to play for England, the manager wants him to captain England, we’ve done extraordinarily well under the combination of those two and that’s it really.”So that’s that then, John Terry can go back to chatting to the press about how (in spite of recent form to the contrary), we’ll still be above United at the end of the season. Right? Wrong! Because hot on the heels of his inclusion in this years FIFA World XI, John Terry’s getting it in the neck again.
It seems that when it came to voting for his player of the year, John Terry remained loyal to his Chelsea team-mates, voting for Didier Drogba and Michael Ballack. Shame on him! I mean, imagine being loyal to your own players eh? They really should bring back capital punishment for this one. Seriously though, can’t the press find something a bit better than this?
Apparently it’s ok for Barca’s Ibrahimovich to vote for Messi and Thierry Henry to give Messi, Eto’o and Xavi his votes. It’s also forgivable for Liverpool’s Benayoun and Mascherano to go for Steven Gerrard but for John Terry to show the same sort of loyalty to his own players is a hanging offence? Do me a favour. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not necessarily agreeing with his choice of players. I mean bearing in mind the vote’s meant to be about players’ performances on and off the pitch, the press were bound to jump onto both players’ conduct in last season’s Champions League as grounds against them and personally, seeing as we’re looking at the world’s best players, I think a vote for Michael Ballack probably is stretching the loyalty just a little too far and to be honest, up until this summer, Didier Drogba’s performances and behaviour left a lot to be desired – although bearing in mind voting takes place in October it’s fair to say JT would have had Drogba’s much improved form in his mind at the time.
I’m not even defending John Terry’s conduct of late because seriously, as both the Chelsea and England captain, he shouldn’t be doing whatever it is he seems to be doing to keep drawing negative attention to himself. The very fact that he is the Chelsea and England captain means he’s there to be shot down anyway but to actually give out the ammunition is careless in the extreme.
I guess my point is that if the press have only just picked up on the fact that the Chelsea captain’s agents are about as good at giving him advice on the PR front as Harold Shipman was on the subject of preserving life, then they should have the balls to run articles on that instead of dressing his loyalty to his own players up as a crime against football.
Blue is the colour
