John Terry

He is possibly the most disliked player in the Premier League and almost certainly the most disliked player in the England National team, John Terry is, in all fairness, a good player, yet as he has proven on countless occasions, a questionable human being.  Somewhere along the line his morality appears to have been seriously corrupted and In recent years trouble has seemed to follow the Chelsea and England captain in a relentless bid to besmirch his name.

There is no doubt that Terry has been one of the best defenders in the country, if not the world over the past decade and he owes a lot of that to his obvious qualities as a leader both on the pitch and in the dressing room.  He epitomises the stereotypical English centre-half in a generation of footballers better known for lurid coloured boots and fast cars than their commitment and endeavour on the pitch.

In the Terry Butcher mould, John Terry was groomed as a future England captain from his very early days in the Chelsea side as a product of their youth set up.  Given his unflinching attitude on the pitch and his patriotism that was displayed through tears after England’s World Cup exit to the Germans in 2010, it would be reasonable for any unknowing bystander to think that Mr Terry should be held as some sort of a hero amongst the English footballing fraternity.  But as we know, that is not the case.

Gone are the days when the England football team was revered and the players that wore the famous three lions idolised; the likes of JT, Rooney and Ashley Cole are a far cry from heroes of old, Hurst, Charlton and Styles.  However, can the collective distain for the current crop of English stars be attributed to a lack of success alone?  In 1966 the squad was made up of a group of men that the public could relate to, yes, they were still superstars but there were no huge pay packets and little pretentiousness amongst them as there is today and as a result, expectations were less. 

John Terry is the logical choice as England Captain; there is no way of getting around that, no matter what your personal view of the man is, he is the best man for the job. As we all know, he was given a well-publicised reprieve once before after being stripped of the armband for his extra-marital activities with the ex-girlfriend of one-time best pal Wayne Bridge, yet a second looks unlikely in the face of a court-case for allegations of racist abuse.  So the question remains, if John Terry isn’t going to be first out of the tunnel, will he be in it at all and moreover, will he even board a plane to this year’s European Championships?

I have always been a fan of JT and I’ll admit I have fought in his corner on more than one occasion in the past, yet in light of events at Loftus Road in October of last year it is impossible to defend him any further.  He is an ilk of footballer that is dying out but in reality, he has contributed massively to his own downfall.