Three Lions but no armband

“Hump it, bump it, whack it might be one possible recipe for a good sex life, but it won’t win us the World Cup.”

So said former Chelsea chairman Ken Bates after England failed to qualify for the 1994 World Cup, and little did he know how he’d be proved right 16 years later by one of his Stamford Bridge protégées.

News of John Terry’s sacking as England captain following recent revelations about his private life is set to reverberate around the footballing world for months to come – at least until the dust has set on the World Cup final in Johannesburg on 11th July. If Rio Ferdinand, or whoever else takes Terry’s place as captain, has lifted the cup the decision will be proved right. If, however, England stumble to the same inevitable failure as in previous tournaments, then Terry may well be painted in some quarters as a martyr to the cause.

What is interesting about the sacking of Terry is just how big a role was played by the media in Fabio Capello’s decision. Rumours of an outbreak of back slapping amongst the gents of the press may be greatly exaggerated, but the media campaign against Terry inevitably made it very difficult for Capello to do anything but sack his captain. Terry’s heavy-handed attempts to quash the story clearly meant that the press had reason to go after him once the judge overturned the gagging order, but the sheer scale of the attack suggests that Terry wasn’t perhaps as successful at buttering up the media as he was with the ladies.

Terry appointed PR expert Phil Hall on Tuesday, but it proved too little too late. They were up against a slavering press pack with an axe to grind – not to mention Max Clifford. John Terry is another in a long line of misbehaving footballers, yet it seems his disregard for the media proved his undoing.

The media, the same media that will be behind ‘our boys’ in June, have brought about a big change in the set up of the England squad just 5 months before a tournament that England could win. And whilst some might say this could have a destabilising effect, I think that the reasons Capello gave in his media statement suggest that the fear that his captain’s actions might destabilise the squad was precisely why Terry got the boot. “What is best for the England squad has inspired my choice.”

We’ll see in July whether he was right.

Tags: public relations

This entry was posted on Friday, February 5th, 2010 at 6:16 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.