John George Terry is the Captain of Chelsea FC and England. He has won every domestic honour in the game and famously, a UEFA Champions League Runners Up medal after placing his crucial penalty against the post. He is an almost peerless leader and central defender, role-model to thousands of children and teenagers, the highest paid player in the Premier League when he signed his new contract in 2007 earning approx $864,000 a month. He is sponsored by Umbro Sportswear, Samsung, the Nationwide Building Society, and the Pro Evolution Soccer game. He married at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire in 2007, birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill and is the father of a pair of twin girls born in 2006. He was named Dad of the Year in 2009.
Up until last weekend he was also the subject of a Super-injunction, a rather nasty piece of English legalese which not only prohibits reporting of various issues covered in the injunction but you cannot even report on the existence of the injunction itself. As a defender, it’s a legal clean sheet. This was lifted on Friday and the News Of The World dutifully reported that Terry has been playing away from home with the fiancee of ex-Chelsea team-mate Wayne Bridge. Not only this but Terry then got her pregnant and paid for the subsequent abortion. It’s not all bad however as he gave her $30,000 to “cheer herself up” afterwards. Naturally his wife is distraught, not only at his behaviour but his elaborate attempts to cover it up.
I’m no moralist, we’ve all been young once but that’s the key. If you’re young, unattached and in the prime of your life then you have to take some time to smell the roses and enjoy yourself.
If you are a married man, in an enviable position with a wife, family and position of serious responsibility and glamour then you have a duty not only to yourself but also to the millions of others you represent when you wear the armband. When you are revealed to be a lying, sneaking, loathsome sneering two-cent louse that hid behind expensive lawyers instead of being a man about it and also cheating on one of your mates behind his back as well…He’s a footballer, the closest thing a grown man will get to being in a gang in this day and age – Whatever happened to mates before muff?
Captain of England is one of those positions in society where your behaviour matters. You represent something greater than yourself, a symbol, an ideal, someone to be looked up to, to be idolised and copied. Staunch Catholic and Mussolini admirer Fabio Cappello is a man who inspires fear and respect in equal measure. Despite all the trappings, I would not want to be in Terry’s shoes for one of his weeks wages when il Capo summons Terry for a friendly tet-a-tet this week.
It takes a special kind of person to make Ashley Cole look like a paragon of virtue but congrats JT – you’ve done it.
You are certainly Yanks’ Jackleg of the Week, month and possibly year and as Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster might have it – “A complete Arse”.
Guy Bailey is a staff writer for The Yanks Are Coming. He can be reached at guyrbailey@gmail.com.