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Capello will know that the masses may not like it but, at the end of the day, what does he have to lose? He knows that, bar some kind of divine intervention, he will receive his marching orders after the European Championships next summer, and therefore will be looking for a short term solution to solve the England national team’s apparent lack of leadership. The question is, will reinstating Terry as captain work, or will it serve to be yet another mistake on the part of Don Fabio?
It is worth remembering that Terry was stripped of the job because he had an affair with the ex-girlfriend of former teammate Wayne Bridge. The decision was in no way football related and it was not a decision that Capello wanted to make.
Before the media found out about his sordid private life, Terry encompassed everything that had resulted in success for England when qualifying for last year’s World Cup: hard work, passion, determination and grit. I think you would find very few people who would argue that Terry doesn’t have the natural leadership qualities needed to captain his country. Well, on the field anyway.
The problem is that captaining England involves more than marshalling eleven players on a football pitch. The job requires somebody who commands the respect of the dressing room, the management and arguably the entire nation; hence the reason Terry was stripped of the title in the first place.
Now it is very easy to sit and make judgements about a situation with the benefit of hindsight and, at the time, I thought that Capello had made the right decision for English football to take the captaincy off Terry. However, taking such an important constant away from the team hasn’t strengthened the squad at all, in fact quite the opposite.
With Rio Ferdinand on the sidelines with injury, England went into the World Cup without a stable influence from a settled captain. We all know that the tournament made Capello’s management style look more similar to Mike Bassett’s than an England great such as Bobby Robson or Sir Alf Ramsey and, without a settled captain, the England manager was left to bear the brunt of a fierce media onslaught when England were knocked out in Round 2.
You can see Capello’s logic with regards to giving back the captaincy to Terry, certainly from a football point of view. However, I fear that the u-turn will only serve to weaken Capello’s position. The media will no doubt be quick to capitalise on his inability to stand by a decision that he made, but then again is it in fact a sign of strength to reverse a decision and maybe admit that your original decision wasn’t the right one?
Maybe Capello just feels that the Terry saga had blown over and people would view the decision purely from a football perspective. Yet by making the choice to give the armband back to Terry, the issue has been brought back into focus, and that’s the overarching problem.
Only time will tell whether the decision was right or not, but England simply have to beat Wales in their next qualifying match. If the players don’t appear united behind Capello and Terry then both manager and captain will be in the firing line again.
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