The fun began before the 2010 World Cup finals in South Africa,John Terry,England's captain and for a long time seen as the talisman on which England would finally get the monkey of 1966 off it's back,decided to hijack any esprit de corps the England camp had by ,not to put too fine a point on it,humping a teammates ex wife.
The teammate at his club had moved on by then but his new club played his previous one with both cuckold and cuckolder on the pitch.Famously the cuckold refused to shake hands...Tellingly both sets of players came out in support of their particular man,many of whom were also to be named in the World Cup squad.The die was cast.
The final's duly came and went without,in cricketing parlance,England troubling the scorers.England were terrible in every sense,not least,and rather tellingly in team spirit.To say it was non-existent would be understatement.Indeed the only notable contribution was from Rooney slating the paying fans to camera after England had been rightly booed.Say what you want about our feted footballers but they're never over burdened by a sense of their own failings...
Talking of failings i'm afraid Fabio Capello has to take some of the blame by picking Terry for the squad.Frankly he'd had a dog of a season at Chelsea and purely on form alone was'nt worth his place,never mind being responsible for destroying whatever spirit there had been among the players.If he'd been on top form that probably would be a moot point,but he was'nt and it's not...
Anyhoo the fallout was'nt as great as it should have been,we still stumbled about blindly believing we have the best league in the world along with some of the best players without once copping on that even players from so called minnow footballing countries were miles ahead of us in terms of simple control,movement and tactics....Still our Premiership is watched world wide so it must be the best right?
Next up were the Euro qualifiers and England sailed through their group without too many problems--there usually is'nt---Capello seemed to have exorcised the ghosts of 2010 but there were rumblings in the FA about his tenure as boss,however if they sacked him now it would make them a)look ineffective and stupid b)cost them a shit load of money.How could they get out of this fix?
Meanwhile in a seemingly unconnected case the Spurs manager was being investigated by Her Madge's Inland Revenue for non payment of taxes...
As with all the best soaps things went quiet for a while,even boring.But then the scriptwriters really excelled themselves and guess who was at the centre of the new perfect storm on the good ship England.Yup Cap't Terry.
This time he allegedly made racist comments to the brother of his first choice centre back English partner...I have no idea if he did or not as his trial is not due till the end of the season at the behest of Chelsea.But the FA decided to go over Capello's head and take away his Captain's armband---Meanwhile Harry's trial on tax evasion had began---Now no matter what your thoughts are concerning Capello there's no argument that he's a proud man and would take umbrage at the FA going over his head in anything team related---Why it's as if the FA deliberately set out to rile the man they wanted out of the way without having to stump up millions of ££££££ in compensation.
All good soaps have a one door closes/one door opens moment and ours came yesterday.With the jury out overnight in Harry's case it gave the FA the opportunity to arrange a meeting with their Bet Noir,Capello, for the afternoon--Knowing the jury's decision was due in the late morning or early afternoon-- in the almost certain knowledge he would have no choice but to offer his resignation.Now all they needed was the 12 good men and true to do their duty for Queen & Country...
The rest is(almost)History...
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