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John Terry's sauce leaves witless in pickle over England captaincySo to the travails of England's skipper, a cringeworthy tale fast developing into the most precariously poised national crisis since Suez
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The FA may revise the entire premise of the England captaincy following John Terry's alleged affair with a team-mate's former partner. Photograph: Sean Dempsey/AP
Isolating the single most witless comment on the John Terry saga thus far is a near-impossible task, but you have to think that Janet Street-Porter, 63, would be in with a shout. "Sick joke," began her Daily Mail column on the subject. "John Terry was chosen as 'Dad of the Year' by Daddies Sauce. That's a product I won't be buying any more."
In any sane universe, the correct response for anyone over the age of six would be to throw one's head back and cackle: "Oh do grow up, Janet!" Instead, alas, the fashion of the times suggests we should react by saying that it is obviously a massive disappointment that the Street-Porter condiment cupboard will now be deprived of the brown sauce which was once such an integral player among its lesser sundry ketchups, but that nothing is more important than the harmony of that cupboard being maintained, so it is commendable – if inevitable – that Janet has taken such a tough moral stand and shown what she's about as a larder manager.
And so to the travails of England's Captain Trashtastic, a cringeworthy bros-before-hos tale rapidly developing into the most precariously poised national crisis since Suez. On Sunday, various Manchester City players raised their shirts to display vests in club colours bearing the slogan "Team Bridge". Do you realise what that means? In the 24 hours leading up to the game against Portsmouth, some players actually approached someone in the Man City kit room, who actually agreed to rush out the sort of Team Whoever T-shirt last favoured by hipster ironists during the mid‑mesozoic period of Brad Pitt's ditching of Jennifer Aniston for Angelina Jolie. A chain of events so utterly ludicrous that I can only assume it was a staged plotline for the forthcoming, Endemol-produced documentary to be set at Eastlands.
Meanwhile, the sports minister, Gerry Sutcliffe, was limbering up for another of his vital interventions, explaining to England supporters left rudderless by the shock of it all that "to be the captain of England you have to have wider responsibilities for the country". "Clearly if these allegations are proven," he babbled on, "then it does call into question his role as England captain."
Not sure what Gerry is suggesting with that "proven" – perhaps he imagines Vanessa Perroncel might have kept a stained dress in the manner of Monica Lewinsky. But if he thinks it's the business of government to be making utterances on such things, then he's even more lightweight a bandwagon-jumper than previously suspected.
As Pat Nevin said in Newsnight's round-table discussion of the matter – Newsnight, if you please! – international football is different from club football, and in the former there should be plenty of leaders on the field. "We've got this extreme thing about the captaincy," he observed. "In actual fact it's not as important as people are suggesting." Well quite. Otherwise we wouldn't have given it to David Beckham, whose Agincourt moment was rallying his England team‑mates not to speak to the media in the wake of beating Poland in 2004, thus depriving the world of the "lads did really well" platitudes which are the armband‑holder's stock-in-trade. (Forget his "heroism" in the fabled Greece qualifier: as Nevin stressed, you don't need an armband to lead by example on the pitch.)
A friend is fond of likening the responsibilities of England football captain to those of a regimental goat, and even if you believe that unfair to regimental goats, the contrast with the vitally important issue of who captains an England cricket side could not be greater.
To an Italian like Fabio Capello, much of our obsession with the role will be complete anathema. Fortunately, the FA has given him carte blanche to deal with the Terry situation, and if he is brave, he'll follow up either the reluctant-but-inevitable dismissal of Terry, or the latter's resignation, by announcing that he has decided the captain will simply be the eldest player in the starting line-up – or the one with the most caps, it doesn't especially matter.
When that tenure ends, the FA should enshrine the tradition in perpetuity. It is the sort of eminently simple and sensible innovation that the Soho Square brains trust is far too craven and hidebound to institute themselves, but which would save more hundreds of future man hours of hassle, and offer more of a genuine legacy, than 10 of their botched or quarter‑arsed initiatives.
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"It felt like a really pointless version of ketamine: no psychedelic effects, no pleasant slide into rubbery nonsense, just a sudden drop off the cliff of wrongness."
"i'm gonna wreck you so bad we're going to have to change church"
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