“We don’t understand,” said a German colleague. “Why so much fuss about who captains the England team? He wears an armband, maybe he talks a little more to the media. Then what?”
The game now knows “what.” Precisely:
- court action to resolve an accusation and a denial
- a tele-conference of the governing body of English football
- the removal of said armband
- upsetting a national manager to the point where he quit four months ahead of the European Championship
- the need for a pay-off
- the likely need for the expenditure of more millions to buy out the club contract of the next manager
- zillons of critical words in print and around the airwaves
Right now most of the commentaries – surprised in tone, too – have stood up for the integrity of the Football Association. The FA has collected more Brownie points in the last few days than in the rest of the last 38 years since the egotistical Professor Sir Harold Thompson axed Sir Alf Ramsey and set in train all sorts of mayhem.
This will change.
Right now Fabio Capello is the villain of the piece. In due course more questioning attention will switch to the actions of FA chairman David Bernstein, to the West London magistrate who felt that justice was best served by a long adjournment and to John Terry himself and whoever has been advising him.
If Terry had done the honourable thing in the first place and resigned the England captaincy while maintaining his availability and eagerness for selection, none of the “what” would have happened.
In an exact analogy Chris Huhne, the same day, resigned as a Minister of the Realm after also being charged with a criminal offence (which he also denies) but retained the unchallenged right, as a man insisting on his innocence, of continuing as a Member of Parliament.
The snag, in the sporting context, is the tradition of the captain’s role in English sport.
This has always been illustrated with greatest clarity in cricket. The old tradition was that the captain was always a ‘gentleman amateur’ who was supposed to have been educated into the supposed public school leadership tradition.
Walter Hammond, England’s greatest cricketer in the 1930s, did not become captain of his country until after the Second World War when he declared himself an amateur. Len Hutton finally became England’s first professional captain ‘only’ at the start of the 1950s.
England’s cricket team has been littered, down the years, with men who were chosen for their supposed leadership qualities while not being worth their playing place in the team.
That patrician perception of the captain spilled over into football and was enhanced by the outstanding leadership examples of first Billy Wright and then Bobby Moore whose exemplary reigns spanned a generation.
Their reputations have been burnished and polished by the distance of years and legend which have imbued the armband with almost intimidatory demands. David Beckham also set new standards in working hard on projecting the captain’s image in a modern media era.
Perhaps the significance needs to be removed; perhaps the new England manager should take advantage of his being parachuted into the job by saying he will chose his team first and his captain, from game to game, second.
Other countries, other sporting cultures, have their own methodology.
At Real Madrid the captain, traditionally, was the club’s longest-serving Spanish player. Hence, in the 1960s, when left-winger Paco Gento was injured the captain’s role was picked up by Manolin Bueno, his rarely-seen but similarly long-serving reserve. Never mind that Di Stefano, Puskas, Santamaria & Co were lining up alongside him.
If the Capello debacle demystifies the captaincy then that might, at least, prove to have been one positive contribution towards easing the way for his managerial successors.
THIS WEEK’S ARTICLES:
ROGAN TAYLOR: PITY THE POOR FOOTBALLERS
GERRY COX: WHERE DO ENGLAND GO FROM HERE?
Keir Radnedge is one of the foremost observers of international soccer. He has reported at every World Cup since 1966 and is a regular contributor to TV, radio, newspapers and magazines worldwide. He is London-based Editor of SportsFeatures.com and is chairman of the Football Commission of the International Sports Press Association (AIPS). Visit www.KeirRadnedge.com for further information. Follow him on Twitter for more sports industry updates.
The views of our regular columnists are independent, and as such do not represent those of Leaders in Football.
