TERRY AND BRIDGE - WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?

 

For anyone that doesn’t know, the story so far is this. It was recently revealed(in World Cup year) than John Terry(married), then Chelsea and England football/soccer captain had been having an affair with a girlfriend/ex-girlfriend of Wayne Bridge, former teammate of Terry’s at Chelsea(now at Manchester City) and fellow England international.

A few days later, Terry was stripped of the England captaincy(though he retains the full backing of Chelsea and their fans and has re-affirmed his commitment to England). He’s also been forgiven by his wife.

Bridge in the meantime, has decided that he doesn’t want to play for England ever again over this issue.

Messy. To provide some extra background, here’s a Times article on the whole mess:

Now, I am a football fan. That’s been part of my self-identity since I was a kid. And from an English football fan’s perspective, Bridge’s decision has provided manager Fabio Capello with a pretty big headache. Bridge is a left back, his main England competition for that spot is Ashley Cole. Slight problem, Cole has injury problems which means that Bridge ‘would’ have been assured of a starting spot in the World Cup. Without both Cole and Bridge, our options are limited.

Now, a large part of football culture is based on...well let’s start with the legendary Bill Shankly quote “ “Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it's much more serious than that.”...well I wouldn’t go that far but a large chunk of football culture is based on the idea that anything that happens off the pitch doesn’t matter. It’s a philosophy that Capello very much believes in, it’s a philosophy that I as a fan have brought into to a large extent for better or worse.

As far as football fans are concerned, footballers earn respect in two ways. Skill and commitment to the team. To a lesser extent fair play on the pitch. Conduct off the pitch is very much the icing on the cake, something opposing fans will use to beat your players with but that’s it. As Tony Evans has implied, Bridge has shown a lack of commitment to the England team, he’s thrown away an opportunity that millions around the world would give anything for - there’s no getting round that, no matter what the reasons.

Alyson Rudd suggests that Bridge was forced out by Capello’s refusal to boot Terry altogether. From a football perspective, that’s unrealistic. If Bridge(particularly with Cole’s injuries) is/was important to what should be England’s best performance in a World Cup in my lifetime then Terry is crucial. Captain or not he is arguably England’s best defender and therefore part of England’s “spine”. You mess with a team’s spine at your peril. If Terry had been booted and we’d have gone on to perform poorly in South Africa, it would have been blamed on Terry’s absence, and I wouldn’t have argued with such an attitude.

And yet, I am more than just a football fan and Rudd does have some good points. If John Terry was not a football player and particularly a crucial member of my country’s national team then I would say that he is a dishonorable, disloyal back stabber. Indeed he certainly is.

Whether Bridge and this girl Vanessa Perroncel had technically split up or not, it’s almost certain that he was trying to get back together with her. Terry was his best mate from his time at Chelsea therefore he would have banked on his support and got precisely the opposite. Terry is the bad guy here no questions asked.

The incident also brings into question the attitude of football WAGs. Bridge and Perroncel split purely because she refused to move to Manchester with him. It’s very plausible that she may have seduced Terry rather than the other way round. She’s certainly come out of the whole affair with a lot of cash and there’s rumours that she may have simply may have been part of a secret WAG culture that’s always looking to net a bigger name player. Either way, she’s gotten away clean. Interesting.

Still, from a football perspective this is irrelevant. John Terry ‘is’ a crucial member of the England team and therefore my instinct is to say “he’s a scumbag but...we need him”. As I’ve already covered, for better or worse, moral character is a desirable rather than an essential quality in a footballer. I don’t want this potentially awesome World Cup campaign to be sidelined by off-pitch issues any more than Fabio does.

To an extent, that may well have been Bridge’s attitude as well, in that he may see himself as dispensable as well as in an uncomfortable situation. Slight problem, he may not be as dispensable as he originally thought.

I can only assume however that Bridge has been told this by more important individuals than me. And yet he’s still chosen to pull out. Which is disappointing, particularly as I’m not expecting him to reverse his decision before the World Cup.

My football fan’s instinct says that he should have been able to put his issues with Terry aside for the good of the national team. He has not made this decision with the best interests of the England national team, of us England fans at heart, and part of me does feel let down by that.

And yet, as an individual, I’ve seen these sort of situations brew up and that sometimes it’s impossible for two individuals to work together after an explosive incident between them. It feels like hell for the party that has been wronged, no matter what the bigger picture. Emotions are weird things that can never be completely discounted, no matter how much some people may want to do so.

And so, I think that Wayne Bridge has made the wrong decision, for questionable reasons.

And yet it’s still him that I feel sympathy for.