John Terry has hit back at the critics who slammed his reappointment as England captain by insisting he should never have been stripped of the armband in the first place.
Terry has regained the leadership of Fabio Capello’s team just over a year after the England coach deprived him of the honor following an alleged affair with the partner of teammate Wayne Bridge and reports that he was exploiting the captaincy for financial gain.
Capello’s decision has been criticized in some quarters because it is felt Terry’s distasteful activities off the pitch showed such a lack of respect for the captaincy that he should not have been given a second chance.
Much to Terry’s consternation, he has become regarded as one of the poster boys for everything that is wrong with English soccer and he could have gone some way to changing that perception with a contrite tone when he met the English media at the team’s hotel ahead of Saturday’s Euro 2012 qualifier against Wales.
Instead, Terry insisted that, although he has made a conscious effort to avoid negative headlines of late, he still felt he had been harshly treated by Capello last year.
“Change my ways? That’s a difficult word,” Terry said. “When I spoke to Fabio, and we can’t go into too much details, but when he knew the facts, he knew. As I said to the manager at the time, I accepted their decision. It doesn’t mean to say I agreed with it, and I never will. That’s me being very proud and having been honest with them.”
“Over the last year I’d like to think I’ve personally kept my head down and done the right thing. As we get older, we live and learn. We move on. As a man, as a player, we can see I’ve moved on, on and off the field,” he said.
Those accusations of making money off the back of his privileged position were also given short shrift by the Chelsea defender.
“I’ve never cashed in. I’m not the best looking guy anyway, so people aren’t going to want me spread all over the place, but I’ve never tried to cash in on the England captaincy,” he said.
Another black mark against Terry was a perceived attempt to destabilize Capello by publicly questioning him during the World Cup as revenge for taking away the captaincy.
On that subject, Terry was ready to admit he had gone too far, but he was adamant he was just trying to do the best for his country.
“I just wouldn’t come out publicly and say what I said. It would stay in-house. That’s what I learned from that,” he said.
“Looking back, certain things I shouldn’t have said, but I can still hold my head up high. Certainly. I wasn’t trying to upset the apple cart, the squad, the manager. That’s not me,” Terry said.
With first-choice captain Rio Ferdinand too often injured and Steven Gerrard regarded by Capello as too timid a leader to galvanize the squad, the Italian has taken the substantial gamble of giving Terry a second chance.
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