One can’t help but feel for JT. The guy is Chelsea. Chelsea is the guy. JT = CFC. And that’s maths. Mr Chelsea. CH3L$3A: reads JT’s number plate.
So it comes with little surprise that an envoy comprising of the people’s David Cameron, former pleb Kate Middleton and passion’s Gary Neville has been sent to Geneva to represent ‘the football family’, with the aim of ensuring that JT will be allowed to leer and make crude gestures towards women in the director’s box at the Champions League final in Munich; in much the same way as they did for that other undeserving bastion of Britishness, Wazza. The respective crimes are in the same ball park, so they should be able to secure a rescinding of the red card, a pay rise and a knighthood using the same notes as last time. One could be forgiven for not realising that six other men, probably with families and houses and legs just like JT, will also miss the game in May. But not one of them is blessed enough to hold a British passport, and therefore probably isn’t really bothered anyway due to having a relative passion deficit.
His insistence on his being “not that type of player” was a tactical prod from JT’s overworked PR team, who knew that such an original and esoteric phrase was a sure fire way to propel their man into the nation’s press, and subsequently their hearts. That he can still deliver such a line in 2012 without arousing even the merest suspicion of irony goes some way to explaining just how primitive the mind we’re dealing with here really is. JT’s latest whoopsie also reopened the debate over what it means to wear The Armband after a hiatus of roughly seven seconds.
However, get your JT fix before it’s too late, for if there is a man who’s likely to step back from the footballing spotlight now that he’s of no tangible consequence to the actual football match, who won’t want to detract from the eleven players who do take to the field of play in the biggest game in club football, it is he.
But rest assured good Christians, your hours of servitude in the house of the Lord have all but paid off with the news that JT CAN COLLECT THE TROPHY IF CHELSEA WIN THE EUROPEAN CUP. No, you haven’t left the door open, for that gust of air was the collective sigh of humankind revelling in that most just and divine news. To be fair, JT did have the humility to admit that “it does look bad on the replay,” before informing the hitherto ignorant TV audience that the world was indeed round.
The timing could not have been more perfect. His PR machine can now reel out the stories about how devastated/ distraught/ upset/ sad/ miserable/ melancholy/ depressed/ down-in-the-dumps/ suicidal their man truly/ really/ honestly/ genuinely/ properly/ frankly/ sincerely is, creating an illusion of victimhood just in time for Sunday’s game against QPR, and why-make-such-a-big-deal-of-it?’s Anton Ferdinand.
Team Terry will be hoping the events of midweek (when he assaulted a man – easy to forget, I know) give him enough credit in the sympathy bank to counteract the negativity due with the resurfacing of the Ferdinand affair.
Credit to the FA for what, inevitably, is looking like an increasingly appalling decision. JT’s trial could have been done and dusted by now, but instead they chose to keep him out of prison – till he’d embarrassed the nation at an international tournament, again – where he could have spent some useful hours keeping in shape for Euro 2012 running coke for his father and charging Ken Clarke over the odds for tours of the facility, as opposed to decking foreigners. Although having said that, he probably could have found time for that too. In fact, it’s rather difficult to see how JT’s hobbies would be altered at all by incarceration.
The news has obviously had Germany on tenterhooks, and Bayern Munich’s illustrious hierarchy are reportedly concerned at the effect the news is going to have on their boys.
Mental images of JT’s mitts fondling/ valuing the trophy will imbue the evening with an air of pre-determinism that could scupper Bayern’s preparation. They’ll see that smile we’ve become so familiar to throwing up to over the years – you know, the one that betrays an act of the most debased humanity – as he holds aloft the trophy, which will plunge the usually focused and head-strong Teutonic side into a fatal existential doubt, an inescapable ‘what are we doing this for?’ despair, as Phillip Lahm and Franz Beckenbauer engage in Socratic dialogue over the issue of whether something with the potential to make John George Terry happy can actually be worth pursuing, in this or any other moral universe?
Pep Guardiola is the latest victim of what’s being referred to in medical circles as the ‘Terry Effect’. The urbane Catalan has opted to take a sabbatical from football (as I said, no passion, this foreign lot), which hasn’t stopped our intuitive media from jumping all over wilful speculation that he may be about to take the Chelsea job. That Guardiola would go to the club where the man who’s cost him his job is the most heralded employee has done much to reassure concerned readers that the British footballing press’ commitment to irony remains as strong as ever. Abramovich is reportedly willing to offer Guardiola ‘total control’, the news of which lead to JT apparently wetting himself.
As mentioned already, this weekend JT will face off with Anton Ferdinand, a man who has alleged to the point of a criminal trial that John racially abused him, during their teams’ match earlier this season. Such is the low level of morality around which the football world revolves, that Ferdinand is anticipating being booed at Stamford Bridge.
“There is a big rivalry between the two clubs anyway but, with everything that has happened, I know there will be some fans targeting me.” I am myself often propelled into doubt over what day of the week it is, so to be so convinced of receiving aggravation for being a supposed victim of racism, one can’t help but fear for Anton’s long-term well-being – so low is his opinion of the human race. Well, football supporters anyway.
I can’t quite resign myself to such a forlorn sense of inevitability quite yet. I mean surely, surely he won’t cop abuse. This is West London. Michael Ballack couldn’t afford to buy there. They’ve got that swanky Harrods. Enlightened folk with enlightened ideas etc. It’s hardly Russia, Texas or Liverpool, is it?
One can only speculate as to what remorseless act of buffoonery JT will perpetrate at full time. Naturally, the topless-with-armband-on state of undress is a given – to the manner born etc., perhaps accompanied by a few righteous English fist-pumps. A t-shirt, with “INNOCENT” emblazoned across the chest? (Ladbrokes – 3/1) An against the odds moonwalk (studs etc.) to MJ’s Black or White? (William Hill – 6/1) Parading his kids round the ground in a bid to emotionally blackmail the jury? (Paddy Power – Evs). Or just a long stare into the distance, the Sky camera faithfully catching his profile perfectly… We can but speculate, but when JT has his back to the wall, one has to expect the unexpected. Before thinking: yeah, I kind of expected that.
Which all leads to the conclusion that JT’s misdemeanours are now becoming so numerous, it’s becoming increasingly likely to mix them up.
I’m sure my memory will soon harbour tales of when JT slept with the mother of Jody Morris’s child, or when JT assaulted Frank Perroncel during his 50 grand tour round Epsom, or when JT and Wayne Bridge mocked Japanese tourists after the Fukushima earthquake, or when JT spat in a child’s face.
Perhaps this is his thinking: if I commit as many atrocities as possible, I’ll water each and every individual one down to the point where no one will remember anything concrete I ever did, just that I’m a bit of a bad egg. JT is non-fiction’s Alex DeLarge, appearing to have completely omitted that post-adolescent phase of maturing, condemned to occupying the mind of an errant teenager for the rest of his days.
There’s perverse logic at play here, Ryan Giggs being the converse case in point. A one crime (well…) fool who doesn’t have the bottle to plunge to further depths – and will forever be known for shagging his brother’s wife. Try pinning a crime on JT with anything approaching accuracy in 2020; it’ll be nye on impossible.
Fans seeking to unsettle the defender will spout myriad opinions, as each individual finds themselves taking issue with a different wrong, resulting in the home crowd’s attempt to speak with one voice will falling comically short. Silence will reverberate through the grounds at which JT is plying his trade, as supporters look at one another and their iPhones for common Terry-bating ground; to no avail. The only way they’ll be able to chant as one will be to sing in praise of this seemingly unsurpassable anti-hero, unified in horrified respect for the total and utter lack of contrition shown throughout his career.
He’s is now in a no win situation, with inactivity on the JT scandal front prompting no relief in the populace, rather suspicion as to how he’s managed to cover up his latest transgression, i.e. we’d rather know who he’s cuckolded than be left floating in a state of tense ignorance. And with that in mind, there’s a semblance of comfort in thinking that he’ll still be with us next season, doing it all again: putting in solid performances, undermining the new boss, demanding a wage increase, shagging left, right and centre, beating on, a boat against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.