5 Times that John Terry courted controversy during his career
Yesterday saw the end of the career of one of the Premier League’s all-time greats, as former Chelsea and England captain John Terry decided to hang up his boots after the best part of two decades playing at the top of the game.
Terry will go down as a legend in Chelsea folklore and it’s hard to deny both his accomplishments – he won multiple trophies in his career including the Premier League on 5 occasions and the Champions League once – but despite this, ‘JT’ was involved in heavily controversial moments on numerous occasions in his storied career.
#1 The 9/11 incident
The 2000/01 season saw Terry break into Chelsea’s first team as a regular choice as a central defender, but it didn’t take long afterward for him to court some serious controversy. In September 2001, he was one of four Chelsea players fined by the club following a nasty incident surrounding the cancellation of a UEFA Cup tie with Levski Sofia following the terrorist attacks in New York on September 11th.
Terry, along with his teammates Frank Lampard, Jody Morris and Eidur Gudjohnsen went on a drinking binge at a hotel near Heathrow Airport just 24 hours after the attacks, and according to reports the session went on for five hours and saw the players behave terribly – stripping, swearing and vomiting.
It was also reported that the four players abused American citizens who were stranded in the area following the attacks, although Chelsea’s managing director at the time, Colin Hutchinson, denied that the four intended to insult any member of the public.
He did, however, state that their behaviour was “totally out of order” – and fined each player two weeks’ wages before donating the money – reported to be well over £100k – to a fund helping the families of Americans affected by the terror attacks.
While Terry was relatively young at the time of the incident – just 20 years old – the incident was an early sign of his mistakes in judgment.