Was John Terry ever guilty?
John Terry, the man who is idolized by millions and hated by the rest of the population just can’t keep himself away from scandals. His recent court case has put the FA, FIFA and the Crown Magistrate under a lot of criticism as they fail to provide what the common man believes is the fair judgement.
John Terry was apparently charged of racially abusing QPR defender, Anton Ferdinand. Few days later, we never heard the end of it and the matter was brought to court. He was removed from captaincy, Fabio Cappello quit the post of the England manager (who wouldn’t?) and England saw another dismal European campaign.
Ashley Cole, one of the black players in Chelsea and team-mate of John Terry believed the case should never have gone to court. The entire case ended up resulting only in a massive drain of tax payer’s money with the Chelsea captain running around scot free whereas Anton Ferdinand avoided the media as much as possible and Rio Ferdinand ended up making a joke out of himself on twitter, once again.
Lets re-think a bit. As a school boy, we all have great playground memories and being a kid of 15, I am living it at the moment. I can’t remember a single game where I haven’t abused someone after they ended up taking the ball from me or humiliating me in some manner. It’s the way our minds are. At the heat of the moment, we say things which we never even wanted to say and usually those sentences result in a reason for the person to think about what his friend has just told him. The exact happened to John and Anton. In the QPR game, Chelsea had just been given two red cards and were on the losing side, slowly slipping away from the first position. The losing side definitely had the right to be angry. Anton rubbed the salt into his wounds by stopping Terry from complaining to the ref about a penalty and if he says he didn’t see those abuses coming, then he was thoroughly mistaken. If anyone here could stand up and tell me that you have never abused a friend of yours because you were frustrated from all the unfair incidents happening and later onwards you both just took it as a joke, then I would probably take you to court as well for belonging from another planet!
An off-duty officer thought it would be good thing to brag about in front of his mates if he went and complained about the incident to the higher-ups. Ferdinand and Terry had already resolved the case after the match and Ferdinand himself was a very reluctant witness. He himself started off by saying he never heard what John Terry said and that to me is banging the nail on your own foot! John stuck with his excuse and evidence throughout the five days and it paid off. Terry believed that he only repeated the words in a manner of sarcasm. Now if there was a TV replay on what Ferdinand was saying then we could clearly know whether he accused Terry of calling him a black c*** or not. But at the end of the day, there was no TV footage and lack of evidence and the support of his team-mates won the case.
Terry has done many things in his life which can be deemed bad and if more were to come I wouldn’t be surprised, but calling him a racist would even make Ballotelli smile. 16 players signed a paper which said Terry had never used any kind of racist slur and that should have been enough to win him the case. He said being a Chelsea player seperates you from others and makes you the elite, as you slowly become immune to everything the crowd hurls at you. You take it to your chin and get on with it. From his “Mum loves scouse c*** ” to Wayne Bridge songs, John has enough memories to write a book of poems!
Coming over to the Suarez matter. He smiled in front of the FA and told them that he called Evra a “negrito” which is apparently very friendly in his own native language with his own grandmother backing up his claims. Sorry Suarez , but to the English people that is like saying you killed a man and only thought it would be a fun thing to try out once in a while cause your life is based on the phrase YOLO. He went ahead and admitted it whereas in the Terry case, they both were against each other which the court had to intervene as they also received a formal complaint.
Now the Rooney incident. Who swears on national television? Especially if you are a Manchester United player, with millions of people gluing their eyes on the TV set getting ready to scream goal ! Owen Coyle pretty much summed up why Rooney underwent a two game ban :
“The Premier League gets global coverage and everything comes under scrutiny. Whatever you do is analysed and over-analysed,” “The players need to take that into consideration, realising if they think they can get away with something, ultimately they won’t because there are cameras everywhere. You need to be very careful and very wary of your actions.
Lucky for John Terry he did not run up to the cameras and have a nice little chat with the camera man and aim a racist slur at Anton. Lip movements were the only evidence and John is lucky, no doubt. With even lip readers telling that their profession is not very accurate , there was little the court could do.
But with everything said and done, this stands as an example for others to control their anger and temperament during a high profile match. The FA will be doing something themselves and I’m seeing fines for both the players as a suitable punishment for all the saga they created. FA has to be given credit in some matters when it is due.
PS : John Terry just had a skype chat with Fabio Cappello with the ex England boss unable to control his laughter. Apparently he is loving life in Russia.