Burnley 1 Chelsea 2:CARLO ANCELOTTI has said John Terry must control his private life but insisted there was no question of him losing the Chelsea captaincy.
After a series of allegations about his off-field activities, including suggestions that he asked for £10,000 for a private tour of Chelsea’s Cobham training complex, revelations that Terry enjoyed a relationship with the former partner of his England team-mate, Wayne Bridge, had placed the married father of two under enormous pressure. Terry may have to return his Dad of the Year award but he seems likely to cling on to the captain’s armband at Stamford Bridge.
“John has his private life,” said Ancelotti. “He has to control his private life, just as I have to control my team. He is captain of the team and I am very honoured and proud to manage John Terry.”
Ancelotti played his football in the Milan run as a fiefdom by Silvio Berlusconi and managed at San Siro when his club and others were brought to their knees by the calciopoli corruption scandal. There is not much that would shock him. When asked if Terry had shown mental strength by scoring while adrift in a sea of headlines, Ancelotti said he knew many players in Serie A who were mentally strong.
His manager thought so little of the scandal that when the squad gathered on Friday evening at their hotel out on the Pennine moors, the question of whether Terry might step down was unworthy of a conversation. The fact that Terry, baited by the Burnley crowd – although the true venom was reserved for Ashley Cole – scored the winner on a pitch where Manchester United and Arsenal had dropped points, was an added vindication.
“Maybe it could be the most important goal of the season,” Ancelotti said. “I think the rest of the team ran over to celebrate with him because they knew the goal was so important. Maybe this win is a sign of the destiny of the Premier League.”
Interestingly, Ancelotti said that when his team-mates gathered to congratulate Terry it was because of the vital nature of the goal at a ground where Burnley had not lost since October rather than a show of affection for a beleaguered leader.
The domineering way in which Terry has captained Chelsea has not led to universal popularity among his team-mates. And yet Ancelotti has been around long enough to know it is not necessary to like a team-mate to play well alongside him.
In April, Chelsea will travel to Old Trafford with its statue of the Holy Trinity – Best, Law and Charlton – the men who made Matt Busby’s Manchester United. The three were sometimes icily distant from one another, although there is no suggestion that George Best’s roving eye ever settled on Norma Charlton.
Footballers can react two ways when their lives go wrong. When they were on trial for grievous bodily harm, Lee Bowyer produced his most committed performances for Leeds while Jonathan Woodgate could not face football. Terry, born in Barking, a few miles from where Bowyer grew up, comes from the harder school.
“He showed a lot of character because it was not an easy situation for him,” Petr Cech, who has not always seen eye-to-eye with Terry, said of his captain, who seemed determined to show no visible emotion when scoring.
As someone relegated amid the dying embers of Brian Clough’s regime at Nottingham Forest, Brian Laws recognises that playing well is no guarantee of survival.
This was his fourth straight defeat since succeeding Owen Coyle, although Steven Fletcher’s coolness after turning Chelsea defender Alex did provide his first goal as Burnley manager.
His club are where most people expected them to be as February begins, in the relegation zone with Hull and Portsmouth. Laws made his point that, however well Burnley played, their defensive errors are acceptable in the Championship but not the Premier League. Unless a three-month winless slide is halted soon, the Championship is where they will find themselves.
Guardian Service
