Why Fabio Capello Will Keep John Terry as England Captain

With the FA making it clear that the decision as to whether John Terry will remain England captain or not will be in hands of Fabio Capello and Fabio Capello alone a decision about Terry’s future is expected to be made, if not immediately announced, by the end of the weekend.

The England manager is due back in England over the next few days after spending recent weeks in Switzerland recovering from knee surgery and has seen the scandal around his captain erupt in the British press over the past six days.

Now, like several previous England managers before him, the Italian faces the unenviable prospect of dealing with the dreaded "off-the-field" problem. Thankfully for him, unlike Venables, Hoddle, and Eriksson before him, Capello is not directly involved in the latest controversy.

With the British press standing proudly on the moral high ground, expectation and pressure has been steadily building from all quarters on Capello to strip Terry of the captaincy, if indeed the Chelsea man does not choose to step down himself.

However, it seems unlikely that Capello would bow to this type of pressure, especially if the majority of it is coming from the media.

Fabio Capello has a £6m a year contract with the FA and his job is to win football matches. Something which his predecessor ultimately could not do.

The FA aren’t paying him to provide some sort of moral compass for the country through his selection of players or even captain and any decision he reaches over the Terry issue will surely be taken after Capello has considered the footballing factors above all others.

Questions have been raised as to whether the England players will still have the respect of their captain in the dressing room and on the pitch. However, John Terry is a leader on the pitch and will continue to be so whether he’s wearing the armband or not.

He will speak up and rally the players whilst he’s on the pitch in any capacity so if the respect issue is really a problem with the players then Terry will have to be dropped from the squad altogether because there will be no point in having a quiet, impassive and suppressed Terry on the pitch.

Will Capello want to go to South Africa without his first-choice centre-back? It’s unlikely.

Rio Ferdinand is already giving him enough headaches with his injury (and now disciplinary) problems which have restricted him to just ten appearances so far this season.

Would Capello really want to risk going into a World Cup with Upson and Lescott in the heart of his defence? The two look likely to make the squad as back-up at present and, of course, could subsequently appear in the tournament but would Capello want to effectively handicap himself from the very start?

The players themselves will know that they will have a better chance of success in the summer with John Terry in the side.

Undoubtedly they will support and sympathise with Wayne Bridge but will it enough for them to make a stand and demand of Capello that Terry be demoted as captain and removed from the squad? It looks unlikely.

Capello runs a tight ship and would not take lightly to the players effectively dictating the decision making process to him.

The Italian is a pragmatist and a realist who will want Terry in his team to give him the best chance of landing world football’s greatest prize.

In a perfect world he could also dispense moral judgement but he’s not in a position to do so without severely weakening his team. The average pundit could be paid £6m a year to make these decisions, but they probably couldn’t get Capello’s results on the pitch. This is what he is paid for, and why he is paid so highly, after all.

What to do with Wayne Bridge is also a key issue for Capello to resolve. Rumours abound that the Manchester City left-back is seriously considering retiring from international football, a decision which would help the Italian in so much as it effectively takes the problem out of his hands.

If, however, Bridge chooses to continue with the England side then Capello will need to speak to both players involved and decide whether or not the recently publicised events are going to cause a problem within the squad.

Unfortunately for Bridge he is undeniably less important to Capello’s England set-up than Terry so could well find himself excluded from the World Cup squad if Capello comes to the conclusion that it would be too much of a risk to team morale to take both men.

However, such a decision could easily be made for footballing reasons in any case. Bridge has not excelled since his move to Manchester City (although his now public personal problems might go some way to explaining this) and Capello has already explored other options at left-back.

The Italian has been weighing up the pros and cons of taking only one specialised left-back (Ashley Cole) to the World Cup and then relying on either Joleon Lescott or James Milner to provide cover in that position in case of emergency.

Why else would Capello experiment with Milner at left-back for the last fifteen minutes of the qualifier against Belarus? Milner could provide Capello with viable cover in that position and enable the inclusion of more of a ‘wildcard’ pick such as Joe Cole in the final squad.

Upon his appointment as England manager Capello made a clear and deliberate show of selecting his captain, eventually, and rather cleverly in this writer’s opinion, choosing Terry to start a new era and making everyone forget how he had already been captain under the previous unsuccessful regime of Steve McClaren.

Fabio Capello is renowned as a disciplinarian. Yet he is also a realist, and this is why he will stand by his captain, for it gives him the best possible chance of success in the summer.

And the siege mentality of national squad versus the press that comes with it? Why that just might help motivate the squad even more.