O Captain! My Captain!

The last couple of weeks have proven to be a fallow period for football, which is somewhat surprising looking at the gruelling fixture pileup awaiting many teams in April. Should we be disappointed? No, no we shouldn’t.  This intermediary period has allowed the collective football fan to filter out all the cultural static and concentrate on what is really important: THE ARMBAND. Not so much the artefact, but what it symbolises. For John Terry is redemption made tangible, but for Rio Ferdinand – currently reduced to Tweeted asides – it is a reminder of his frailties, of a summer spent watching a World Cup instead of playing in it.

Terry has had a merry old time. Long gone are the days of contrition, of the bulldog with the tail between its legs. Now we have Terry barking at anyone who will listen that he did nothing wrong, never deserved to be stripped of his captaincy. His baiting of Ferdinand was clearest when he claimed that Michael Dawson had made the position ‘his own’, a comment which can only be read to suggest that Terry feels that Ferdinand is as good as retired from international football. It would seem if the football is a bit dry, liberally season with a bit of Terry and things get a lot more interesting.

The suggestion that Ferdinand should retire from football would certainly be met with approval from Alex Ferguson, a manager in the habit of quietly convincing his players to cut out international football to prolong their careers – Berbatov, Scholes and Giggs spring immediately to mind – but one gets the impression that Ferdinand would not be so easily dissuaded from appearing for England. There lingers about him the same desperation to play for England as can be seen in Beckham’s omnipresence around the team. Here are two men that may well be hanging about the squad until an indecent age just waiting for the opportunity to ‘boot up’, two former captains put out to pasture.

So, onto Barry the armband is thrust in this post-colonial meeting of two nations. No sooner does Terry claim the captaincy than he renounces it in favour of a Capello-endorsed rest. Thrown into the choppy waters that Terry leaves in his wake is Barry: the quiet man. A man so vapid and inoffensive that not even Ferdinand can muster 140 characters to complain. One has to wonder if Capello is attempting to demystify the captaincy issue that he claims is a uniquely English fetish. To display that we as a nation should not place so much emphasis on who leads out the team, as a leader will lead with or without a piece of elasticated cloth. And so to help him in this goal I have provided your very own armband. We can be Captains, just for one day.

Cut it out, wear it with pride, for you are a Captain my friend.   

~ Ed