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Post 12 Mar 2012, 7:48 am

I dunno about all that. Whether or not Capello made the right decision, in my opinion the FA were right to act. You're possibly not aware of how virulent the British press can be, especially around footballers behaving badly. Had Terry not been stripped of the captaincy the entirety of the buildup to the Euros would have been utterly dominated by the John Terry controversy, completely overshadowing anything else. It would have been a media circus of epic proportions that would most likely have poisoned the atmosphere in the camp and ruined our prospects (such as they are). My only real criticism of the decision is that it doesn't go far enough. It would be better if any footballer who faces a pending criminal prosecution should be suspended from internation duty until the verdict.

As a matter of fact the policy used to be exactly that. When Bowyer and Woodgate were awaiting trial for (admittedly much more serious) hate crime offences they were both suspended from playing for England. This has happened to a number of players over the years. It only changed when Steven Gerrard was in the dock. All of a sudden a spineless FA shifted the goalposts on that and allowed him to remain in the team because they didn't want us to lose our best player. They're now paying for that with all the controversy over Terry.
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Post 12 Mar 2012, 12:44 pm

RUFFHAUS8 wrote:Criminal/civil, whatever. Semantics used to distract the discussion. Your typical debate style at work again.
Given that you started your post with the sentence: "Once again reading comprehehsion seems to elude some people.", I'd have thought you'd appreciate that I put the effort in to understand what you'd written. Silly me. :smile:

RUFFHAUS8 wrote:There's a court trial governing verbal conduct between players in an athletic match. That in and of itself is over the top absurd, but even that was not the point. The point is that Terry was accused of saying something racially inflammatory to Ferdinand. The basis of this entire spat is that Terry allegedly called Ferdinand a "black c*unt". That's a crime? That's a waste of time.
Firstly, while it was on the pitch, it was also televised live and broadcast publicly.

And yes, under public order laws, calling someone a "black c***" can indeed be a crime.

RUFFHAUS8 wrote:The FA in their hypocritical wisdom has decided that a man accused of racism for a kneejerk reaction in an athletic match in response to a spur of the moment violent conduct cannot be captain of the England team, but he can still play football for them. That was the point, and Capello was correct to call them out on it. The point was the FA is not letting Capello manage the England team. That was the point, but you are incapable of staying on point.
As Sass has pointed out, there was a blanket rule. It was changed - while Mr Capello was around, so he can't pretend it was news - to give the manager/coach the choice of picking someone.

RUFFHAUS8 wrote:I'm not justifying racial abuse. Period. Nice try @#$! but this isn’t what I said no matter how many times you try to paint it that way. The point is that Ferdinand escaped punishment by the FA and the police for an extremely malicious and clearly intentional elbow to Terry's head. If there are laws, rules, punishments for Terry's retaliation, fine. I'm not defending John Terry. I'm saying that there is clear video evidence of Ferdinand striking terry before the alleged racial abuse. While you can be dismissive of it for whatever reason you hold, the FA is further inept and corrupt for ignoring the elbow. There's no excuse for willful malicious elbows like that in the game. Period. And that was my point, and my point not made to discredit Ferdinand's accusation, but to discredit the FA. But of course that doesn't suit your race card agenda.
I never said you were. I will refrain from calling you names, if that's all the same to you. What I said was that a previous foul does not excuse racist abuse (which, unfortunately, does not have the same meaning as 'justify'. You accuse me of bringing irrelevant stuff in, but have to make accusations against Anton Ferdinand and complain about how much of a rotter he is, as if that's relevant to whether Terry's charge should affect his captaincy or call-up.

I wish I'd called you on that before, because you seem to be labouring under a misapprehension:

Ferdinand did not initiate the investigation of the police and CPS. It was that the words were clearly caught on television and there for all to see.

By the way, I've seen the elbows. They look worse in slomo (as do all contacts), but they are hardly as you describe. That's my opinion, of course. But the worst that should have been a result would be a yellow card (for the second one), and that would be some stretch, to be honest. It was nothing like the two offences that saw Chelsea players sent off in the same game. And boy, was that a fractious game! Chelsea down to 9 men, trailing to a penalty that they stupidly gave away, especially in a local derby.

Maybe that could be used as some mitigation for the angry play and the language being used by players. However, neither of us are in the Crown Prosecution Service, so neither can say why they think they have a strong enough case to lay charges.

Those charges in place, the issue is as you say, should a man who is facing trial for a public order offence still be the captain of the England football team - representing our nation, being the prime player who is supposed to set an example and to (as the laws of the game say) embody the spirit of fair play, and - of course, with the nature of the offence he's alleged to have committed, can he really have the confidence of his own squad - unless we decide it's better to exclude any black players who don't take his side - or the respect of his opponents?

RUFFHAUS8 wrote:That's not the point either. The point is that they did intervene where I believe (that's an opinion in case it's unclear to you) they should not have, and further that this is part of the reason that the England manage position is an impossible job in which no one will ever succeed in until the FA ceases their power crazed micromanaging. It was a simple observation, and one based in fact, that you chose to attack with semantic and misdirection, and flat out dishonesty. As usual.
Your personal problems with me aside, the thing is that you are perfectly entitled to your opinion, but when it comes up against the facts (as outlined by Sass), and when you compare to non-sporting company policies, you'd find that usually such rules are enforced without any bending precisely because if you start to bend them for some people, you end up with more problems.

I've no problem with you calling the FA spineless. But you are off base to try and link in a load of other stuff.

RUFFHAUS8 wrote:I'm saying that this should be the manager's decision, because that is exactly what he's been hired to do, manage the team. So once again, good for Capello. He did the right thing here.
Well, even managers have to accept the rules of the organisation they work for. But (and I guess here you'll accuse me of that heinous crime of 'semantics' again), he's not the 'Manager', he's the 'Head Coach'. Which implies something a bit different in terms of role and responsibilities anyway.

I will say one thing though - Capello was right. Right to resign, for the way he approached the issue and if he really can't work within the framework he agreed to in 2008 and again in 2010.

Am I 'cynical' for hoping for failure in the Euro's? Maybe so. Point is that we are rubbish and overrated. 1998 to 2006 we had a decent run of sides. But we have become stuck in a rut of late. While England qualified with relative ease for S Africa, the team struggled in what should have been an easy group to get out of. The games against Algeria and Slovenia were turgid, and that against Germany proved that we were way out of our depth. My opinion is that we will flubber anyway, but what I fear is a Mike Bassett-style flukey run that has Harry hailed as a hero, giving him a chance to really destroy the team over the next few years.

Pearce would perhaps make a good replacement, but not just yet. He's had good performances from the youth sides he's been coaching and he used the Holland game for the important task of exposing younger players to the international game.
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Post 12 Mar 2012, 11:46 pm

It's perfectly possible for both the FA and Capello to have done the right thing for different reasons. From Capello's perspective he was nothing more than an employee on a fixed term contract. His job wasn't to worry about the wider image of the sport or the good of the English game in general, his sole responsibility was the success of the England team on the pitch. If he felt that his employer was intruding on his area of responsibility to the extent that it was making it impossible to carry out that job then resigning is the honourable thing to do in the circumstances.

The FA have a much broader remit though, their responsibility is to the good of the game at every level. One of their primary concerns at present, which long predates the appointment of Capello, is the elimination of racism from football. The symbolism of having a man accused by the CPS of racially abusing a fellow player as England captain goes against everything the FA claims to stand for. It would suggest that their commitment to fighting racism was only (if you'll forgive the phrase) skin deep. Bear in mind also that only a few months earlier they'd made a massive fuss about Sepp Blatter's supposedly racist remarks, thereby backing themselves into a corner on the issue. All this made John Terry's position untenable in my opinion.
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Post 13 Mar 2012, 2:05 pm

Sure, and the FA also undermined their own policy a few years back when they made an exception for Gerrard. The FA is well known for incompetence. I still think they ultimately arrived at the correct decision though.
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Post 13 Mar 2012, 3:14 pm

I do take your point Randy, but at the same time I don't think that refusing to select somebody facing criminal charges equates to taking a view on their guilt or innocence. What such a policy says is that the FA do not wish to select people with a major question mark on their character to be representatives of the nation. That's not unreasonable. In fact I'd go further and say that not only is it not unreasonable, it's actually a sensible policy to adopt because team spirit can be seriously undermined by the inevitable media shtstorm that always develops around footballers facing criminal trials.

Where the FA went wrong here was in seeking to apply their policy selectively in the case of Gerrard and then wimping out of a decision over Terry in the hope that everything would have been resolved by the time the tournament rolled around. That was cowardly. Somebody has now clearly taken control of the situation though and taken the decision that England can't afford to go into a major tournament led by a man facing criminal charges for racial abuse. They should have made that decision from the outset but better late than never in my opinion.

That said, I can understand Capello's annoyance. The way they handled the Gerrard situation, and initially handled Terry, must have led him to believe that the FA had no desire to get involved. Clearer boundaries should have been set a long time ago so that everybody would have known where they stood. I don't accept that the national association has no business whatsoever in team selection where that selection impinges upon the overall policies and responsibilities of the association, but clear rules do need to be in place.
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Post 14 Mar 2012, 1:56 am

Sassenach wrote:I do take your point Randy, but at the same time I don't think that refusing to select somebody facing criminal charges equates to taking a view on their guilt or innocence.
Indeed. Firstly, the point about 'innocent until proven guilty' is that it is usually preceded by 'in the eyes of the law'. Which is not the same as saying everyone else has to treat them as if there's no case to answer.

Even then, people who are not yet found guilty will have their rights abridged by the State, for example remanded in custody, or bailed with conditions. Anyone who trumpets this line presumably would have to be calling for the freeing of all unconvincted internees at Guantanamo Bay, for that matter, to be consistent.

But employment law is different, as are the practices of employers.. Being suspended from work, or being demoted pending an external decision, is by no means unusual or unreasonable for people who are accused of serious breaches. If they are exonerated, then they can be reinstated. But when the fact of a criminal charge threatens to impair your job performance, what is an employer supposed to do? If the charge involves something that happened at the workplace, and affects others who are or may be employees, suppliers, customer, etc, then it becomes even more of an issue.

When it comes to selection policy, I think that the coach should have pretty much free rein over the eligible players. I just don't think 'under a charge for a public order offence committed during a match' makes one eligible. It didn't use to, but it certainly rules out being captain.
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Post 14 Mar 2012, 9:57 am

I should add btw that I don't think what Terry is alleged to have done should be a criminal matter. Calling people names ought never to be a matter for the police, no matter what those names may be. I do think it's acceptable for the FA to have a zero tolerance policy for racial abuse if they wish to, but the law shouldn't be involved. The law that Terry is being charged under is a fairly recent one brought in during the fag end of the last government when they were well into their authoritarian phase. It's a particularly absurd law which has also seen a busker charged with 'hate crimes' because he played a few bars of Kung Fu Fighting when some Chinese students passed by. The same legislation was also recently used by Manchester Police as a justification to confiscate the entire printrun of a Manchester Utd fanzine because it contained a joke cartoon about the Suarez racism affair showing a guy in a KKK robe with LFC written on it. That is, an anti-racist cartoon that was deliberately intended to be critical of racism in football and the police decided that it might 'incite racial hatred' so they confiscated thousands of copies of the fanzine without compensation. It's frankly outrageous that this kind of thing can take place, and the law is a joke. The joke is on us though, because it's our freedom of speech that's being curtailed.

Thanks to Labour we also have laws against 'incitement to religious hatred', which in theory makes criticism of religion a criminal offence. This law, ironically, was intended to be used against Muslim extremist groups. The reality has been rather different of course. What's actually happened is that it's been used by those self-same extremists and other religious organisations to shut down criticism, aided and abetted by our friendly neighbourhood police force, who seem to like nothing better than prosecuting people for speech crimes.

So yes, I do have a certain sympathy for John Terry. Not that I can ever condone racial abuse, and not that I don't think the FA should have acted against it, but the fact he's being pursued by the law is ridiculous.
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Post 15 Mar 2012, 12:54 pm

Not entirely clear who you're addressing there Randy, but I don't recall ever trying to say you're not entitled to express your opinion. Neither do I recall ever saying that the FA isn't incompetent, or that it's fine to select Terry in the team.

I do think you're underplaying the symbolism aspect though. Yes, England captain is a notional position, but traditionally it's always been a highly symbolic one and always been treated with far greater reverance than it really deserves by both the press and many England fans. The FA know this full well and know how it would look if they were to allow Terry to remain in the position right now.
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Post 15 Mar 2012, 1:19 pm

Sassenach wrote:Not entirely clear who you're addressing there Randy, but I don't recall ever trying to say you're not entitled to express your opinion.
Neither did I. I simply question whether the opinions stack up against the facts and the different context of the UK, and offered my own opinions.

Neither do I recall ever saying that the FA isn't incompetent, or that it's fine to select Terry in the team.
ditto.

I do think you're underplaying the symbolism aspect though. Yes, England captain is a notional position, but traditionally it's always been a highly symbolic one and always been treated with far greater reverance than it really deserves by both the press and many England fans. The FA know this full well and know how it would look if they were to allow Terry to remain in the position right now.
Well, on the pitch the captain does have particular reference in the rules of the game. But generally they are held responsible (whether rightly or wrongly) for the general conduct of the team during games.

RUFFHAUS8 wrote:Somehow I knew that you were going to go to Guantanamo Bay with this. An absurd and exaggerated comparison, and entirely irrelevant. The law is the law, and if Terry broke the law, then he should pay whatever penaty the law stipulates. John Terry, and Anton Ferdinand for that matter, while properly classified as punks, are footballers, not a terrorists take as prisoners of war. Only you could argue something as ridiculous as that.example.
Ah, so basically, 'innocent until proven guilty' doesn't apply to suspected terrorists (and POWs have legal rights that are not extended to the inmates of Guantanamo, or weren't at least).

I did mention less contentious examples, like bail conditions. I also pointed out what 'innocent until proven guilty' really means. But hey, you gotta turn any response to you into some kind of personal attack.

Whatever.
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Post 29 Apr 2012, 12:22 pm

So it looks like being Hodgson after all. Must say I'm both surprised and delighted by this development. I honestly couldn't see the FA making this call because it's clearly the right one and the FA haven't made the right call on anything important in living memory.
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Post 29 Apr 2012, 1:05 pm

Well, a we could have manager who's not the equivalent of Arthur Daley in charge, one who I have seen work with squads who are not all superstars or world class but get strong performances out of them. Not just at club level, but also at the national level getting countries to finals competition they rarely if ever qualify for.

This is the job he should have got in 2010, instead of going to Anfield.
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Post 29 Apr 2012, 2:19 pm

Well he got Switzerland to two finals but didn't manage it with Finland, although he did get them as close as they've ever been. Still though, he does seem a much better fit for the job. International management requires a particular skillset that isn't necessarily the same as what you need at club level, and Hodgson has already proven that he has what it takes. Harry Redknapp is essentially just a chequebook manager, and he also seems to crave the limelight at all times. That doesn't suggest to me that he'd be able to make a smooth transition to the England job. He's also a crook of course, which doesn't help. Yes, I know that he was found not guilty, but I don't know anybody who actually believes that he was innocent. Why the hell do you open a Swiss bank account in the name of your dog and then receive huge payments into it if you're on the level ? Besides which, the BBC already managed to catch his assistant blatantly agreeing to facilitate transfers in return for a bung from what he thought was a dodgy agent several years ago (coincidentally when they were working at Portsmouth). I don't see how Kevin Bond could manage to deliver on that without 'Arry being involved, so it's obvious that he's highly dodgy. We don't need that kind of man as England manager.
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Post 29 Apr 2012, 3:34 pm

No, we don't. Venables had to go for his financial dealings, however good a manager he was.

I don't think Roy will have an easy time of it - no England manager will - but he does have the experience and the strategic nous. I am less confident that he's got the temperament to deal with some of the prima donnas or a press backlash if things go badly.
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Post 30 Apr 2012, 8:41 am

I'm pleased its Hodgson and not Harry. Mostly because Spurs had targeted Roberto Martinez to replace Harry and I hope Martinez stays with Wigan! (Its been a good 6 weeks to be a Wigan fan)
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Post 30 Apr 2012, 9:59 am

Got a lot of time for Martinez from when he was playing at the Latics and they and Fulham were competing for the Div 4 title back in 96-97. It would indeed be a shame for Wigan to lose him.