John Terry - Open Letter To Chelsea Supporters.

[Nobody]

admittedly not on topic, but not totally off topic either:

 

<img src="http://i26.tinypic.com/550yma.jpg" />

I did feel for Terry when he missed the penalty, but this sounds more like a "feel sorry for me!!" rather than an apology tbh.

[Shearergol]

I love nothing more when one of the four most hyped English footballers in this country does something wrong.

 

Rooney, Terry, Gerrard and Lampard. Especially when it's Gerrard.

 

 

Thanks for proving my point about people not liking England players

[Dave]

Didn't need to release this statement, so I don't know why he has.

[Mowen]

Didn't need to release this statement, so I don't know why he has.

 

I agree. Strikes me as though he's just trying to reiterate the fact that he cares more than anyone else does.

[hakka]

admittedly not on topic, but not totally off topic either:

 

<img src="http://i26.tinypic.com/550yma.jpg" />

 

hahaha, brilliant stuff!

 

Cole did have a couple of decisions for corners not go his way, but he looked so funny when he lost it that time.

[Dinho lad]

An open letter to the fans ! f*** me, I remember the days when a Pizza Hut advert would have done the trick....

 

[Sima]

Best club level centreback in the country, alongside Vidic.

It's arguable whether he's even the best at Chelsea IMO.

 

It isn't even arguable tbh

[ChrisJbarnes]

admittedly not on topic, but not totally off topic either:

 

<img src="http://i26.tinypic.com/550yma.jpg" />

 

hahaha, brilliant stuff!

 

Cole did have a couple of decisions for corners not go his way, but he looked so funny when he lost it that time.

 

 

http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/4640/mastercardtd5.th.jpg

 

 

http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/3660/terrycryxx0.th.jpg

 

 

[Guest battyleespeed]

Ain't nothing wrong with that letter. I bet one would want to try do something to leviate the pain after missing out a winning penalty in the championship league final!

 

Its just that ordinary people love to see one of the rich and succesful to go down. In the end its all down to envy, simple as that. These footballers are and have everything that ordinary blokes ever dream about. Things like this just bring it all out, as if its now justified to rip him apart.

 

 

[Guest Brazilianbob]

Fair play to him tbh. Some of the hate he gets on here is far too over the top.

 

Exactly my thoughts.  I wish our players were half as committed to the club as he is to Chelsea.

 

And yes he didn't have to write the letter but he did and that speaks volumes.

[Guest saintscoobz]

Serves him right, i feel absolutely no sympathy for him.  The penalty miss couldnt have happened to a nicer man or team for that matter. Up yours John Terry.

[buzza]

He feels guilty and the way to move on is to apologise and feel redeemed. It's a brave gesture and he does seem to hold chelsea in high regard.

I personally think the letter is a bit "sickly" and could have left quite a bit of the "I am so blue" bullshyte out of it, but we're all different and I doubt he wrote it anyway, some chelsea secretary or PR pillock...

[M4]

Fair play to him tbh. Some of the hate he gets on here is far too over the top.

 

Exactly my thoughts.  I wish our players were half as committed to the club as he is to Chelsea.

 

There's being committed, and being a petty wanker. The man deserves no sympathy. Tough.

[Crumpy Gunt]

Fair play to him tbh. Some of the hate he gets on here is far too over the top.

 

Exactly my thoughts.  I wish our players were half as committed to the club as he is to Chelsea.

 

And yes he didn't have to write the letter but he did and that speaks volumes.

 

Remember Chelsea bought his committment for £130k pw.

[Swissmag]

Fair play to him tbh. Some of the hate he gets on here is far too over the top.

 

Exactly my thoughts.  I wish our players were half as committed to the club as he is to Chelsea.

 

And yes he didn't have to write the letter but he did and that speaks volumes.

 

Remember Chelsea bought his committment for £130k pw.

 

Good Point! :-)

[Shearergol]

Fair play to him tbh. Some of the hate he gets on here is far too over the top.

 

Exactly my thoughts.  I wish our players were half as committed to the club as he is to Chelsea.

 

And yes he didn't have to write the letter but he did and that speaks volumes.

 

Remember Chelsea bought his committment for £130k pw.

 

That's right. It's all black and white. Players are all just after the money.

 

Or maybe he does love Chelsea anyway. Clearly you know him (as most people on this board seem to) so you tell me?

[Guest Chubby Jason]

I did feel a slight twinge of sympathy for him when I saw him weeping his heart out after the game but I soon recalled the thousand incidents with the man that made me hate him so much in the first place; pissing on bars and parking in disabled parking spaces, happily paying the £60 fine rather than walk all the way from an allocated space.

 

Not to mention his constant bullying of referees that could (should) cost him his England captaincy. There is a very good article from F365 on Terry's crying and how is encompasses the problems with English players;

 

 

What Terry`s Tears Said About Us

Posted 26/05/08 10:20

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There can be few blokes who really are 'a man's man' who would not have felt a degree of nausea, if not outright contempt at the waterfall of John Terry's tears last Wednesday.

 

But his display served a very good purpose. It illustrated exactly what is wrong at the core of English football. As England's national side comes into focus again this week, there is much Fabio Capello can learn from Terry's emotional breakdown.

 

Let's get this right, if you are weeping so uncontrollably for so long just because you have lost a football match, you are emotionally immature; you are a boy in a man's body.

 

I cried like that when England drew with Poland in 1973 and thus failed to qualify for the 1974 World Cup. I was 12. .

 

Few of us go through life without an occasional watery eye - more usually born of joy rather than disappointment - but we reserve the proper out-and-out crying for life and death matters, not for football.

 

If you are crying that much about football, what on earth are you going to do if, God forbid, a real tragedy strikes you? Where is left to go emotionally?

 

It's bitterly ironic that the press are still so intent on painting Terry as a specifically English icon and hard man when the traditional English way is the exact opposite of his behaviour.

 

The traditional English way is the stiff upper lip; emotion is expressed only in private and if shared then only with loved ones. Publicly expressed emotion is for the weak and the self indulgent. It is certainly not the sort of thing leaders of men indulge in. It is undignified and shows lack of character. And yet we are told he is still 'England's lion'. The same things were said about Tony Adams even when his life was in a mess and he was a raging alcoholic. Why are these type of people so many English fans heroes? Is dysfunction attractive? Is it now the norm?

 

Let's not kid ourselves, we have a real problem here.

 

Other sports just don't do sobbing losers. There seems to be something about English football culture that suspends the participants adulthood, trapping some in Peter Pan teenage world.

 

Too many players today behave like petulant children. When you see Rooney, his face looking all pink and bee-stung with rage at some perceived injustice hunting down the ball angrily, you see a teenage boy who has lost control.

 

Ashley Cole's 'I-turn-my-back-on-you' behaviour looked like a parody of a twelve year-old that won't go to his bedroom. This type of behaviour is emotionally dysfunctional and certainly not the sort of thing a man in his mid twenties should be doing on a football pitch. Where is their self control?

 

While footballers have always lost their temper, and occasionally have had a whack at each other, the sort of over-wrought emotion expressed by some of today's prima-donnas is not the kind of Francis Lee punching Norman Hunter anger. It's mere childish, self-centred emotionalism.

 

Having everything done for you and earning inconceivably huge amounts of money must all contribute to this fantasy cartoon world at the centre of which is their own glorious self and their own fabulous ego.

 

When something happens to shatter this illusion, is it any wonder they go off the edge?

 

England players are widely regarded as having a psychological problem playing for the national side now, and it isn't too fanciful to tie the character of these mannish-boys into their on-pitch failures. Too many of England's players are not sufficiently emotionally developed to cope with high pressure situations such as the Croatia game, and especially penalty shoot-outs.

 

Add to that the selfish need to try and maintain their over-inflated personal legend status and you end up with players charging around trying to be the super hero or simply going missing altogether. Team work goes out of the window and individualism takes over.

 

It is significant that during the Portugal game at the last World Cup, Owen Hargreaves was many people's man of the match and of the tournament. He kept his head when everyone else was losing it, kept disciplined in his role and was the only one to score a penalty.

 

He was far more disciplined and in control than those around him. Hargreaves is not a product of English football culture. He is a product of German football. That can't be a total co-incidence. (Interestingly, after a season in the Premier League, he is starting to show signs of indiscipline and petulance - perhaps learning it as the 'right' way to react from the likes of Rooney)

 

In Germany which is the most successful European nation there has always been more maturity to most players. They have always seemed less hysterical, more firm minded and have had more good old fashioned bottle.

 

If we had 11 Hargreaves that day, we would almost certainly have prevailed. But we didn't and once again we saw Terry in full self-pitying, weeping mode again. Hargreaves didn't cry but he had given more than anyone. This is instructive.

 

The German team ethic has dominated over the personal desire for glory and that's how it should be. It works, as three Euros and three World Cup wins show. It is only through teamwork that the individuals can shine. That's how Greece won in 2004. It doesn't guarantee victory - Germany lost to an equally tough-minded, resolute Italian side in the 2006 semi-final - but it gives you a much better chance.

 

 

England's failure in the now distant past has been caused by lack of tactical awareness, by lack of fitness, by lack of basic good skill and by poor management. England's failure in this century has included all of these elements but with this new crippling emotional self-centredness thrown in as well.

 

On top of that there's a whole strand of English popular culture which absolutely worships them for their fame and money. I imagine them to be the sort of people who watch 'Katie & Peter' and who go on reality shows because they 'really, really want this' whatever the 'this' is. They copy David and Victoria's hair cuts and buy Heat and Hello.

 

And on top of that there's the press and TV media which takes good English players and over indulges their talent and exaggerates their capabilities because it sells well to a section of the public that is far too eager for heroes to worship.

 

If Capello wants England to succeed this all needs to be tackled head-on.

He has already talked about player's mentality not being right; that they lack self belief despite being at the peak of the domestic game.

 

And yet continental players are also subjected to the same culture when playing in England but often deal with it better.

 

This is just a subjective opinion and it's a bit of a generalisation that I can't back up with hard fact but it's always seemed to me that the overseas players who play in the Premier League are by and large far more intelligent people, far more rounded than many of their English counterparts. Put crudely, we produce Steve McClarens while Italy produces Fabio Capellos.

 

When you hear men like ex Chelsea defender, Marcel Desailly, or current stars like Fabregas, Torres and Toure they come over as people who are to some degree sophisticated; for a start they're often bi-lingual. Clearly there are examples to contradict this but it does seem to be a generalization which has substance.

 

Perhaps this is why these men don't end up in the Priory and don't generally behave like Motley Crue let loose at the Playboy Mansion, as desirable as that might be.

 

The game is producing largely uncultured boys without the intelligence, education or incentive to grow up. There's far too much emphasis on that favourite of the phone-in passion, and not enough on perspective.

 

Capello has to select a team on the basis of strength of character and attitude as well as on ability. We need players who are calmer, more rational and less prone to believing their own hype; players who are not so wrapped up in themselves; players who don't cry when things go wrong.

 

In an era of shallow emotion, celebrity culture and rampant self indulgence, this seems unlikely but we should all fervently hope that it does because if it doesn't I shall scream and scream until I'm sick.

 

[Keefaz]

Utter bullshit and hypocrisy, imo. Gazza became a legend on the basis of a few tears. We complain when players look like they're going through the motions and don't give a shit, yet we bitch when Terry blubs over what is the most painful and disappointing incident of his career.

[Guest Chubby Jason]

Utter bullshit and hypocrisy, imo. Gazza became a legend on the basis of a few tears. We complain when players look like they're going through the motions and don't give a s***, yet we bitch when Terry blubs over what is the most painful and disappointing incident of his career.

I thought he made several good points to be honest. Especially the comparison with Germany. Remember when Ballack got booked in the World Cup semi-final which meant he would miss the final? His response was to go and score the winner that got his team through. He didn't cry like a woman, knowing the camera's would be on him and the commentator's flapping over the "despair" he must have been feeling, his number one goal was to make sure his country progressed, rather than give a "look at me, I'm devastated" performance for the cameras.

[Colos Short and Curlies]

Captain tomorrow

[Keefaz]

Utter bullshit and hypocrisy, imo. Gazza became a legend on the basis of a few tears. We complain when players look like they're going through the motions and don't give a s***, yet we bitch when Terry blubs over what is the most painful and disappointing incident of his career.

I thought he made several good points to be honest. Especially the comparison with Germany. Remember when Ballack got booked in the World Cup semi-final which meant he would miss the final? His response was to go and score the winner that got his team through. He didn't cry like a woman, knowing the camera's would be on him and the commentator's flapping over the "despair" he must have been feeling, his number one goal was to make sure his country progressed, rather than give a "look at me, I'm devastated" performance for the cameras.

 

I'm sorry, but Ballack is one of the last players I'd hold up as a shining example. He's a petulant, egotistical fucker whose team-mates all hate.

[ElDiablo]

Spot on Keefaz, it's just added ammunition for some people. No way he should be captain for England though. Rio's been consistently better than him in the premiership this season and always at international level.

[Keefaz]

Spot on Keefaz, it's just added ammunition for some people. No way he should be captain for England though. Rio's been consistently better than him in the premiership this season and always at international level.

 

Probably, but I'm not sure if he's a better leader. Say what you like, but on the pitch John Terry has been a terrific leader, even if you despise his antics.

[Guest Edd]

Utter bullshit and hypocrisy, imo. Gazza became a legend on the basis of a few tears. We complain when players look like they're going through the motions and don't give a s***, yet we bitch when Terry blubs over what is the most painful and disappointing incident of his career.

I thought he made several good points to be honest. Especially the comparison with Germany. Remember when Ballack got booked in the World Cup semi-final which meant he would miss the final? His response was to go and score the winner that got his team through. He didn't cry like a woman, knowing the camera's would be on him and the commentator's flapping over the "despair" he must have been feeling, his number one goal was to make sure his country progressed, rather than give a "look at me, I'm devastated" performance for the cameras.

If you think his performance was just "for the cameras" then you couldn't be more wrong.  Say what you like about Terry but he's Chelsea through and through and cares passionately about them like any fan of any team would.

 

Think of it this way.  If you missed the penalty that cost Newcastle the Champions League final how would you react?  Would I "cry like a woman"?  Too fucking right I would.

 

 

[Colos Short and Curlies]

Utter bullshit and hypocrisy, imo. Gazza became a legend on the basis of a few tears. We complain when players look like they're going through the motions and don't give a s***, yet we bitch when Terry blubs over what is the most painful and disappointing incident of his career.

I thought he made several good points to be honest. Especially the comparison with Germany. Remember when Ballack got booked in the World Cup semi-final which meant he would miss the final? His response was to go and score the winner that got his team through. He didn't cry like a woman, knowing the camera's would be on him and the commentator's flapping over the "despair" he must have been feeling, his number one goal was to make sure his country progressed, rather than give a "look at me, I'm devastated" performance for the cameras.

If you think his performance was just "for the cameras" then you couldn't be more wrong.  Say what you like about Terry but he's Chelsea through and through and cares passionately about them like any fan of any team would.

 

Think of it this way.  If you missed the penalty that cost Newcastle the Champions League final how would you react?  Would I "cry like a woman"?  Too fucking right I would.

 

 

 

I wouldn't miss!