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Sam Allardyce would be a fool to bring John Terry back to the England side

Sam Allardyce, a man who looks like he’s been living on a diet of granite and windchill factor, is not really a footballing relic. He was one of the first English managers to take sports science and data analysis seriously. He was always, no matter how some of his sides played, open to incorporating mavericks into a first eleven and giving them licence to indulge their talents. He might look like a bovine-humanoid hybrid, or an anthropomorphic block of concrete, but he is not a fool. Allardyce could be the most successful England manager for the past two decades, relatively speaking. His pragmatism, disliked by many of his clubs’ fans, could be an advantage for a side that too often crowbars stars and has-beens into an eleven. Allardyce may look like Le Corbusier designed his skeleton, but again, he is no fool.

Which is why it is so depressing that he is obviously willing to have John Terry back in the England side. For a man who has obvious intelligence in using the players at his disposal, he is being foolish, reckless, cynical and more in suggesting that a man like Terry should be back involved with the England team.

First, Terry positive points in list form: 1. Er. That’s it. More seriously, Terry’s pace and strength seem to have left him. While he was never especially quick, he was able to command the backline authoritatively. He was aggressive and intelligent in his positioning, and when either of those let him down, he could desperately scramble back to pull off vital interventions. In an era when England also had central defenders like Sol Campbell and Rio Ferdinand, Terry was their equal for much of the period. He is popular with Chelsea fans, and he never relents in his drive to win.

But, of course, there are his negative points, and these are so extensive that is seems baffling that Allardyce thinks that bringing him back to international duty is the stupidest thing since Manchester City last tweeted on their account.

In 2010, John Terry decided that he would tout his England ticket box, a privilege and not a right, for cash. This was against the rules of the deal, and also completely unnecessary. That he was already earning millions of pounds a year at this point, and still grasping for a little extra, suggests he has no real sense of what being a captain means. Beyond ostentatiously and conspicuously pulling up his captain’s armband and looking serious on the pitch, being a captain should come with it some kind of moral obligations. That’s not to say that he should be an especially brilliant role model, but he should be capable of sticking to the rules of the job.

And, let’s not forget what is most important, which is that in 2012 he was found guilty by the FA of using racist language against Anton Ferdinand. Calling him a, ‘black ****,’ he was found not guilty - not the same as innocent - in a legal court, and his defence was still described as ‘unlikely’ by the judge. The FA considered his testimony, ‘improbable, implausible and contrived’. He was not convicted of the crime, but it would be reasonable not to believe a single word of his defence, and assume that he did indeed deliberately insult Ferdinand with racist language.

Of course, when he was found guilty by the FA, he choose not to appeal the decision. The FA, it’s true, rarely reverses any decision, but perhaps after such a humiliating exploration of how his mind works, he didn’t want to be exposed any further. That, though, is contrasted by the apology he later issued. He quite carefully did not actually apologise to Anton Ferdinand directly for what he had done. Nor did he suggest that Chelsea fans stop their plainly racist targeting of Rio and Anton Ferdinand, or Patrice Evra, in games that followed the decision. While he is not directly responsible for the actions of these people, he was the club captain of Chelsea and was more than happy to let it continue.

It is important to remember that it was in a fit of pique and indignation that, having been punished for something that he did admit was unacceptable, he retired from international football. This is a man who said that he wished he could serve in the army, but never actually did, despite being a superfit athlete with nothing obviously preventing him from doing so. It is odd to think that where he could serve his nationalism - in the England team - he left in a huff as soon as he was told off for doing something racist.

So that is the kind of person that Allardyce wants back in the team. There are two ways at looking at this. There is a man who has been punished for financial impropriety and racism, and reacted with self-sympathy and evasion instead of recognising his faults. There is a man who, at 35, is un unreliable presence against the best opposition, and sometimes merely quick opposition, and nowhere near the defender he used to be. The first way of looking at this is that Allardyce does not see anything wrong with this behaviour. The second way is that Allardyce does believe it is the wrong way to act, but thinks that England’s defence is in such a state he will ignore it to bring him back to the side. Neither way to look at it is a happy one.