Goodness me, there’s having a little cry and there’s letting it all hang out in front of roughly half the world’s population. As REM sang ‘everybody hurts sometimes’ and John Terry must surely still be reliving the moment when he slipped on the Moscow turf, hit the post with his penalty and saw Chelsea’s Champions League dreams disappear into thin air.
We all know that it wasn’t Terry’s fault that the Blues lost out and he really shouldn’t be beating himself up so badly. After all, Nicolas Anelka missed from the spot and he’s a striker, not a central defender. However, it’s going to take a while for the man people call ‘JT’ to get over this miss, perhaps it’s a good job that England aren’t featuring in Euro 2008, where a shoot-out is always likely.
The Guardian report that Terry has received some comforting words from none other than Sebastian Coe. The double Olympic gold medallist is urging the skipper to consign Wednesday night’s events into the past and look to the future, it’s only just begun apparently.
“If I could tell him one thing it would be to forget it,” Coe said. “It’s over, it’s history, and just be relieved that it happened for your club rather than in a World Cup final for England. To all Chelsea supporters the guy is a total hero and nothing will have altered because of last night. I’m just sorry it had to happen to him.”
Nevertheless, they say what goes around comes around and Terry’s previous altercation with Tevez did not exactly endear him to the hearts of neutrals. Many people with no allegiance to Manchester United appear to be deriving joy from ‘Mr Chelsea’s’ miss and Didier Drogba’s red card, with the pair both involved in many unsavoury incidents this season.