Italians amused and bewildered by English hypocrisy over John Terry

Posted Saturday, February 06, 2010 by theguardian.com

Italians amused and bewildered by English hypocrisy over John Terry
Gianluigi Lentini was not censured by Fabio Capello at Milan after an alleged indiscretion in 1993.

Italian sports journalists struggled to stifle their laughter this week as they followed the John Terry affair, and sought to explain why England is dumping questions about leadership and extramarital affairs in the lap of an Italian. "This is one for the history books," said Il Giornale, smirking. "Who would have thought of asking one of us to become the moral authority in such a delicate question?"

Owned by the family of Silvio Berlusconi, Il Giornale may well have an axe to grind about Fleet Street's keen interest in the Italian prime minister's nights with escort girls. But it could be forgiven for pointing out that not only is Fabio Capello being handed the job of deciding Terry's fate as England captain, but his go‑between, Franco Baldini, is also Italian, as is Terry's club manager, Carlo Ancelotti.

And if Ancelotti has already made it clear Terry can stay on as the Chelsea captain, Italian pundits were in no doubt Capello would like to do the same. "What goes on on the pitch is important to him, period," one said.

No one can recall Capello ever dishing out moral discipline during his stints at Milan, Roma and Juventus. The wayward striker Antonio Cassano, who played under Capello at Roma and Real Madrid, proudly revealed in his autobiography he had notched up over 600 lovers, including some he sneaked into the physio's room at Roma under the nose of the manager.

Capello dished out punishment to Cassano, but only for his behaviour on the pitch, once screaming: "Only rabbits walk away!" when Cassano stormed out of training.

Up in Milan, Capello was told by a journalist that his new signing Marcel Desailly had been spotted in a bar at 3am before training. "Capello took the player aside and calmly said: 'Milan may seem big, but everyone knows everything.' Desailly settled in very quickly after that," recalled the same journalist.

In another incident, the Milan winger Gianluigi Lentini famously crashed his Porsche in 1993 while driving at 200kmh amid rumours of a visit to the wife of the Juventus player Toto Schillaci. But that was Schillaci's estranged wife and Capello never acted over the episode. Certainly, there is no indication that the fact Lentini never featured regularly for Milan once he had recovered from his injuries had anything to do with him being punished by Capello.

Managers throughout Serie A are loth to crack down on private lives. "There is just less attention in sports to moral questions here," said La Repubblica's Fabrizio Bocca. "All that counts is that you can keep up during training," said a second journalist.

The Italian press also does a fair job of ignoring salacious stories of players misbehaving with other players' wives when they arise. One journalist said he could think of two recent incidents that were widely rumoured but never made the back pages. One exception was the much-publicised decision by the wife of Paolo Barison, who played for Italy in the 1966 World Cup, to move in with his Napoli team-mate, José Altafini.

Today, David Beckham's return to Milan for a second winter spell is proof that players get an easier life in Italy, said one Milan watcher. "David has told fellow players that one of the reasons he came back here was because no one worries about his private life. We are more interested in what he does on the pitch than where Victoria is going shopping."

Turning its attention to the Premier League, Corriere della Sera stopped laughing long enough to have a stab at explaining the media storm in which Terry is being tossed around. Coverage, it wrote, is equally divided between "scandalous entertainment", "sociological dissertation work on spoilt footballers", and "condemnation of the poor behaviour of people in public positions".

The only moral position taken by the English authorities to date, the paper wrote, is cowardice. "The sports minister was horrified but did not lift a finger and the FA passed the hot potato to the coach." Il Giornale went one further, calling the sports minister, Gerry Sutcliffe, "a jackal who scented blood and jumped in". John Terry, it added, "is just a footballer, not a priest".