The John Terry racism saga has taken another bizarre turn today as Fabio Capello has resigned from his position as England manager. Capello had recently protested the Football Association's decision to strip John Terry of the England captaincy after his trial for the alleged racial abuse of Anton Ferdinand was set for July - without consulting him - and it was pretty clear that neither the manager nor the FA were particularly thrilled with the situation.

While the FA are painting this as a fairly amicable separation, quotes attributed to the now-former manager portray a very different story, with Capello apparently claiming that he was insulted and undermined as manager and that removing Terry from the captaincy was the height of hypocrisy. Remember, this all came about from someone watching a Youtube video of John Terry shouting at Anton Ferdinand and reporting it to the police. It's astonishing that something so relatively small has managed to bring down both England's captain and her manager on top of that. What a crazy day.

It is, obviously, highly unlikely that whoever ends up managing the country (the hot favourite is, of course, Harry Redknapp) will be unlikely to reinstate Terry as captain. Hopefully this is all the push him needs to recover from international football and focus on Chelsea.

Crazy day.

Yep, he totally went there:

NB: Two separate tweets condensed.

I'm not Fabio Capello's biggest fan, and I'm not entire sure I totally blame the FA for making this move (although the timing is awful), but this is an obvious sign of just how this decision was made: In panic and with no thought whatsoever. England will be going into Euro 2012 with a captain who isn't an a manager at odds with its own association. How very... well, England.

The John Terry/Anton Ferdinand saga was drawn out even further earlier in the week when it was announced that his trial would not begin until after the European championships in July. Largely due to that delay, the FA has today released a statement that John Terry will not be captaining the England squad at this summer's tournament. Terry was reportedly notified by phone of the decision this morning and has yet to comment publically on the matter. Fabio Capello was also reportedly informed of the board's decision this morning by phone.

Frankly this decision may be a good thing for both Terry and Chelsea. You have to assume that he's going to have some additional motivation to show his quality now, he certainly seems to play very well every time his life off the pitch sees a little more turmoil. You'd also have to wonder if this is simply a precursor to his being left off the squad, but that decision rests on both the player and Capello. His having the summer off wouldn't be the worst thing to happen to Chelsea though, so maybe that would be for the best.

Petr Cech was already a legend and a veritable superhero before dropping all pretense and donning his carbon-fiber mask for this weekend's Euro '12 Qualifying Playoffs.  Is it any surprise then that he shut out a dangerous Montenegro side (sporting the talents of Mirko Vucinic and Stevan Jovetic) over 180 minutes?  Probably not.

Glorious!

Continue reading this post »

Chelsea have four players in the England squad to face Spain and Sweden in international friendlies this week, and the big story is Daniel Sturridge's first senior callup. Obviously, the striker's been in good goalscoring form (if somewhat erratic at everything else) for the past nine months, and it had been a bit of a mystery as to how he's not gotten the call previously. But nevermind about the past snubs - he's in now and will hopefully impress.

The rest of the Chelsea boys are the usual crowd - John Terry retains his place despite the ongoing racism investigation by both the FA and the Metropolitan police, while Ashley Cole and Frank Lampard both retain their spots in the squad, although they're hardly guaranteed to start.

Anyway, here's the full list:

• Goalkeepers: Joe Hart, Scott Carson, David Stockdale.
• Defenders: Glen Johnson, Kyle Walker, Phil Jones, Gary Cahill, Phil Jagielka, John Terry, Joleon Lescott, Ashley Cole, Leighton Baines.
• Midfielders: Scott Parker, Gareth Barry, Frank Lampard, Jack Rodwell, James Milner, Stewart Downing, Adam Johnson, Theo Walcott.
• Forwards: Darren Bent, Bobby Zamora, Gabriel Agbonlahor, Daniel Sturridge, Daniel Welbeck.

Check out SBNation.com for all of the latest transfer deadline rumors and news.

It's been too long since we entertained ourselves with the amusing ramblings of Ian McGarry, but this one is just too good to pass up. Chelsea, apparently, aren't done with Luka Modric yet (even if Tottenham Hotspur think they are, the fools) and they're totally going to make a 30M plus Florent Malouda offer for the little Croatian who could™. Spurs, apparently, have preemptively rejected that offer, asking for Didier Drogba instead.

Since the world I'm used to living in mostly features Ian McGarry being wrong about mostly everything*, it's difficultto take this one very seriously. It is interesting, however, to look at how we'd react to each proposed deal - I would be happy to offer Malouda as bait to Spurs, mostly because I don't think he's worth that much on the market, but if Chelsea gave Drogba to Tottenham for anything less than a completely exorbitant price, I might explode in a fiery rage.

*Unless Marco van Basten became Chelsea manager while nobody was paying attention and subsequently signed Neymar.

Anyway, until a more reputable source has this one, I think my stance is that nothing is happening. Although, yeah, the Malouda option is intriguing.

After Danny Sturridge's coming-out party in the last half of the 2010/11 season with Bolton, many would have tipped him to shine at the under-21 European Championships in Denmark. Ok, maybe they wouldn't have expected him to shine against Spain, but still. Instead, we got a gruesome performance from one of England and Chelsea's brightest young stars (the rest of the team wasn't really any better).

Continue reading this post »

With some key international games coming up this summer it's not exactly vacation time for some of Chelsea's stars or their lesser-known players. On June 4th, England's senior side face Switzerland at Wembley in a Euro 2012 qualifying match that, if won, should probably see England in prime position to qualify from the group, while the U-21 team (minus Jack Wilshere and Andy Carroll) are looking to do well in the 2011 U-21 European Championships, where everyone will lose to Spain.

Continue reading this post »