English football has another farewell tour. They are becoming annual affairs. Twelve months after Steven Gerrard’s extended goodbye comes John Terry’s.
Institutions are being stripped off an inspiration. The confirmation that Chelsea do not plan to offer Terry a new contract came, like Gerrard’s announcement that he was bound for LA Galaxy, in January.
Each set the scene for a four-month send-off. Everything is framed in those terms: a chance to win a final trophy, a final game against Manchester United, even, in Gerrard’s case, a final sending-off.
The Liverpudlian was the subject of an outpouring of emotion from his own. There was ample evidence of the respect he commanded at other clubs.
Terry can expect eulogies at Stamford Bridge but, given his capacity to polarise, fewer ovations from outsiders.
Yet what his impending departure illustrates is the enduring difficulty of dealing with a declining titan.
Much is sentimentalised in the Premier League yet its leading clubs appear guilty of callousness. Great servants are cast aside, the focus on the future obscuring past deeds.
Whether or not Liverpool were right to dispense with Gerrard, their crass approach to contract negotiations ushered him toward the exit.
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Chelsea do not yet have a manager for next season, but they have decided their captain is probably surplus to requirements.
Terry, like Gerrard, retained a centrality in the autumn of his career. It was easier for Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes to slip away into retirement.
Both had effected a quiet transition from automatic choices to influential squad players. Rotation was a dirtier word to both Gerrard and Terry.
Each, too, felt his commitment to one club was too strong to join rivals.
Chelsea can be confident there is no repeat of Frank Lampard’s departure, when they assumed their record goalscorer was making an immediate move stateside only for him to materialise at Manchester City and set up an equaliser against the club he graced for 13 years.
Lampard was another totem of a golden era, both for Chelsea and the Premier League. One by one, they are being removed, sometimes voluntarily, sometimes not, with the passage of time the prime cause for most vacating the stage.
Gerrard. Terry. Lampard. Giggs. Scholes. Rio Ferdinand. Nemanja Vidic. Jamie Carragher. Ashley Cole. Alex Ferguson. Jose Mourinho.
Perhaps only Arsene Wenger and Wayne Rooney will remain next season. They will be the throwbacks to the days when English football had a footballing supremacy in Europe, to the three seasons from 2006 to 2009 when England supplied nine Uefa Champions League semi-finalists.
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They were times of great certainty. The ‘Big Four’ were the prevailing powers. United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool finished in the top four positions every year.
Their domestic dominance was so entrenched that they could turn their attentions to the continent. Terry was an emblematic figure then, the rock of a famously frugal defence and the face of English entitlement.
There was an inevitability, a relentlessness to the progress of the Premier League superpowers. Not now. United are fifth, Liverpool seventh, Chelsea a lowly 13th.
Perhaps only Arsenal will be in the Champions League next season. Manchester City changed the landscape, providing monied challengers.
Tottenham and the ultimate outsiders Leicester have displaced the established order now. The failings of the favourites have created unpredictable times. There is less quality at the top, more equality.
Barring a remarkable recovery over the final 15 games, Terry’s last league campaign in Chelsea blue will also be his least successful.
They have not finished outside the top six since 1996, 29 months before he debuted. Terry’s advocates argue Chelsea have curtailed his time at Stamford Bridge too soon.
Perhaps, though, he would have got a glorious goodbye if he had gone a year earlier.
The greatest careers always assume an importance that extends beyond the individual.
When Terry takes his leave, both Chelsea and English football will be bidding farewell not just to a high-class defender but to a time that represented a high point in the history of both.
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