When England's players arrived at the team headquarters near Watford this week, Fabio Capello gave them a lecture on respect. He said that everybody in football would be watching their behaviour and their attitude towards referees extra closely this season and that it would be hard for him to select those that continued to attract bad headlines. John Terry did not take this as a positive sign in his quest to retain the England captaincy.

The next day, it was announced that Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, would be leading a government initiative against teenage knife crime and several England footballers, those perceived as good role models, were required to be the public face of the campaign. Rio Ferdinand, captain of Manchester United's double-winning team in many matches last season, sat next to Smith as she faced the cameras and he later spoke with feeling as a community leader and a longstanding anti-knife campaigner, who had helped to establish the Damilola Taylor Trust after the fatal stabbing of the ten-year-old from Peckham nearly eight years ago. Again, Terry did not see this assured display of statesmanship as of great help to his cause.

Frankly, he had long given up hope of leading out England at Wembley against the Czech Republic tonight. Terry had heard the same rumours as the newspaper journalists, the same insider information that has been circulating in football for the best part of six months. It began with a rumble that certain figures within the FA did not see Terry as captaincy material. Always officially denied, of course, but resurfacing from time to time, nonetheless. Chelsea were fined £30,000 for their protests when John Obi Mikel was sent off in a match away to Manchester United on September 23; later they were charged with failing to control their players away to Derby County on November 24. Terry was captain in both games.

There were other issues, too. One too many lurid Sunday newspaper headline, it was said. Not the sort of thing that reflects well on the English game with all those Fifa dignitaries to impress in time for 2018. Then Terry's £150,000 Bentley turned up in a disabled parking space. Brendan Behan wrote that there was no such thing as bad publicity; but he did not spend much time trying to catch Terry a break towards the end of last season. By March 19, when Chelsea drew 4-4 away to Tottenham Hotspur, the whispers had grown to a roar of banner headlines. The lack of respect shown by Terry and his team-mates for Mike Riley, the referee, was the final straw. The next week, Terry was overlooked by Capello as Ferdinand was handed the captain's armband for a match in France, and whole sermons about standards of behaviour were read into the manager's pidgin English and translated answers.

The brusque manner in which Capello announced Ferdinand's elevation at a team meeting was also said to indicate his displeasure at Terry's conduct, rather than his rudimentary grasp of a foreign tongue, and from there the Ferdinand-for-captain rollercoaster went at speed down the rails. Even when Terry was made captain against the United States in May, and scored, it was perceived as a morale-building sop to get him over the agony of missing what would have been the winning penalty in the Champions League shoot-out. Unlike Ferdinand, he did not travel with the team to play Trinidad & Tobago in June. The lines of communication continued to buzz with predictions of a demotion.

Hear the same sentence enough times and you start to believe it, and Terry will have lost count of the number of times he has heard, or read, that Ferdinand was to be Capello's captain. According to his agent, Aaron Lincoln, he was resigned to listening as the manager read out Ferdinand's name at the team gathering after training yesterday when it was known the decision would be revealed.

He did hear the clipped pronunciation of Ferdinand, but as his understudy, not his replacement. Steven Gerrard was the biggest loser, usurped as vice-captain, Terry the biggest winner, reinstated to the position he held under Steve McClaren. What he won was something that was technically in his possession, but it must still have felt like locating a prized item of jewellery down the back of the sofa having long written it off as lost. And successfully claimed on the insurance.

“I was surprised, actually,” Terry said. “You hear little things and with the form Rio has been in and what Manchester United have achieved I thought he would get it.”

So what swung it? Capello has talked of a captain in the mould of Franco Baresi, his leader at AC Milan, and right down to his central defensive position in the team and his penalty miss at a final of a leading tournament, there are similarities. Capello admired Baresi's ability to command the players under pressure, to stay calm and give instructions, to execute the game plan. This is Terry's forte, too. It is no coincidence that he was missing from the two matches in which England fell apart at the back at crucial moments, in Russia and at home against Croatia.

As for Ferdinand, it has been argued that responsibility has brought the best out of him, that it has made him more focused during matches. Yet is that truly an attribute? Why should it need an armband to get a man's head straight? Surely, awarding the captaincy is not about what the job can do for you, but what affect your appointment has on the team. Yes, Ferdinand may appear the better role model, but where do the moralists draw the line? Ferdinand's behaviour after United played away to Chelsea last season was hardly exemplary and he did miss that drugs test. We all know what you get for that these days: a gold medal.

Captive audience

John Terry's second coming as England captain will be witnessed by the biggest football crowd in Europe this evening. The FA has sold more than 65,000 tickets for the first international of the season at Wembley and with ticket offices open throughout the day it hopes that the attendance could be in excess of 70,000. Tickets remain available priced between £30 and £60.

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