The interview had been candid if a little hasty in some of its conclusions. The captain seemed surprised by the havoc it caused. He was summoned to an urgent explanatory meeting with his head coach while fans mounted their podiums, exercised their blogging rights and in large numbers demanded he be stripped of the armband.

This may sound like the recent adventures of Arsenal’s William Gallas. It is not. It is a contemporary story of a skipper of another team, the one followed by the people of western Europe’s most populous nation. Last month, the comments of Germany captain Michael Ballack in the Frankfurter Allge-meine Zeitung (FAZ) put him in trouble with his manager, Joachim Loew, who, even after a face-to-face, clear-the-air meeting, has not let the issue lie. Last Wednesday, Loew again reminded Ballack to keep to himself his thoughts on the balance of the national squad and the way it is managed.

Happily, Chelsea’s Ballack does not yet feel restrained from reflecting on the role of the modern captain, an issue hanging heavy and bold over a London derby today featuring the deposed and new skippers of Arsenal - Gallas and Cesc Fabregas - against, among others, a team including the captains of England, Germany and, but for the suspension of Didier Drogba, Ivory Coast. They each have their own interpretations of how to lead, according to Ballack. “Every captain has his own style, and I think this period is different from 10 or 15 years ago,” he says. “As a captain now you really have to be able to adapt.”

His own example made the point. “A few weeks ago, I did the same thing [as Gallas]. I did a little interview and it became a very big thing.” Big enough that after the FAZ published it, the magazine Kicker surveyed 20,000 German fans and found o n l y 38 per cent g a v e B a l l a c k a thumbs-up for opinions critical of the management. Die Welt found 55 per cent thought the captain should be thrown out of the Germany squad.

Ballack had highlighted what he saw as Loew’s “disrespectful” posture towards some of the senior players in the German team. More echoes: Gallas nine days ago remarked to a reporter that younger teammates seemed “insolent” and questioned their courage. Gallas lost his position.

Ballack, who inherited Gallas’s No 13 shirt at Chelsea when the French defender restlessly sought a way out of Stam-ford Bridge two years ago, can now put himself in Gallas’s shoes. “The young players who are coming through are different,” he says. “When I was a young player of 20, I was different from what I am at 32. But as a captain you have to be able to put yourself in the position of the younger players, how they are feeling. They tend to speak more. Maybe there is today more equality and not such a hierarchy. Maybe it’s better being a young kid now. When I grew up it was different. You looked up to the older ones; you didn’t talk to them a lot when they were in their group together. That was normal.” B a l l a c k l a u g h s when he recalls his call-ups to the German national squad in the late 1990s. “ S o m e t i m e s I would arrive at the national squad and the senior players I looked up to didn’t even know I had been selected,” he says. “After three days of practice they’d say, ‘Oh, who’s this guy?’ A captain would not automatically speak to a new player. I’m not saying that was bad, just that it was a different time.”

In time, Ballack would be given the German armband and named captain of his country’s biggest club, Bayern Munich. His leadership has attracted intense scrutiny ever since.

Ballack acknowledges he does not fit the mould of his predecessors: he is no more like the loudmouthed Lothar Matthaus or the strutting Stefan Effenberg than Gallas is like Tony Adams or Frank McLintock.

In his late 20s, the comparisons became a bugbear for Ballack. “In the former years it was different. Some people expect strong words out on the pitch. Me, I was not the same as Matthaus or Effenberg. They liked to play their games with the media sometimes. What is important is that the captain is accepted, that he has personality and that he has a good relationship with the team and head coach.”

With status, Ballack found himself challenging the idea of hierarchy in which he had been schooled, that your elders were always your betters. He offers the example of the two forceful men who had been goalkeepers for most of his captaincy. “Oliver Kahn had a lot of influence in the team but not so much when I became captain,” he says. “Jens Lehmann then became the number one and was a lot older than me. It was not a problem.

I was the captain and I worked at establishing a good relationship with him and sought him out for discussions because he had experience and was one of the few players who had knowledge of playing for clubs outside Germany. That was valuable.” Might Arsenal, a strikingly young team, miss the seniority of a figure, however eccentric, such as Lehmann? “He was a leader because he was a success, he was always very professional,” says Ballack. “I am only looking from the outside but what I observe with Arsenal is a very young team who find themselves captained by a very young man.”

Ballack says Fabregas looks the part. “As a footballer, what he can do goes without saying. He’s been involved in the first-team at Arsenal for three or four years, which gives him a lot of experience for his age. He won the European championship last summer with Spain, so he should be carrying that confidence. “You watch Arsenal play and you see he’s the one who’s controlling things. I’d call him their playmaker, even if he’s not a No 10. On the pitch he has a very big influence. You see that he’s accepted by the other players. If he wants the ball he gets it from them. Cesc has reached a level above the other young players, so there are a lot of boys of 19 or 20 who will look up to him.”

Ballack believes Fabregas still has lessons to learn. “To be captain now is an important stage in his development, even if it has come out of a situation that nobody expected. I think from his standing as a player he can handle this job.

“But it can be hard for a young player because you don’t have the experience, and sometimes you can really miss that. You can have everything else but you need experience as a captain. Still, it is a decision made by Arsène Wenger, who knows what he’s doing. Cesc is appreciated and respected by Arsenal, by the fans, by the media and across this league. But normally at Cesc’s age, you are not the captain.”

Ballack understands why not. Would he have made a good captain at 21? “No,” he says, laughing. “I wasn’t ready for it then.”

BORN LEADERS: YOUNG CAPTAINS WHO MET THE CHALLENGE

BOBBY MOORE: West Ham captain at 21 England captain at 22
Natural leader who played 544 games for the Hammers , lifting the FA Cup and Cup-winners' Cup, and captaining England to their 1966 World Cup win.

TONY ADAMS Arsenal captain at 21 England captain at 26
Remained Arsenal captain for 14 years, winning four league titles and three FA Cups.

RAY WILKINS Chelsea captain at 18 England captain at 25
Captained Chelsea back to the First Division in 1977 and helped England qualify for 1980 European championships.

FERNANDO TORRES Atletico Madrid captain at 19
Atleti now admit they expected too much, too young. Entrusted with spearheading their return to the top flight, he bore it well.

PEP GUARDIOLA
Barcelona captain at 22 A boyhood hero of Fabregas, Guardiola, like the Arsenal captain, played in central midfield, came from Catalonia and showed sufficient maturity in his early 20s to be named skipper. Now head coach at Barça.