Farewell farce FA will investigate Terry’s early departure
Probe into bets on the exact time of substitution Kicking ball out of play may have broken rules
John Terry’s contrived farewell substitution was under investigation last night after the Football Association began looking into bets placed on the 26th-minute change.
The FA contacted bookmakers after it emerged that at least three punters had won thousands of pounds betting on the specific time of Terry’s exit during Chelsea’s final Premier League game of the season on Sunday, at odds of 100-1.
The Twitter account of club fanzine cfcuk also posted a tweet more than half an hour before kick-off of the champions’ 5-1 win over Sunderland forecasting that Terry would be substituted in the 26th minute – to correspond with the shirt number he has worn since he made his debut 19 years ago. However, there is no suggestion of any wrongdoing by the clubs, bookmakers, punters or anyone else. The investigations appear to be for technical reasons only.
The FA was also under pressure last night to examine whether Chelsea had breached its rules by contriving to ensure the ball was kicked out of play so their captain could leave the field with a guard of honour at a pre-planned moment.
There is no suggestion the game itself was fixed or that any cheating at betting was attempted but, according to FA regulations, arranging in advance “any event within a match or competition” is also an offence. Terry confirmed after the game that the manner of his departure had been pre-arranged following talks with Chelsea manager Antonio Conte. Sunderland manager David Moyes also admitted his side deliberately kicked the ball out of play to allow the substitution to take place, saying Terry “deserved a great send-off ”.
The action taken by the FA over the Terry substitution was backed by Keith Hackett, the former general manager of Professional Game Match Officials Ltd, and Chris Eaton, former Fifa head of security and former executive director for sport integrity for the International Centre for Sport Security.
Hackett told The Daily Telegraph: “There’s a regulation and a regulation has been broken. You can’t do that.” Eaton added: “Even the best noble cause to manipulate play creates an acceptance that play can be manipulated. In my view, it should be banned and made clear in the rules of the game – or certainly in the policies of the game – that for no reason should you falsely manipulate the flow of play for any cause, be it noble or otherwise.”
The Premier League did not consider the substitution to have compromised the integrity of the competition, because Chelsea had already finished top of the table and Sunderland bottom.
That was before it emerged that Paddy Power had paid out on bets on the 26th-minute change. Paddy Power said in a statement: “We replied to a novelty request for odds on John Terry’s substitution – one of hundreds on the Chelsea game – and fair play to the three punters who were on at odds of 100-1. To be honest, the only mistake here is we should have clocked sooner there’d be another cringeworthy Chelsea send-off for JT.”
The Terry substitution was not without precedent. Didier Drogba was carried off by his Chelsea teammates midway through the first half of a fixture against the same opponents two years ago on his farewell .
Gambling industry experts expressed surprise that a market was in place for the bet, with William Hill spokesman Joe Crilly saying: “We don’t offer betting on substitutions because it is too easy for an unscrupulous person to manipulate the market.”
There is no suggestion that the decision to substitute Terry was anything other than an attempt by Chelsea to give their long-serving captain a farewell to remember. The substitution process began when the clock ticked on to 26 minutes, which is the 27th minute of the match, and by the time he left the field it was the 28th minute. Yet Paddy Power honoured the bets, saying: “Clearly the send-off was planned for the 26th minute to commemorate JT – hence we paid out.”
Chelsea declined to comment on the FA probe but it is understood their own inquiries found that Sunderland were told about the plan only after the match had begun.
‘We should have clocked sooner there’d be another cringeworthy send-off for JT’
ou can tell a lot about a man in the way he says goodbye. John Terry stagemanaged his own send-off from Chelsea this weekend with all the subtlety and grace of a hippopotamus at the wheel of a forklift truck.
Just as happened in Moscow in 2008, when he insisted on taking what he anticipated to be the Champions League winning penalty only to feel the ground slip from under him, the workings of hubris came back to cuff him resolutely round the ear.
His tearful send-off after 26 minutes, through a guard of honour of his colleagues, was meant to serve as an appropriate full stop to a wonderful, stellar, trophy-strewn career. Instead it looked cheap and contrived, sending a shiver of distaste down the spine of many observers.
Compare that to what happened to Wayne Rooney on Sunday. There was no marching off at 10 minutes pointedly to coincide with his shirt number. No phalanx of applause. Rather, starting his team’s final league match of the season to ensure freshness in the legs of those required for more significant engagements ahead, he left the stage when his manager deemed it appropriate.
Sure, from the crowd there was a stirring ovation for his departure on 90 minutes. But what made it all the more meaningful was the identity of the player who came on for him.
Angel Gomes, the first footballer born this century to play in the Premier League, later described his delight at replacing the all-time leading scorer of the club he has supported all his life. He tweeted a picture of him taken with Rooney 10 years ago, when he was a gaptoothed six-year-old in a United shirt beaming in his hero’s presence. Alongside it he put a shot of him replacing Rooney in Sunday’s fixture with the caption, “10 years later! Anything is possible if you believe”.
It wasn’t just the suspicious improvement in Rooney’s hairline across that decade that was remarkable about Gomes’s poignant tribute. It was the way it reinforced a fundamental understanding of the long-serving captain’s exit. There was no choreographed insistence that an era had come to an end with his going, no engineered assertion that we would never see his like again.
Instead, his withdrawal was spontaneously cast as an act of continuity, of one generation seamlessly melding into the next. Rather than that of a self-styled legend, this was the departure of the ultimate team man, a casting back to the moment in August 2002 when he first ran out in Everton colours, a moment that almost certainly passed Gomes by. After all, he was then just learning how to walk. Sure, unlike Terry at Chelsea, there has not yet been official confirmation that this was indeed the last we will see of Rooney in United colours at Old Trafford. But every indication has been given that his time has been called.
His starting participation on Sunday suggests any involvement in the Europa League final on Wednesday will be peripheral and ceremonial, that he is only likely to play if sent on by his manager for the dying embers of a certain victory. What his last-minute substitution insisted was that he will be gone over the summer. He will leave behind an astonishing record of achievement and a host of wonderful memories. But what his going will not do is stop all the Old Trafford clocks. This is not the end. As that farewell of his made appropriately clear, the baton has been passed. And Angel Gomes is already running with it.
It was an act of continuity, of one generation seamlessly melding into the next