Legacies help — clubs should utilise them

WHAT took them so long? Why did it take until the last minute for Chelsea to realise what they could be losing in John Terry? I’m not saying Chelsea owed it to Terry to offer him a contract because of his long service. They didn’t. Nor am I suggesting the defender who has played this season is playing like he did 10 years ago. He isn’t. There is a bigger picture. Chelsea shouldn’t be looking at Terry and thinking about what he will offer to the team over the 10 months of next season. They should look at the next 10 years, working out whether he could become a manager, a head of the academy or a director of football. Since Terry announced in January that it looked likely he would leave, I found it difficult to understand how he and Chelsea could drift apart. I felt that way when Frank Lampard ended his stay on the King’s Road, as I did when Steven Gerrard and Liverpool went their separate ways. I’m not talking about sentiment or keeping big reputations in a team because of past glories. The issue here is the future and legacies — why are clubs prepared to wave goodbye to men who could be crucial to the next generation? Terry has been at Chelsea since he was 14. He’s got a lifetime’s experience in the game, he knows what it takes to reach the top and then to stay there. He’s got the kind of CV plenty of other clubs would want to tap into. Why else do you think Manchester City signed Lampard? But this is not an isolated case. When I first spoke to Brendan Rodgers in the summer of 2012, he told me he had a role in mind for me that could be both coaching and playing. I was delighted as I had told him it was going to be my last season. When I met him face to face, however, the offer had gone and he had brought Mike Marsh down from the academy. A few months later, I told Liverpool that Sky had made contact and wanted me to join them but nobody at Anfield asked me to wait. They were well within their rights, of course, but I did find it strange. It’s now three years since I played my last game. I would never go looking for a role and the only way I could see myself working for Liverpool again was if Jurgen Klopp or a future manager asked me. I remember being in the directors’ box at Parkhead for a Champions League game between Celtic and Ajax; Marc Overmars and Edwin van der Sar were there, in an official capacity, while Dennis Bergkamp and Frank de Boer took charge of the team. Bayern Munich have things right. Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, their former player and current chief executive, has it in mind for the likes of Philipp Lahm, Thomas Muller and Manuel Neuer to have big roles in the future. That doesn’t seem to be the case in England and the way Chelsea have left it so late with Terry is the latest example. Clubs shouldn’t be scared of keeping hold of their legends. They should be doing everything to ensure they safeguard the future.