Twelve minutes solved the John Terry affair but bigger headaches await

Fabio Capello may have offered a master class in "crisis management" last week but England's coach is now being asked to perform football's equivalent of pushing a boulder up a very steep hill. Sacking John Terry as national captain is one thing - replacing Ashley Cole while conducting running repairs on the rest of England's crumbling defensive wall is quite another. The Italian will have to compensate for Cole's absence when Egypt visit London next month. The African champions promise to be appreciably less ring rusty than Wayne Bridge at Wembley. That is, providing Capello can persuade Bridge to replace Cole at left-back and thus play alongside his one-time best friend, John Terry. Such is the power of Premier League football that soap-sudded accounts of Terry's alleged affair with Bridge's former girlfriend have made headlines across the Middle East - although the Cairo press tended to be rather more interested in the Chilcot Inquiry - and now Egypt seem poised to play a walk-on part in the next episode of the John and Wayne Show. John Wayne would probably have told Bridge that victimhood was unbecoming, before challenging him to refuse to let Terry wreck his private life and a long cherished World Cup dream. The Manchester City manager, Roberto Mancini, has told his left-back precisely that, so Capello, a man of few personal words to his players, may well let his compatriot serve as England's unofficial psychologist before shepherding Bridge back into the fold. Presuming Toni Terry does not do severe damage to her husband during the "compassionate leave" he has been granted from Chelsea - the centre-half yesterday flew out of Heathrow - Capello's role will be to ensure, that once ensconced inside England's training base near Watford, the two defenders prove capable of "compartmentalising" their lives. Or, as Glenn Hoddle might have described it, "putting their professional heads on". Talking of Hoddle, Capello could do worse than reflect on his England predecessor's suggestion that "pigs and troughs" represent international management's natural rhythms. The loss of the world's best left-back, Cole - added to the more minor affliction currently keeping out Glen Johnson, Rio Ferdinand's back trouble and Terry's private life - certainly does not suggest England are climbing towards a peak. Neither is this the zenith of Terry's career and the captain clearly has much to ponder as he doubtless spends part of the next few days walking the "Arab Street" - or at least pacing Dubai's high-end shopping malls while Toni flexes the plastic. The apparent lack of humility, soul-searching introspection or regret demonstrated by Terry in an interview immediately after the brutal, 12-minute meeting with Capello that led to his loss of the captaincy suggested that the Italian had made very much the right decision. As he watches the waves crash on Jumeirah beach from the sanctuary of Dubai's Le Royal Méridien hotel, England's former leader could do worse than remember that adultery is punishable with a prison sentence in the United Arab Emirates. Fortunately the United Kingdom is somewhat less medieval but even in the 21st century it is not always possible to divide the personal from the public. Capello's problem is that unless he is confident Bridge and Terry can separate those uncomfortably entwined aspects of their lives, Egypt may become just the first of several sides to open up England's suddenly less than Italianesque defence.