That said, how John Terry can honestly vote for Michel Ballack is a fucking mystery, even, I would imagine, to casual Chelsea fans. Ballack rides on a reputation of brilliance that can only be supported by his often stunningly catalytic international play. I believe, when one considers his contract, that any rational person can only surmise that he is a banefully average-to-just-above-average Premier League player.

How can anyone, for that matter, rationally boast Ballack as being anywhere near the best player in the world. I mean, c’mon.

Can we really say that JT doesn’t know that much about — RONALDO, XAVI, KAKA, INIESTA — as well?

Would anyone out there take Ballack over any of those 4 players on any team you were playing for/managing/supporting?

That said, perhaps the fact that Terry knows VERY much about three of those four players — if his slights, both verbal and in book form are any indication — would make it fair to say that he’s voted with his “emotions,” which is his RIGHT.

The reason why this is a big deal, in my opinion, is because JT has increasingly over the last decade been cast equally by many supporters and pundits as the mold from which the yardstick of uber British (sporting) integrity, an enduring emblem of the English working class values that once completely permeated the sport until the creation of the EPL (though, that didn’t stop him from getting drunk and taunting Americans post-9/11 — a fact no one should ever forget, though we should forgive. Perhaps.)

This veneer’s shine, to indulge a cliche, has certainly been ground and scratched to significant degree as of late — even Rio Ferdinand didn’t use a potential transfer to leverage his controversial contract dispute back in 2005. The difference for me is that JT initiated his contract talks out of the blue(s), pardon the pun, with the help of Citeh (who would now probably pay him 300,000 a week, in truth). In fact, JTs “loyalties” are more in line with the man who would be his closet rival for the aforementioned mantle of veneration, Gerrard, who almost joined him at Chelsea. I think anyone would be hard pressed to maintain that over the past season or so Gerrard, oft injured just like Ballack, wouldn’t have been more deserving of Terry’s vote than Ballack is/was.

As it seems, the man who has cultivated his millions — be it through his newish 170,00 a week contract or his fledging career as a ticket tout — by playing up to the anointed personification of the British Bulldog is one of the biggest, shadiest fucking money grubbers around.

But that’s his RIGHT as well. In our day and time, it’s rather ridiculous to label players money grubbing assholes — it goes without saying. If one barely had a high school education and were given 10-15 years to accrue as much wealth as possible, many of us would become so.

However, many supporters are looking for something else, and many have been searching for tears in Terry’s work dungarees for quite some time. As it turns out, many such tears aren’t the result of hard tackling; therefore, many of us were/are right about him, and so those who’ve been drafting the design plans to embroider his face over the intersections of the St. George cross and Union Jack over the past 6 or so years might want to rethink their unwavering dedication to such a questionable, uh, gentleman.

That said, such flags would make an interesting juxtaposition with those AIG emblazoned United strips — if Gary Cook were running both up a flag pool, a cynical-yet-not-inaccurate visual metaphor for the present condition of premier English football might be complete.

Who knows.