Together at Last?
Steve Bruce has history with John Terry, which meant you had to take the early rumours of Aston Villa’s interest in Chelsea’s captain fantastic with more than a pinch of salt.
We’ve seen Bruce and Terry playing golf in Portugal this summer and the Villa boss has also admitted that when he was in the frame for the England job, bringing the 36-year-old back into the national team picture, in a coaching capacity, was on his agenda.
Terrier Terry Bid
The roots to their relationship can be traced back to Bruce’s ill-fated time managing Huddersfield Town during the 1999/2000 season, which finished with Bruce later contemplating legal action, after the Terriers’ chairman Barry Rubery had lambasted him in the club’s programme, claiming Bruce had made the mistake of “believing that a great footballer would make a great football manager” and questioning his transfer record.
Before things turned sour though, Bruce had been courting a young John Terry, who was faced with trying to dislodge the French 1998 World Cup winning centre back pairing of Frank Leboeuf and Marcel Desailly in the Chelsea team.
At the time, Chelsea boss Gianluca Vialli was actually open to selling Terry.
“I bid £750,000 for him, a lot of money then, and Chelsea accepted it,” Bruce has revealed since. “But the boy didn’t want to leave Stamford Bridge.”
Terry stayed and quickly managed to make serious inroads into the team, despite the competition he faced. The rest is obviously history, but can you imagine if he had gone to Huddersfield? Maybe Bruce would have never have ended up managing the Blues? Maybe Terry wouldn’t have slipped up taking that penalty in Moscow? Who knows, maybe even Huddersfield Town might have got to the Premier League sooner than this year!
As Jimmy Greaves said, “football is a funny old game”, but if Bruce and Terry do finally end up together, it will be a serendipitous one as well.
UTV
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