FEB 4 — Almost exactly two years ago, on February 5, 2010, Chelsea defender John Terry was stripped of the England captaincy amidst revelations of dalliances with the girlfriend of his former Stamford Bridge teammate Wayne Bridge.

Almost exactly one year ago, Terry was reinstated to the national team’s armband as manager Fabio Capello declared that losing the leadership status for 12 months was sufficient punishment.

And now the soap opera continues, with Terry being removed from the captaincy for a second time following the allegations that he racially abused QPR defender Anton Ferdinand in a match at Loftus Road in October.

The decision was taken by the board of the Football Association (FA), rather than by Capello himself, and it was really an inevitable outcome as soon as the court proceedings against Terry were delayed until early July — after the conclusion of the upcoming European Championships.

A significant and unwanted distraction would have been unavoidable if Terry (picture) had travelled to the Euros as captain while he still had a court case hanging over him. Every defeat, mistake, disagreement or controversy — and there are always plenty of those whenever England limp their way through a major tournament — would have been automatically attributed by fans and media to Terry’s presence as captain; every black member of the squad would have been relentlessly questioned and scrutinised for any sign of internal discord; every Capello press conference would have been hijacked by the JT captaincy issue.

Even though there’s every chance that Terry will eventually be found innocent and the decision should not be taken as an admission of his guilt, it would simply have caused a hugely negative distraction if a man accused of racism — a serious crime in contemporary British society — had been given the honour of leading his country into a major international event.

So the FA had no choice but to take the captaincy away from the Chelsea defender, but it’s a shame they didn’t reach that same verdict in October, when the allegations were first lodged. They must have known that it would take a while for the matter to be cleared up, so why wait for more than three months to make the decision? Sadly, acting quickly isn’t within the FA’s nature.

It’s also a shame that Terry couldn’t make the initiative himself and ask to be relieved of the captaincy duties while the case remains unresolved. But that would have been perceived by some as an admission of guilt, so I can understand why Terry forced the FA to make the decision for him. And anyway, such a move could have also been regarded as an act of retreat — and JT is stubborn and bloody-minded enough to make sure that he never backs away from anything.

Capello will not be happy because he would have been perfectly comfortably — wrongly so, I feel — to travel to Poland and Ukraine with Terry still as his leader. But the Italian will need to put aside his irritation because he now has two decisions to make: whether Terry should be included as a member of the squad at all, and who should replace him as captain.

On the first point, I believe Terry should still be available for selection. Leaving him out would be an unjust form of punishment before his guilt or innocence has been established, and the main problem with his captaincy was the public clamour that would have resulted from giving such a prominent role to a man accused of racism. His presence as an ordinary member of the squad, although still provocative to the tabloid media, is on the whole much less incendiary.

If Capello decides to leave Terry out of the squad altogether (which he won’t), it should be for footballing reasons alone — although he should also seek the opinions of his senior squad members to gauge whether they would resent Terry’s presence within the group. But that’s not Capello’s style, and he regards Terry so highly I’d be amazed if he doesn’t select the defender for his 23-man squad.

As for the captaincy: in the past Rio Ferdinand would have been an obvious choice, but he and Capello had a public falling-out last year when the captaincy was handed back to Terry and it’s not clear whether those bridges have been mended yet.

Furthermore, the Manchester United defender is no longer an automatic member of Capello’s squad — he was left out for the friendlies against Sweden and Spain in November — and handing the armband to a seriously injury-prone 33-year-old would be a risky move. So Rio (ironically enough, of course, the brother of the player at the centre of the allegations against Terry) is an unlikely candidate.

Instead, Capello may well turn to Liverpool skipper Steven Gerrard. The dynamic midfielder has done the job before — most recently during the disastrous World Cup campaign in South Africa — and would command the respect of his teammates as one of the most experienced members of the squad. He seems to be the obvious option and I’d be surprised if Capello went with anyone else.

Capello, no doubt, will be among the spectators at Stamford Bridge on Sunday when, with the neat sense of timing that always seems to surround John Terry, Manchester United are the visitors.

The pre-match talk has been dominated by the question of whether Rio Ferdinand will shake Terry’s hand during the pre-match formalities, or whether he’ll spring to the defence of his brother and black men everywhere by snubbing the Chelsea skipper.

Terry, as always, won’t give a damn either way — and he’ll probably score the winner with a header from a corner. You heard it here first.

* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.