England gaffer Fabio Capello has spent the past week deliberating who is the biggest arsehole in his squad in order to hand them the captain’s armband.

It is an Italian tradition, based in superstition, to award the captaincy to the most loathsome player at a club and since the very start of his tenure on English soil the granite-faced Venezian has been determined to incorporate that into the national set-up.

When he was first appointed Capello was delighted to discover that the incumbent at the time was such as astonishing shitbag anyway that no decision was necessary.

John Terry, the unreconstructed vagina in question, is the son of a drug dealing father, a shoplifting mother, and brother to a fellow professional who had an affair with a team-mate’s spouse which tragically resulted in that team-mate later hanging himself.

Terry himself meanwhile was a serial philanderer and had been involved in numerous shameful ‘antics’ away from the game such as,

– urinating in a pint glass in the middle of a nightclub

– savagely beating up a doorman

– getting completely mullered in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 – not through appalled shock and anger at the tragic events like the rest of the civilised world – but in a bowling alley at Heathrow airport, laughing and joking, and causing immense upset to American tourists as they numbly watched the plight of their fellow countrymen back home

– parking his Bentley in a disabled bay rather than paying the 50p an hour for other freely available places nearby

– taking ten grand from undercover journalists to give them a guided tour around Stamford Bridge.

This was all manna from heaven for Capello who couldn’t have ever imagined being blessed with having such an enormously dislikable fucknut leading his team onto the field of play.

Unfortunately the extremely Cockney, self-proclaimed ‘leader of men’ – who has been known to cry like a little girl over footballing set-backs such as missed penalties – then ruined everything by taking his abhorrent behaviour a step too far. Or should that be a bridge too far?

By pre-empting his brother’s predilection for sleeping with a colleague’s loved one Terry created a maelstrom of media frenzy so severe that it gave Capello little choice but to seek a lesser arsehole in his squad to become his ‘capodecino’.

So, following the scandal that erupted like a boil on Andy Townsend’s warty face, the Italian turned to Rio Ferdinand.

A convicted drunk driver who had also, like Terry, been involved in numerous sex scandals, Ferdinand had recently been banned from professional football for eight months for repeatedly avoiding a routine drugs test. Surely he would prove to be the perfect despicable role model for children everywhere?

Capello further improved his hierarchy of miscreants by installing Steven Gerrard as the appropriately-titled vice-captain. After punching a tooth clean out from a DJ’s mouth in a vicious bar-brawl and suffering unsubstantiated – but persistent – rumours of getting a teenager pregnant, Gerrard was the ideal candidate to under-study should the need ever require.

At this point the rest of the England squad became aware that their manager placed a great deal of value on illegal and immoral activities and, for a brief spell, Bisham Abbey became a rogue’s gallery or, as one player described it, a ‘gangsta’s paradise’, as the player’s pushed themselves forward as future candidates for the captain’s role by carrying out a whole litany of misdemeanours.

Leighton Baines threw sausage rolls at visiting dignitaries one afternoon in the canteen, whilst Peter Crouch took a steaming shit between the goal posts as the disgusted keepers practised facing free-kicks.

Meanwhile Terry, now stripped of the honour of ‘head tool’, even attempted to sabotage England’s last World Cup by leading an imaginary mutiny from the players, a move that was said to have delighted his boss.

Since then though, to the immense frustration and dismay of Capello, his deviant charges have turned….well, nice.

Ferdinand recently went a record amount of games without committing a foul, whilst even his understudy Gerrard has ceased flailing to the ground like a flying starfish upon the slightest of contact from an opponent.

This worrying development has resulted in his current quandary about whether to change the pecking order and award the much-sought after armband to a more reliable arsehole.

According to our source within the F.A corridors of power Senor Capello even briefly considered offering the privilege to Ashley Cole who impressed his gaffer by personally sending him phone pics of his genitals last year, but, in our source’s words, ‘There are limits. We want a scumbag, not a total c***’.

He added, ‘In reality its not like Fabio is short of options. Finding a sinner in the England set-up is like shooting fish in a barrel. But he has to be careful this time not to choose someone who will turn all gay and wholesome once they are awarded the honour. Well, I say ‘honour’….its not exactly something to be proud of in the real world I suppose. It’s rather like being the best looking guy in the burns unit’.