http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxvrRggOQjo

(gratuitous opportunity to show Moscow penalty miss)

The John Terry super injunction story is more proof that celebrities or organisations should turn to PR professionals and not lawyers when dealing with a media crisis. Only public relations professionals have the tools to ensure that a story such as this one can be kept under control.

A super injunction can work, sure. However there is no plan B.

Once the injunction is made public, what was a negative story is amplified tenfold. The whole affair seems more sordid. He is now on the front of five national newspapers. This is a massive fail, nearly on the same proportions of his penalty miss in Moscow (Viva John Terry – bit of Man Utd gloating there…).

Of course PR isn’t 100 per cent fool proof, far from it, but media relations would have been a better strategy, rather than litigation. John’s PR consultant could have negotiated and traded other content, tried to kill the story and prove it to be incorrect, or managed the story, so the coverage was minimised.

Most people wouldn’t be that surprised about John Terry behaving this way, so really taken on its own the story of a footballer trying to impregnate someone is fish and chip paper. We’ve already seen him urinating in bars, fighting and taking cash in hand payments from journalists for tours of the Chelsea training ground. So really this story is not that newsworthy. John has made it newsworthy, thanks to his legal advice.

Liverpool are in crisis

This morning it looked like Ryan Babel, the multimillion pound superstar footballer who plays for Liverpool FC had deleted his Twitter account after publicly criticising his manager, Rafa Benitez.

The page was taken off line for a few hours and now has reappeared without the offending tweets. In fact there are no tweets older than one hour.

I was going to write a short post on how football clubs should handle football stars and their Twitter feeds, but now I think the fact that Ryan has deleted his account is even more amusing!

You can find his Twitter feed here Twitter account.

I’m guessing he is knee deep in trouble. Ryan is probably in less trouble than his manager who seems to be cracking up again and reeling off facts.

For anyone who is disappointed at Babel’s page being taken down, you can read his inane Tweets in full. find them here

Ryan, a word in your ear. It is not your Twitter account that is the problem. Try engaging your brain before speaking.

The Football Association needs a PR campaign to show that hooliganism is no longer a big problem in England.

The reason for my post is that this story of the Italian FA telling Capello that “Hooligan is an English word” annoyed me today.

England has an issue with its reputation abroad, one that is no longer based on fact, but rather folklore.

With such strong, negative and ingrained perceptions of British fans there is a clear task for the Public Relations Industry. This is because unbalanced reporting leads to disproportionate levels of coverage, that then informs international football fans and organisations worldwide. It becomes a vicious circle.

The facts need communicating:

- England is the safest place to watch football (there is lots of evidence to back this claim up)
- France, Italy and Spain is a far more dangerous place to watch football
- France has ancient stadia with hooligans aplenty, as does Italy
- Spain has the added joy of racism to throw into the mix, click here

OK, here is my caveat, this season there has been more trouble than usual in the UK, e.g. Man Utd v Barnsley, West Ham vs Millwall, and England can’t take its eye off the ball, but look at this more severe example which happened this week in France at a match between Marseille and Paris SG. In my view it was under-reported, see here:

Events such as what happened in Marseille are a regular occurrence in France, but just aren’t reported worldwide, compared to when we Brits get involved. This lack of balance needs addressing. I just want to see us all up to necks in the same problem without other countries missing out on the criticism.

35 Italians died in a horrific incident involving Liverpool FC hooligans, yet during the war millions of human beings died. However we can forgive the nations involved in those war-crimes, so why not the same with sport?

Could the Football Association create a crisis management strategy which kicks into action every time there is trouble in the UK or the rest of Europe? Maybe it already has a crisis PR team but clearly more needs investing in improving our reputation. When trouble is severe then the FA will rightfully hold its hands up! However robust efforts must be made to put hooliganism into perspective when compared to what happens in mainland Europe. OK, we need to stamp the problem out here, but reporting of events in Spain, England, and Italy must be proportional on a global level.