John Terry's exit from Chelsea was an excruciating act fit for an excruciating player

This is the man who, when suspended for Chelsea’s Champions League final against Bayern Munich in 2012, materialised in full club kit and shinpads to lift the trophy

Terry lifted the trophy at the end of the game (Getty)

There was a compelling and gratifying reminder late last week that football can exist with the ego taken out.

Chelsea’s N’golo Kante was receiving the British football writers’ Player of the Year award at a dinner in London and, in recognition of the honour, the club’s technical director Michael Emenalo offered a revealing insight into the quiet, diminutive French player. Kante rolls up to training in a relatively dilapidated Mini, “still complaining about the £500 he has spent on that car,” Emenalo related. “He wants a simple life. He has a simple life.”

You wished, as the Premier League season reached its conclusion on Sunday afternoon, that the departing John Terry had been in the banqueting suite to witness the overwhelming reaction to this rare example of modesty in the game. Terry bowed out as a Chelsea player and opted for something far less self-effacing than Kante, a player so averse to the spotlight that he even found the VIP suite at London’s Landmark Hotel a little full-on and asked for somewhere quiet to rehearse his acceptance speech instead.

As the custodian of Chelsea’s No. 26 jersey, Terry “kind of negotiated” with Blues manager Antonio Conte – as he later put it – to play that number of minutes before withdrawing from the field in his last match at Stamford Bridge, against Sunderland.

The visiting side found themselves in the unwelcome position of being asked to contribute to this façade by putting the ball out of play at the pre-ordained moment. Their collective awkwardness was obvious as Terry’s departure turned into the longest goodbye, on the pitch, in the midst of the match. It was in the 28th minute that he finally left the field.

Though there was no competitive outcome at stake – Chelsea were champions, Sunderland relegated – the fact that bookmakers have paid out to three punters who bet on the specific time of the substitution, at 100-1, makes this no less than a form of unwitting match-fixing, based on the spot bets bookies take.

It also created an excruciating, cloying spectacle in a fixture for which players were paid handsomely, and spectators and broadcasters had paid heavily. Testimonial matches are staged for such choreography as this, though Terry has proved more than once before that he struggles to see how bad things can sometimes look from the outside.

This is the man who, when suspended for Chelsea’s Champions League final against Bayern Munich Champions League final in 2012, materialised in full club kit and shinpads to lift the trophy.

This is the man who, when deposed as England captain in 2010 after details of an affair with the former girlfriend of teammate Wayne Bridge had been published in the press, remained in the squad Steven Gerrard led out. The situation demanded deference yet Terry was right up on the Liverpudlian’s shoulder when he led the team out onto the London Colney training pitches that March. Stepping back has never been for him.

Gerrard’s own Liverpool goodbye, two years ago, was itself an act of hubris. Liverpool celebrated Gerrard so emphatically that they forgot opponents Crystal Palace, who beat them 3-1.

There is another way of bowing out and, as with most aspects of modern football, the Germans have shown the way forward. Their striker Lukas Podolski chose the old school method to bring the curtain down on his international career against England in Dortmund two months ago. He captained the team, lashed a winning goal into the top right-hand corner of the English net on 69 minutes, left the field shortly before the end and then enjoyed a party like few others.

At the London dinner, Kante had far less to say than the tear-streaked Terry did on Sunday. But his softly-spoken sentiments will live long in the memory. “I couldn’t say I was the best player,” Kante said. “But it’s a huge honour.”