• Turkey coach focusing on Euro qualifer v Belgium next week
• Club confident of securing Dutchman’s release from contract

Guus Hiddink has waived an opportunity to commit his long-term future to the Turkey national team, with Chelsea’s principal managerial target admitting he would consider any “concrete offer” for his services.

The 64-year-old said his focus remains fixed on next Friday’s Euro 2012 qualifier in Belgium, a game Turkey, third in Group A, can ill afford to lose. Yet Chelsea are confident they can secure Hiddink’s release from the final 12 months of his contract, and the Turkish Football Federation’s resolve to retain the Dutchman will be tested after the match in Brussels.

On Friday Hiddink declined to speak explicitly about Chelsea, where he enjoyed a three-month spell as caretaker manager in 2009, but suggested he would be eager to return to day-to-day club management. “At the moment there’s nothing concrete to talk about, but if there was a concrete offer I would think about it,” he said. “We’ll play this game and then we’ll see. The moment things are concrete, I’ll go to where I have to be. My thoughts are, first, on this difficult game next Friday. Then we’ll see.

“I have the energy. I’m not feeling that I should sit back. As long as I feel fresh, and as long as young people – players – are not getting annoyed with me, then I will continue. I feel energetic to go on. Sir Alex Ferguson is a lesson to all of us. I read that his wife told him to get back to work, not just to sit there in the garden and do nothing. You should only walk away if you start repeating yourself and can’t keep it fresh. But I don’t feel like that at this moment. And my wife thinks I’m a lousy gardener.”

Hiddink is understood to earn around £3.5m a year and is overseeing a week-long training camp in his native Netherlands ahead of the Belgium game. He has not held a permanent position at a club since leaving PSV Eindhoven in 2006 for roles with Australia, Russia and now Turkey. His brief spell at Chelsea, as an interim manager following Luiz Felipe Scolari’s dismissal in February 2009, was combined with his duties with Russia, although that arrangement could not be repeated.

“That was an exceptional situation,” he said. “Roman Abramovich was also supporting Russian football very strongly so, when they asked me to jump in for that period, we spoke with the president of the federation in Russia and all agreed. But you must only do one job.” Turkey would not countenance a similar job-share over the final season of his current contract.

His tenure with the TFF has been far from spectacular and there was fierce criticism after a qualifying defeat to Azerbaijan. He has retained the support of the TFF president, Mahmut Ozgener, though the federation is due to hold a presidential election in mid-June. Defeat in Belgium, which would leave the Turks four points adrift of the group’s play-off place, would prompt calls for Hiddink to be dismissed.

“I have a good relationship with the president,” said the Dutchman, who commutes to and from Istanbul from his home in Amsterdam. “He’s a very modern-thinking guy, and we always talk when needed, every fortnight. Whatever happens in the elections, my focus will remain on winning.

“But the reaction here is rather up and down and, should we lose, I can imagine they would say it would be better if I quit. As they did when we lost to Germany and Azerbaijan. There are rumours, too, that it would be easier for me to leave if we lost to Belgium, but I’ve been in this business a long time. That is not influencing my approach to the team. The focus is on the job and this game. That’s it.”

Chelsea hope to have a new manager in place by the middle of June, which would allow Hiddink to settle before the playing staff return on 4 July for pre-season training.

The squad are already familiar with Hiddink, who has acted as an adviser to Abramovich on an ad hoc and unpaid basis since leaving Stamford Bridge

Guus HiddinkChelseaTurkeyDominic Fifieldguardian.co.uk

The former England captain has struggled due to injury and personal problems

By mounting an ironclad defence of his form this week, John Terry succeeded only in confirming the sceptics’ view that, on the field as well as off it, his aura is not what it was. The smart thing to do would have been to make a quiet admission of a temporary dip, or to say nothing. But Terry, who returns to the Chelsea squad at Anfield tomorrow after serving a one-match ban, has not always distinguished himself off the pitch through an instinct for doing the smart thing.

Although the decision to defend himself was perhaps that of a “man’s man” – in his team-mate Frank Lampard’s famous description, following Terry’s muffed penalty in Moscow two years ago – it flies in the face of a great deal of fresh evidence, most recently the defeat at Tottenham Hotspur in which he was dismissed for two yellow-card offences after a performance riddled with errors and uncertainties, incurring a suspension that forced him to miss a Premier League fixture for the first time since January 2009.

For several weeks before the debacle at White Hart Lane he had been showing unusual signs of wear and tear. His mistakes contributed to defeats by Everton and Manchester City in February, and a bad tackle on James Milner in the FA Cup semi-final victory over Aston Villa last month added another charge to a lengthening sheet.

“I’m totally fine with my form,” he announced this week, rejecting the suggestion that this is more than a short‑term problem. “If I’m going to play 50 or 60 games, I’m expected to have two or three bad games. That’s standard, you’re not going to play well in every game. Not even Wayne Rooney and Lionel Messi can do that.”

But Rooney and Messi are forwards. At the very highest level defenders – like goalkeepers – are judged by their closeness to infallibility, and until recently the Chelsea captain’s record on that score has been impressive. At the end of the last World Cup finals he was the only Englishman included in the Fifa technical committee’s all-star squad of 23 players, and he has been a member of Uefa’s team of the year for four of the past five seasons.

Alan Hansen is judging by those standards when he contradicts Terry’s own assessment of his form. “You look at John Terry and you think of a solid, reliable, resolute leader,” the former Liverpool centre-back says. “Unbelievably good positionally, great on the ball and dominant in the air, and perhaps just absent of a little pace. He’s been the cornerstone of Chelsea’s success for a long period of time. This year, due to injuries and whatever, he’s struggled.

“He’s never been the quickest but what happens is that when you get older, when you’ve had substantial injuries, then you need to be as quick as you’ve ever been. He’s had a bad back, he’s had niggles here and there and I think he’s gone to ground more than he’s ever done. Straight away that would be a warning sign to me. You’re basically making decisions in the knowledge that you might not be quick enough to get there.”

Terry’s crisis of fallibility, as many see it, follows too closely for comfort upon problems in his private life. In January he was turned over by the News of the World, who reported his affair with the ex-girlfriend of his England and former Chelsea team-mate Wayne Bridge, adding to a pile of tabloid allegations concerning himself and his family.

In football terms, the first consequence was the loss of the England captaincy, initially awarded to him by Steve McClaren in August 2006 and retained, despite the failure to reach the finals of Euro 2008, throughout the highly successful series of qualifying matches for the 2010 World Cup. Fabio Capello wasted no time in taking a hardline decision, removing a possible source of further controversy and disruption while hanging on to Terry’s availability as a player.

On the surface, Terry took it well. He accepted Capello’s decision without public demur and his first home appearance following the revelations saw him give a flawless display in a defeat of Arsenal. But the near-triumphalism of his post-match praise for the Stamford Bridge fans’ supportive response – “I leave this place with delight,” he said – seemed somewhat misjudged. And while Chelsea played Cardiff in the fifth round of the FA Cup the following weekend, Carlo Ancelotti was forced to give his captain a few days off so that Terry could join his wife in Dubai for a well publicised rapprochement and, it is said, make arrangements to secure his former lover’s silence.

In his personal life, he seems to have weathered the storm – and his resilience on the pitch has never been in doubt. In the April 2006 match at Stamford Bridge best remembered for Rooney’s broken metatarsal, he played for almost the whole 90 minutes with blood seeping through his sock from a deep gash on his ankle. In 2007 League Cup final he almost died after being accidently kicked in the head by Arsenal’s Abou Diaby and swallowing his tongue, subsequently missing three matches.

His acceptance of responsibility on the pitch was demonstrated when, in a 2006 league match against Reading, he responded to injuries to Petr Cech and Carlo Cudicini by taking over in goal for the final minutes to see out a 1-0 win. Even the penalty shoot-out miss in the 2008 Champions League final, which reduced him to tears, came about only because he had agreed to take the place of Didier Drogba, who had been sent off.

“It’s all about how you respond,” he said this week. “I think I’ve responded well.” The wider jury has yet to reach a verdict and will be paying particular attention to his form in tomorrow’s crucial fixture, in which Chelsea need to see off a wounded Liverpool ahead of Manchester United’s late afternoon kick-off at Sunderland. “John Terry will play,” Carlo Ancelotti said yesterday, “because we need to have his character and personality in this game.”

Beyond that lies the World Cup, and Capello’s urgent need, in the midst of a more general crisis among England’s centre-backs, for a reappearance of the John Terry who so confidently led the team through the qualifying campaign before stumbling over his own celebrity.

John TerryChelseaPremier LeagueEnglandRichard Williamsguardian.co.uk

Today’s rumours are wondering what on earth is going on out there

The Mill has never had any truck with the idea that you can solve a problem just by throwing money at it. Unless of course the problem in question happens to be (a) a sadistic and unrelenting table-side mariachi band in an otherwise deserted Mexican restaurant; (b) an illegal money-throwing competition; (c) a small house fire the size of a rumpled £5 note; or (d) everything to do with Chelsea Football Club.

Luckily this seems to be a view shared by the world’s wealthiest man in a denim jacket, Roman Abramovich, who according to the Sun “will give Carlo Ancelotti £100MILLION to rebuild the Chelsea team”. Top of a hastily scribbled list is Fernando Torres, followed by the gnome-like Sergio Agüero, the hulking Maicon, the medium-sized Bastian Schweinsteiger and “a new goalkeeper”. On the way out: obsolete jinker Joe Cole, strangely insubstantial part-success Nicolas Anelka and hangers-on Henrique Hilário, Paulo Ferreira and Juliano Belletti.

The role of Ray Wilkins is going to be “looked into” which sounds tremendous and super, and shouldn’t take too long. Some men called “assistant coaches Paul Clement and Christophe Lollichon” are also going to get it. In the Mirror Abramovich has had time to look in the pockets of his other jeans and Chelsea are looking at “a potential outlay of £140m-plus”. Names hurled about include Torres, Franck Ribéry, David Villa, Marek Hamsik, Angel Di María, Agüero, Schweinsteiger, Maicon, Giampaolo Pazzini, Simon Kjaer and deliciously light Belgian dessert Moussa Dembele.

It might be simpler to mention all the footballers Chelsea are not interested in. Or simply to make up an international-sounding footballer name, for example Jean-Pierre Von Diarra di Maria of Finnish giants Dinamo Nokia, and cube him or endlessly anagramise him or build him out of old hands and feet.

Also in the Mirror Aston Villa want to sign waddling goal-smurf Robbie Keane for £9m. QPR are struggling to keep Argentinian midfielder Alejandro Faurlín. Faurlín signed from Institute FC for £3.5m. Tony Mowbray is “a big admirer”. And the man hit by John Terry’s car has said it wasn’t his fault. “There’s no bad feeling at all on my part,” security guard said, presumably while having the lingering personalised design of Terry’s front bumper tattooed on to his empurpled shin for posterity.

In the Daily Mail Martin O’Neill is whirling his mace, flourishing his trident and clanking slowly down the M6 in his iron suit after “entering the battle to sign Wigan’s £15m-rated Hugo Rodallega“. Birmingham and Stoke are also interested.

Bristol City manager Gary Johnson may be sacked after “an alleged altercation with his players”. And the popular and fashionable Kjaer, still at Palermo, could yet be off somewhere. “‘It would take an offer to which you can’t say no to arrive for me to leave here,” he said yesterday, ordering Robert Duvall to leave his Hollywood villa. Back in the Sun José Mourinho has issued “a come and get me call to top Premier League clubs” by saying, vaguely: “Who knows, in the future I may coach another English team,” all the while presumably performing a complex 10-minute mime sequence intended to convey a sense of longing and wistfulness.

Roman Pavlyuchenko has “performed a dramatic U-turn and pledged his future to Tottenham” by saying: “I will think about my future in May.” Juventus president Jean-Claude Blanc says Felipe Melo will not join Arsenal this summer. Roy Keane and his mannequin-esque helmet-hairstyle will be sacked by Ipswich at the end of the season.

Gary O’Neil’s wife wants Middlesbrough to miss the play-offs so she can go on holiday. “Holidays soon … please keep losing no play-offs xxx,” Donna O’Neil wrote on her Facebook page. But good news for Gordon Strachan. Mrs O’Neil’s status update “in no way reflects Gary’s commitment to Middlesbrough’s promotion push”, according to his red-faced, shiny-suited Mr 10%.

And some good news finally for England’s Three Brave Lions as they launch a tearful sad brave cheated weeping World Cup glory brave foreign cheat hunt disaster. David Beckham will be hanging around primping his quiff as “their inspirational ‘Fourth Lion’”. And he wants to sit in the dugout too. “He belongs on the bench with Capello and the team,” lied a sycophant. “That’s where he’s the most use.” Beckham, who has a “use”, is pictured being driven away from the hospital (a) with his wife; and (b) in a jarringly non-prestige people carrier. “He looked miserable,” said an onlooker.

And on Goal.com Landon Donovan says he wouldn’t play for any English club other than Everton. “Playing at Goodison Park is really special,” he said in America. “There’s something about a historic place. People have gone there for years,” he added, adjusting his pastel-coloured nylon anorak, harassing a Beefeater and asking you to take a picture of him doing a thumbs-up in front of a phone box.

ChelseaBarney Ronayguardian.co.uk