Chelsea's skipper, John Terry paid out £400,000 (€458,000) to the lingerie model with whom he is alleged to have had an affair but that could not save his position as skipper of the three Lions.

It has emerged that Terry and his representatives agreed to pay the astonishing sum to Vanessa Perroncel in order to stop her divulging details of their alleged affair.

The settlement led Ms Perroncel, the former partner of Terry's England team-mate Wayne Bridge, to attend a press conference yesterday afternoon in which Max Clifford, her publicist, declared that, despite receiving six-figure offers, she would not be selling her story to a Sunday newspaper.

The settlement proved too little, too late for Terry in his efforts to retain the captaincy.

An hour before Ms Perroncel's press conference, Terry had been stripped of what he had previously called the "ultimate honour" during a 10-minute meeting with Fabio Capello, the national team's Italian manager, at the Football Association's headquarters at Wembley.