Injured Terry out of England qualifier

John Terry is out of Fabio Capello's team for the World Cup qualifier against Kazakhstan on Saturday. The England captain was forced to withdraw from a practice match staged for the England squad behind closed doors yesterday with a back problem that is not responding to treatment.

The England squad played a 90-minute, 11 v 11 game yesterday afternoon at Arsenal's London Colney training ground after going through a morning session earlier in the day. Terry pulled out the game with a recurrence of the back problem he suffered in Chelsea's Champions League match against CFR Cluj last week, a problem brought on by the hard surface at the Romanian team's stadium. The decision was made last night to leave him out of the Kazakhstan game.

The 27-year-old spent the closing stages of Chelsea's match against Cluj on 1 October as a virtual passenger in his team's midfield but he still elected to play against Aston Villa on Sunday despite appearing to be in discomfort. In the closing stages of that game he had treatment on his back but seemed to refuse the Chelsea manager Luiz Felipe Scolari's increasingly desperate appeals for him to come off the pitch.

He would now appear to be paying the price for that single-minded approach, with the prospect of missing not only Saturday's game but the trip to Belarus next week for the team's fourth 2010 World Cup qualifier on Wednesday in Minsk. Terry was absent from England's first training session of the week on Tuesday and the strain of playing in a full-contact match now seems to have been too much for him.

Emile Heskey also sat out yesterday's practice match, but is likely to be back in time for tomorrow's training session. In terms of replacements for Terry, Capello will have to decide between Joleon Lescott, Wes Brown and Matthew Upson. Capello picked Lescott in England's first World Cup qualifier against Andorra in order to give Rio Ferdinand time to recover for the Croatia game last month.

Terry's injury problems haunted Capello's predecessor, Steve McClaren, who lost the Chelsea man for England's two crucial Euro 2008 qualifiers against Russia and Croatia that decided their fate last October and November. Terry was ruled out of the Russia match in the training session on the eve of the game when floating debris in his knee meant that the joint locked up. This time round it is a different problem that is affecting the central defender.

Terry's back has been a problem in the past, most notably when he was forced to undergo an operation in December 2006 to rectify a major slipped disc. It is not known whether the current problem is related to that surgery, but on that occasion Terry did not return to regular action for Chelsea for around two months. In his absence Ferdinand will take over the captaincy but England will lose a mainstay of their defence.

Heskey's absence from training is not thought to be serious, although there were no clues for Capello's players as to how he intends to set his team up come Saturday. The England manager intentionally mixed up the teams so there was no sense that a first XI were playing against a shadow XI in yesterday's training match as has been the case in the past. Theo Walcott and Shaun Wright-Phillips will have to wait a little longer to find out whether one or both have got the nod to play at Wembley.

Wright-Phillips said this week that being left out of the England team had given him the "kick up the arse" he needed to leave Chelsea and get his career back on track. He was given a stark warning of how Capello treats players who have been left out of their club sides when he was dropped for the Italian's second squad against France, after he had scored against Switzerland at Wembley in his first game in charge.

Wright-Phillips, who returned to Manchester City this summer for £8.5m, said: "Being left out gave me a kick up the arse, if I am honest. It made me want to get back to being the player I used to be – exciting to watch and full of confidence. I just want to get back to being a positive player who helps the team. If I score or set something up, then that makes me happy. It made me realise that I have to be always improving and achieve consistency all the time.

"At the time [when he decided to go back to Manchester City] I just thought about playing. The reason I left Chelsea was because I had always enjoyed playing. I wanted to go back and help City and when I saw the boss he was so positive that said it all for me. I am delighted like anybody would be [to be back in the England squad]; everything is happening very quickly and I am just trying to stay calm."

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