Rarely has one sentence transformed an entire perception. When Craig Bellamy spoke to Sky Sports after last weekend's seismic encounter between Chelsea and Manchester City, his assertion that "everybody in football knows what JT is like" was greeted with cheers by everyone who heard it. At last, somebody in the football world was prepared to utter out loud that the emperor actually had no clothes – an apt metaphor for Terry's behaviour in more ways than one – and Bellamy has been transformed from a figure of dislike into a veritable hero.

If there is a surprise in all of this, it's not that the Welsh striker said exactly what was on his mind – in fact that is what has earned the 30-year-old his reputation as a relatively despicable character in the first place. No, the surprise is that, over the course of a few weeks of moral dishonesty in football, being direct and saying exactly what you think has become a virtue not a vice. And in this strange new reality, Bellamy has become king.

He deserves the crown, if not because of what he said about Terry, then because he has always been viewed a little unfairly by the media and, by extension, the general public. Sure, Bellamy may have attempted to batter John Arne Riise with a Big Bertha when the Norwegian refused to sing karaoke on a night out, and thrown a chair at John Carver, Newcastle's first-team coach under Bobby Robson.

He may even have been disrespectful to Robson himself from time and time and fired uncomplimentary text messages to Alan Shearer – "Your legs are gone. You're too old. You're too slow" was how one went – after he was forced to head to Celtic on loan from St James's Park. He has been in court a couple of times, too, on the back of a few nights on the tiles in Cardiff that became a little messy but amid these misdemeanors, ranging from the serious in the case of Riise and the hilarious when it comes to Shearer, the more positive side of his character has been hidden.

That, though, is at least partly his fault. He has never attempted to publicise any of his more generous deeds and most have emerged into the public domain because those he has helped have felt the need to come out and defend his reputation when he's been under fire. Like Bal Singh, the father of a young boy called Indie from Tyne and Wear who died in 2001 after two kidney transplants.

"I believe my son lived longer because of Craig's kindness to him," he explained in 2005. "He did so much for Indie and so much for us as a family. When Indie was poorly, Craig was always there for him. He used to visit Indie in hospital at least once a week and would play the PlayStation with him. Then when Indie was sent home because the doctors couldn't do any more for him, Craig would come to our house and see him. Indie loved football and he loved Newcastle and Craig raised his spirits when he was very ill. He even gave my son his shirt after a game with Aston Villa and dedicated the goals he scored in that match to him. He is a young gentleman and a special person."

If that example comes across as an extraordinary act of generosity for a footballer, his work in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, is equally impressive. When his wife was pregnant with their third child back in 2006, the Bellamy family were unable to go on holiday together. Some footballers would have fancied two weeks with the lads in Marbella but Bellamy decided to pay a visit to Freetown on the advice of two friends of his in the building trade who had worked there and been shocked at the poverty on show.

The striker spent two weeks in the region and, on the back of what he witnessed, formed the Craig Bellamy Foundation. The aim of the foundation is to provide kids from the area with a proper education, with football being used as an incentive to achieve that goal. Crucially, though, Bellamy is not merely lending his name to the foundation, he is organising and funding it too, a commitment that has cost him £500,000 from his own pocket so far with a figure in the region of £800,000 being pledged from the player in the coming years.

And yet, as admirable as the two acts above undoubtedly are, it can be difficult at times to marry the man involved in both to the snarling, hissing footballer – who once joked his autobiography should be called "Don't Google me" – we so often see. Bruce Rioch, the manager at his first club, Norwich City, believes that Bellamy's attitude on the pitch simply comes from a desire to succeed, something he believes became part of the striker's persona ever since he found out, as a 17-year-old apprentice at the Norfolk club, that his then girlfriend, and now wife, Claire was pregnant. "I think it made him more serious minded and simply hardened his determination to make a decent career for himself in football," explains Rioch. "He was very demanding of himself and others around him. That didn't always go down too well with the older professionals at Carrow Road. But he knew where he wanted to go and was never slow in telling others about his ambition."

Maybe that is it. Maybe Bellamy's attitude on the pitch is solely grounded in his desire to succeed rather than any streak of nastiness running through him, although that may take a bit of explaining to people who have felt the force of his invective. "My missus is horrified when she sees me on the pitch as I am very relaxed and completely the opposite at home," he admitted in a recent interview. "Perhaps I get my frustrations out on the pitch. But she has been with me since we were both 14 so she knows me well enough. She is not a football fan and she doesn't watch me much, which is probably why we are still together."

Even though Claire Bellamy must know him well enough, even she must be surprised at her husband's desire to turn his hand to management when he retires from the game. "Now Craig's reached 30, he's decided he wants to become a coach," Eddie Niedzwiecki, one of Mark Hughes's former coaches at City who also worked with Bellamy at Blackburn, explained recently. "He's thinking seriously about going into the management side when he finishes playing and wants to know every little detail about the way we structure and organise everything."

Bellamy the manager? Well if a short-tempered individual like Roy Keane can make a living off it, there's no reason why the Welsh captain wouldn't be granted an opportunity somewhere to prove his worth. Particularly if this new reality, where straighttalking is viewed as a boon rather than a burden, lasts a few years longer.

ccronin@tribune.ie