The Terry incident is not proved, the Mail on Sunday has retracted its slanderous accusations against Terry & Perroncel as have the Daily Mirror because they faced massive damages for printing unproved material. The ultra cautious BBC state today; 'Several members of the England squad are thought to be unhappy at the reinstatement of Terry after he was stripped of the role following allegations of an affair with a former girlfriend of ex-team-mate Wayne Bridge over a year ago'.
I think you're over simplifying the situation a little. There has been no retraction - the MoS actually printed an apology which stated "On January 31 and afterwards we published some personal information about Vanessa Perroncel in articles concerning an alleged affair with the footballer John Terry. Miss Perroncel has since informed us that she would have preferred her personal information to remain private and it was untrue in any case. We apologise to Miss Perroncel for any distress caused."
Note that they say that some of the personal information was untrue, not that the allegations of the affair were untrue. Given that the papers also accused Perroncel of being "gagging for it", "shameless", a "maneater", a "football groupie" and a "gold digger" who was "money hungry", there's was lot of personal information printed about her that could be what the papers are apologising for. It's also worth noting that the paper states that Perroncel "informed us" that it was untrue, not that it actually is untrue. The fact that they published this so long (nine months) after the original story indicates that it wasn't due to the threat of damages, but this is the conclusion of a legal discussion between the two sets of lawyers. The deliberately vague apology is the best way to satisfy both parties - Perroncel can now claim everything is untrue, and the MoS can claim that only some of what it said was untrue and not have to print a specific retraction of any part of the story. Terry has had no apology.
It's also worth noting that the judgement on Terry's failed "super injunction" stated:
"The applicant [Terry] accepts the truth of certain information which is sought to be protected by the draft order. I do not know whether or not LNS [Terry] considers that those matters were acceptable for a person in LNS’s position in life”. and Terry wanted to keep private "details of such affair and/or relationship, including the consequences thereof."
So Terry has already accepted, in court, that there was an affair / relationship, and all that Perroncel has gotten is a tacit admission that "some" of the personal information published about her was untrue. If the allegations about the affair actually were untrue, both sets of lawyers would have hit the MoS / NOTW with a massive lawsuit within minutes of it being published, particularly given the damage to Terry's commercial rights. The fact Terry has made no effort to claim libel, given how easy it is to sue for libel under British law, can only lead to the conclusion that there was an affair between the two, but the MoS got some of the other details about Perroncel wrong, probably the claim that she's some sex crazed nut hunting footballers with a large net...