What’s happened to Joe Cole?

Written by Barry Vinnicombe

If we were to venture into footballing past to ten years ago and carry out an opinion poll on the hottest young prospect in English football, there is no doubt that the resounding answer would be a player by the name of Joe Cole.

This young man, often described as ‘prodigal’ by the British press back in those days, was a product of West Ham’s once glorious youth academy. Responsible for churning out a generation of players who have excelled in the upper echelons of World football. Along with young Joe, we have seen the likes of Rio Ferdinand, Jermain Defoe and Frank Lampard graduate at a similar time and play football at a consistently high level.

Cole was deemed to be the biggest prospect of them all. He was described as the flair player England needed to win a major tournament. A creative genius in the midfield who had the ability to take on a man whilst maintaining great vision and a selection of ‘Hollywood’ passes that could split a team in two.

13 years have passed since those embryonic days of great expectation, 10 years since his first senior England cap and 8 years since the beginning of Cole’s Chelsea career….

…So where do we find Cole this week after such impressive beginnings to a football career. He must be at his peak by now, playing for one of the established big four or another of Europe’s elite?

‘um’…

He’s actually participating in the Lancashire senior cup for a third string Liverpool team. This is a cup made up of rookie players looking to make it big, one day, (any day!) in professional football. Now lets not be too judgemental, despite the fact that the match was played at Ewen fields (that’s the home of Hyde FC, currently of Blue Square North) this was a quarter-final clash against money-bags Man City (although it was their rookie team). Liverpool won the match 1-0 and Cole was involved in creating the goal.

So where has it all gone wrong for this former ‘saviour of English football’?

We can blame Cole’s downfall on his torrid injury record. Throughout his career he has suffered from; a stress fracture to the foot, numerous hamstring issues and a chronic cruciate knee injury. The knee injury has been the player’s biggest bane, keeping him out of action for extensive periods of time. This ‘knee-knack’ effectively prevented him from gaining a new contract with Chelsea which signalled his move to Liverpool as a free agent in 2010. It seems that as soon as Cole shows promise of becoming the complete player, he is hit by another set-back. In a way, you have to respect Cole for his continuous attempts at getting his career back on track so many times.

His stint at Liverpool has seen the player hit a new slump. He’s barely played this season, and when he has, he has been virtually anonymous. Perhaps it has been the negative tactics of Roy Hodgson, where creativity was sacrificed by a narrow formation that showed up Cole’s weaknesses rather than strengths. Many of us believe that as Cole has aged, the only place he can operate is centrally where he can revel in the space and create those signature plays he can be so good at. He hasn’t really been given the chance to shine in this role, especially with the ominous presence of Steven Gerard and the slowly improving Raul Meireles possibly ahead of him in the pecking order in this position.

Perhaps we will see a change of direction from Kenny Dalglish in the deployment of Joe Cole. It seems likely that Cole will stay to fight for his place this season as he has turned down an offer to re-join West Ham. Cole is now in the twilight of his career and with so many injuries it seems unlikely that we will ever see a return of the form that made us gasp in wonder when he scored that 25 yard screamer against Sweden in the 2006 world cup….Shame really.

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