Aged 33 and currently consigned to bench duties at Chelsea, Ashley Cole is facing the first very real threat, since his 2001 debut, to a previously assured place in the England team. After being handed a start by Sven-Goran Eriksson for a World Cup qualifier in Albania, Cole grabbed the opportunity and established himself as the country’s first choice left-back.
By the end of his first year as an international footballer Cole had been part of an epochal 5-1 victory in Germany, as well as featuring in the famed clash with Greece at Old Trafford when David Beckham’s last gasp free-kick clinched England’s place in the finals of South Korea and Japan.
Before appearing in that 2002 World Cup tournament Cole was a double winner with Arsenal; an integral cog in a mobile and resilient back-four that was steadily emerging to replace the esteemed Dixon, Adams, Bould/Keown, Winterburn quartet.
It had been during the previous campaign that Cole, much like at the outset of his England career, clasped with both hands his first extended shot at Premier League football. An injury sustained by the effervescent Brazilian, Sylvinho, created an opening for the Londoner to come into the Gunners’ side. Such was Cole’s impact that, in the late summer of 2001, Sylvinho was bound for Celta Vigo in Spain.
Wearing the Three Lions of his country, the Chelsea man’s most revered displays have come in direct opposition to Cristiano Ronaldo. In contests, at first the European Championships of 2004, and then two years later in a World Cup quarter-final – both matches that ended with England defeated on penalties by Portugal – Cole came out well on top in his personal duel with the player now accepted as one of the world’s finest.
That tag is equally applicable to the 106 time capped Englishman, whose place in Roy Hodgson’s squad to board the plane to the 2014 World Cup competition in Brazil looks increasingly under threat. It is a remarkable shift in fortune for an individual whose on-pitch value, in over ten years operating at the very height of European club football and on the international scene, has rarely been questioned.
Cole’s early success at Arsenal was eclipsed when he was part of the Gunners’ wonderful ‘Invincibles’ team of 2003/2004. While flourishing in Wenger’s fluent, forward-thinking unit, the left-back exhibited a steely nerve when he converted in his country’s 2004 shoot-out against the Portuguese, and then again one year later under similar circumstances, but in a winning cause, as Arsenal defeated Manchester United at Wembley to lift the FA Cup – Cole’s third triumph of seven to date in the country’s foremost knock-out competition.
By the time of his 2005 cup final glory, Cole’s club future was the subject of intense speculation. Of particular note was a reported February 2005 meeting at which Cole and his agent Jonathan Barnett, along with Chelsea manager and chief executive, respectively, Jose Mourinho and Peter Kenyon, were present. Despite subsequently sitting out much of the 2005/2006 season through injury, and the uncertainty surrounding his long-term commitment to Arsenal, Wenger had no hesitation in fielding Cole in the club’s 2006 Champions League final meeting with Barcelona.
The Gunners’ defeat in Paris proved to be the last time that Cole would wear the shirt of the club he supported through his youth. It was his move to Chelsea, completed on the final day of the August 2006 transfer window, which sparked a wave of public opinion against the man who one of his national team forerunners, Stuart Pearce, describes as ‘the best left-back that’s ever played for England’.
Already fined by the FA for his participation in those talks with Chelsea officials, Cole provoked further condemnation for disclosing that Arsenal’s £55,000 per week contract offer left him ‘incensed’.
There was an attempt in some areas of the game, during Cole’s maiden campaign with Chelsea, to paint Arsenal as having the better of a deal which had seen William Gallas move in the opposite direction. Time has revealed that theory to be at best wayward – more accurately, plain bonkers.
Upon signing at Stamford Bridge Cole declared: ‘I’ve not come here for money. I’ve come here because I want to win things and I have a good chance of winning things at Chelsea’.
His judgement has proved to be as sound as his imperious defending, as astute as his uncanny knack for picking up the perfect position to execute a telling block or crucial goal-line clearance. As a Chelsea player, Cole has won one Premier League title, four FA Cups, one League Cup, a Europa League title and, unforgettably, in 2012 the Champions League. Across the same period, his former club’s trophy cabinet has been unencumbered by further additions.
A near regular fixture in a Blues side competing for the top continental and domestic trophies throughout the past seven years, Cole has garnered experience that is unrivalled by a number of his international team-mates and, crucially, is well in excess of that tasted by his rivals for the left-back berth. Equally vital, the Chelsea man has the strongest of minds, and a winning mentality to boot. He has needed both.
Cole’s popularity having been tarnished further by off-field events, – none of which had anything to do with his profession, and so shouldn’t merit discussion in relation to his performances which have remained stratospherically high since he became a target for the tabloids – he has become something of a whipping boy; a stereotype for the perceived odious, aloof, modern day footballer.
When one of England’s outstanding footballers, of this or any other era, was ludicrously singled out by the Wembley crowd for an error that gifted Kazakhstan a consolation goal in a 5-1 home victory, the court of public opinion appeared to have delivered its verdict. That low, in October 2008, occurred barely a month after Cole had played his full part in a terrific 4-1 slaying of Croatia in Zagreb. His wealth of credit, earned by consistently performing so majestically for his national team for seven years, counted for little when there was a scapegoat to be had for the game’s perceived ills.
Cole’s mastery of Ronaldo only two years earlier, – an accomplishment that moved the current national captain Steven Gerrard to comment: ‘He had him (Ronaldo) in his pocket. There aren’t too many defenders who can say they’ve ever done that’ – was conveniently forgotten.
Cole, as is his habit, had the last laugh. Seven months after the grave sin of erring in a facile game for his country, the left-back was celebrating his latest FA Cup triumph. When the ultimately miserable World Cup finals of 2010 commenced, he was fresh from being crowned a league champion once more.
One of a definite minority in the England unit to come away from South Africa with his reputation intact, Cole’s next challenge to his durable playing credentials arrived during Andre Villas-Boas’ confused Stamford Bridge tenure. With the Portuguese struggling to get his players on board a deteriorating regime, Cole was the novice boss’s statement exclusion for a Champions League tie at Napoli.
Having then been introduced to the fray as an early replacement for a stricken Jose Bosingwa, the classy defender went on to make a characteristic clearance from his goal-line, so keeping the Italians’ lead pegged at 3-1. The importance of that intervention became plain three weeks later when, with Roberto Di Matteo newly installed to the Chelsea hot-seat, the Blues’ overturned their deficit to progress 5-4 on aggregate.
Cole, of course, featured in each of the 120 scintillating minutes of that second-leg encounter just as, eleven days earlier, he had been on the field for the duration of his side’s 1-0 defeat at West Bromwich Albion; the final low that sounded the death knell for Villas-Boas’ reign. The manager, reflecting on a turgid display from his team in the Midlands, contended that: ‘The only player who performed up to any level was Ashley Cole’.
That level, over both games of the ensuing Champions League semi-final against Barcelona, touched extreme peaks of excellence. Incredibly, with the stakes at their highest, against a formidable Bayern Munich side that had home advantage in the final of Europe’s pre-eminent club tournament, Cole outdid even his efforts against the Catalans.
His display of fortitude, pace, knowhow, determination, energy, defensive prowess and sheer ability made him the final’s standout performer. Set against towering displays by Gary Cahill, David Luiz and the immense Didier Drogba to name a few, that was some achievement. It was perhaps the defining night of Cole’s football life – so far. A night on which he once more showcased his knack for staying calm under pressure, striking successfully in his team’s penalty shoot-out victory.
It is rather curious that Cole’s present travails have come under the command of Mourinho – the man credited with honing the defensive game of a player known for his swashbuckling attacking when at Highbury. Left out after Chelsea’s supine 2-0 reverse at Newcastle United, Cole has found his route back into Mourinho’s team blocked by his surprisingly consummate replacement Cesar Azpilicueta.
Cole’s recent outings have been limited to cup-ties, or as holiday period cover to provide his manager’s first-picks with a breather. When he has taken to the field, there has been no sign of any deterioration to Cole’s familiar command of his position. The trio of Premier League matches he has started since the bleak November day on Tyneside have each brought Chelsea three points and accompanying clean sheets. Cole’s four cup appearances have reaped three victories, and only two goals conceded in a league cup quarter-final at Sunderland.
It is that continued stamp of authority on his role, alongside an enduring aptitude for bringing his absolute best to the biggest occasions, that make Cole a must pick for Brazil. The case for Leighton Baines’ inclusion in Hodgson’s squad is overwhelming. When it comes to facing the offensive artillery of Uruguay, or the slick Italians, however, it might just be that Cole’s assiduous, assured defending has more value than the Everton player’s attacking thrust.
Hodgson has spoken of the terrific selection of full-backs at his disposal. The England manager is effusive in his praise for Kyle Walker and Glen Johnson on the right of a back-four. Neither man, though, can lay claim to possessing the defensive quality of Cole.
The same is true of Baines and, indeed, Southampton’s Luke Shaw on the left. The teenager is making a late run at a World Cup spot, but this is no environment to blood rookies at the expense of superior alternatives. The likes of Ross Barkley, Adam Lallana and Raheem Sterling will earn places in the 23 man party because they are the outstanding candidates in their respective roles. Shaw, full of zest and enterprise, is yet to develop into a defender of Cole’s class.
The time will come for Cole to be supplanted in the England team. That time, despite the England manager’s assertion that ‘now it’s Ashley’s turn to sit back’, isn’t now. Our last sight of this standard bearing left-back on a major international stage should not be his unsuccessful penalty against Italy at Euro 2012 – a rare lapse that followed a typically gutsy 120 minute demonstration of his worth.
Hodgson will travel to Brazil with a squad capable of making notable progress at the World Cup. If they are to fulfil their potential, England, on June 13th, will need every single one of their best players lining up to do battle with Italy in the oppressive Manaus heat. Ashley Cole, in what is still his Number 3 jersey, unquestionably fits into that category.
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