Saq
Ashley Cole will take his place on the bench at Wembley on Tuesday as the most capped England footballer in history to sit on the manager’s staff, barring David Beckham’s sinecure at the 2010 World Cup as half-manager, half-mascot.
Unlike many of his Golden Generation peers, Cole – sixth on the all-time list with 107 caps – was not parachuted into managerial roles. In fact, he worked as assistant to two former team-mates – Frank Lampard on three occasions and for a brief spell under Wayne Rooney at Birmingham City. It is here that Cole continues to work as a coach long after Rooney was sacked and where he was recruited by the club, rather than by Rooney.
Cole’s role in Lee Carsley’s England caretaker regime is another such opportunity – but no one can argue that Cole’s coaching career has enjoyed the kind of fast-track treatment that a 107-cap career might usually confer.
Cole may never become a manager. His obsession, and so say those who know him, is coaching. It began when he was at the Los Angeles Galaxy between 2016 and 2018 and has not stopped since. In senior football, he coached at Derby County, his last club as a player, and his first coaching role under Lampard. He spent three years with the England Under-21s. He worked with Lampard on two other occasions: at Everton in 2022 and then when they were appointed on a temporary basis at Chelsea. Cole arrived in Birmingham in October last year.
He spent much of his time on the training ground at Chelsea’s academy in Cobham. It was there that one of the greatest defenders of his generation patiently advised the Under-15s and Under-16s on their game. Those who watched often wondered whether the teenagers involved were truly aware of what their enthusiastic coach had achieved in his own playing career.
A Champions League winner, a three-time Premier League winner with two clubs, seven FA Cups – more than any other player in history – and a Europa League winner. Of course, Cole’s career story is not just a list of his on-field exploits. It is also linked to the scandal that followed and the media harassment he must have suffered during his marriage to singer Cheryl Tweedy. For a time, they were one of Britain’s most famous couples.
Cole, 43, married for the second time to the Italian model Sharon Canu, with whom he has two children, may never want to be that way again. Yet he also seems inexorably drawn to coaching. He already has his UEFA A licence. Those who have worked with him, or observed his sessions, say he has a real rapport with youngsters. He is sought after by the big names at Chelsea’s academy who have made it to the first team. He is a man who spends his spare time scribbling ideas for sessions. Like all modern coaches, he is a master of presenting his ideas, including a blueprint for how his team would retain possession on the touchlines, a preoccupation of any successful full-back.
He could spend his post-competition life living comfortably on UEFA and FIFA ambassadorships and low-key events organised by big names for their clients. But coaching has hooked him and there may come a time when he can no longer resist management.
The Football Association saw in Cole an opportunity to help develop a great English player into a manager. While club football rewarded his peers Lampard, Steven Gerrard, Rooney, Scott Parker and Gary Neville with starter or second-time managerial jobs that were out of reach for most, Cole was not so lucky. Similarly, he did not give his all. The FA gave him youth roles and then, in July 2021, he joined Carsley’s under-21s staff.
The historic differences with the FA have been forgotten – whatever they were. Twelve years ago, Cole sent the infamous tweet describing the FA as a #BUNCHOFT—-, which he later deleted, apologised for and paid a £90,000 fine. In past generations, with a more vindictive FA hierarchy, even a former player as talented as Cole would have had no chance of working for England. But both sides have moved on.
The unsavoury episode was prompted by Cole’s testimony in the John Terry and Anton Ferdinand case, one of the most depressing of the era. Cole’s message was a response to the verdict of the independent commission that heard Terry’s case. It said that evidence about what was said that day at Loftus Road in October 2011, including Cole’s, had been altered. Terry has not held a managerial role since leaving Aston Villa as manager.
For Cole, it may be different. The trauma of his past – his own mistakes, as well as the treatment he suffered at the hands of others – has long since shut the door on him. He does not give interviews, save for a rare audience with Telegraph Sport in 2019. That kind of reticence would not be expected as a figurehead of a club or national team.
In that interview, just before his playing career ended, he hinted that he might be ready to move on. “I’m done with all that now. I still feel like I’ve been treated unfairly. [by the media] “But I’m coming to the end of my career now and what’s done is done. I’m past all those situations where I was like, ‘It’s my fault, not my fault.’ Now I look back and I don’t think about the bad times. There weren’t many, really.”
It’s not clear exactly when he reached the tipping point, though it began with his controversial move from Arsenal to Chelsea in 2006, and the Premier League investigation that followed. There was the “Cashley” saga sparked by the most infamous passage in an otherwise forgettable 2006 autobiography. His first marriage and the drama that accompanied it, no doubt partly self-inflicted, made matters worse. By 2012, it had reached its peak.
But 12 years later, a lot has changed. Cole and his family live quietly in Surrey and he commutes to Birmingham. In 20 years of professional football, he has seen it all. He has knocked out Cristiano Ronaldo, lost two Champions League finals and won one. He was booed by his own fans during a 5-1 England win in 2008. He has become the most capped black Englishman of all time. Another highlight last summer was his first red card for England, aged 42, while coaching their victorious Under-21 European Championship campaign.
An astonishing life so far in football. In fact, if he ever agreed, an updated volume of his memoirs would make fascinating reading. In the meantime, those who will benefit from all this experience will be the players he coaches – and so it seems that Ashley Cole’s second life as a footballer is well underway.
Saq
