Ashley Cole’s quiet redemption with England 12 years after he called the FA ‘a bunch of t----’

Ashley Cole will take his place on the bench at Wembley on Tuesday as the most-capped England footballer in history to sit among the manager’s staff, with the exception of David Beckham’s 2010 World Cup sinecure as part coach, part mascot.

Unlike many of his Golden Generation peers, Cole – sixth on the all-time list with 107 caps – has not been parachuted into management jobs. In fact, he has worked as an assistant to two former team-mates – Frank Lampard on three occasions and for a brief period under Wayne Rooney at Birmingham City. That is where Cole continues to work as a coach long after Rooney’s sacking and where he was brought in as a club appointment, rather than Rooney’s pick.

Cole’s role with Lee Carsley’s interim England regime is another such opportunity – but no one could say that Cole’s coaching career has been given the kind of fast-track treatment that a 107-cap career might usually confer.

It may be the case that Cole never becomes a manager. His obsession, and it is described as such by those who know him, is with coaching. It began when he was at Los Angeles Galaxy between 2016 and 2018 and has continued ever since. In senior football, he has coached at Derby County, his last club as a player, and his first coaching role with Lampard. There were three years with the England Under-21s. He has worked with Lampard twice more: at Everton in 2022, and then when they were appointed on a temporary basis back at Chelsea. Cole arrived at Birmingham in October of last year.

Many of his hours on the training pitch have been at Chelsea’s academy at Cobham. It is there that one of the greatest defenders of his generation has patiently advised the under-15s and under-16s on their game. Those observing have often wondered whether the teenagers involved are quite aware of what their enthusiastic coach achieved in his own playing career.

A Champions League winner, three-time Premier League winner at two clubs, seven FA Cups – more than any player in history – and a Europa League winner. Of course, the story of Cole’s career is more than just a list of his substantial achievements on the pitch. It is bound up with the scandal that came off it and the media harassment that he certainly felt during his marriage to the singer Cheryl Tweedy. For a while they were one of Britain’s most famous couples.

Cole, 43 – married for a second time now to the Italian model Sharon Canu, with whom he has two children – may never wish to have that level of profile again. Yet he also seems inexorably drawn to coaching. He has his Uefa A licence already. Those who have worked with him, or observed his sessions, say that he has a real rapport with young people. He is sought out by Chelsea’s big-name academy graduates who have reached the first team. He is a man who spends spare moments scribbling down ideas for sessions. Like all modern coaches he has mastered the art of presenting his ideas, including one project on how his side would retain possession from throw-ins, a preoccupation for any successful full-back.

He could spend his post-playing days quite comfortably living off the Uefa and Fifa ambassadorships and discreet big brand client events that the famous names get offered. But coaching has him hooked and there may come a time when he cannot resist management.

In Cole, the Football Association has seen a chance to help develop an England great into a coach. While the club game has rewarded his peers Lampard, Steven Gerrard, Rooney, Scott Parker and Gary Neville, with the kind of rookie or second-time management jobs out of reach for most – Cole has not had the same. By the same token he has not been pushing himself forward. The FA has given him roles with junior teams and then, in July 2021, he joined Carsley’s under-21s staff.

Historical differences with the FA have been forgotten – and what differences they were. Twelve years ago Cole pressed send on the infamous tweet that described the FA as a #BUNCHOFT----, which he did later delete, apologise for and pay £90,000 in fines. In generations past, with a more vindictive FA hierarchy, even a former player as successful as Cole would have no prospect of working with England. But both sides have moved on.

That unsavoury episode flowed from the evidence Cole gave in the John Terry and Anton Ferdinand case, itself one of the most depressing cases of the era. Cole’s spiky post was a response to the judgment by 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 changed. Terry has never had a management job since he left Aston Villa as a coach.

For Cole, it may well be different. The trauma of the past – his own mistakes, as well as his treatment at the hands of others – meant he shut the door long ago. He does not give interviews, aside from a rare audience with Telegraph Sport in 2019. That kind of recalcitrance would not be an option as the figurehead of a club or national side.

In that interview, just before his playing days ended, he hinted that he might be ready to move on. “I’m over it all now. I still feel I was unfairly treated [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 of ‘My fault, not my fault’. Now I’m more about looking back and not thinking about the bad moments. There weren’t too many, really.”

Quite when he reached tipping point is unclear, although it began with his contested move from Arsenal to Chelsea in 2006, and the Premier League inquiry that followed. There was the “Cashley” saga brought on by the most infamous passage in an otherwise forgettable 2006 autobiography. His first marriage, and the drama that accompanied that, undoubtedly some of it self-inflicted, made it worse. By 2012 it had reached its height.

But 12 years on, much has changed. Cole and his family live quietly in Surrey and he commutes to Birmingham. Over 20 years as a pro he saw it all. He marked Cristiano Ronaldo out of games, lost two Champions League finals and won one. He was booed by his own fans in a 5-1 England win in 2008. He would become the most-capped black Englishman of all time. Another milestone last summer: he got his first England red card, aged 42, as a coach during the under-21s’ victorious European Championship campaign.

An astonishing life so far in football. In fact, if he ever agreed to it, an updated volume of memoirs would be a fascinating read. In the meantime, those who will benefit from all that experience will be the players he coaches – and so it seems the second football life of Ashley Cole is well under way.