Tonight one of England’s most consistent performers of all time will don the famous Three Lions for the 100th time. But it’s fair to say that you would see much more fanfare if this feat were to befall the likes of Lampard, Gerrard or Rooney than you will for tonight’s centurion, Mr Ashley Cole.
Captain Steven Gerrard was the most recent player to earn his 100th appearance, doing so in November last year with the plaudits of fans, coaches and his team-mates ringing in his ears. It’s already been confirmed by Roy Hodgson, Ashley Cole starts this week’s friendly against Brazil, Ashley Cole joins the 100 club. But it’s not quite the same occasion for one of England’s most unpopular players.
100 caps is a monumental achievement. To throw a little perspective at this, Alan Shearer only has 63 caps. Glenn Hoddle has 53, Gordon Banks has 73, Gary Lineker has 80, Geoff Hurst has only 49. In fact, this week Cole becomes only the 7th player to ever reach the 100 cap mark, joining the impressive company of Peter Shilton, David Beckham, Bobby Moore, Bobby Charlton, Billy Wright and the aforementioned Stevie G.
It seems that if you were to go down to your local pub, or to Wembley for the Brazil game, and mention the other 6 players on that list you’d be greeted with a pretty positive reaction. Not so for Ashley Cole. One’s thing for certain though, this negativity can in no way be attributed to his ability on a football pitch.
Since making his first appearance for England in 2001 Cole’s stock has sky-rocketed and the claims that he is the world’s best left back seemingly get stronger by the day. He has 3 Premier League winners medals, including playing 32 out of 38 league games for the invincible Arsenal team of 2003/2004. He has won 7 FA Cups, more than any other player in history and has a Champions League winners medal to his name. And on top of all of that he has been to 5 major tournaments with England, so far.
Maybe most impressively, his main rivals to his England position over the years, Wayne Bridge and Leighton Baines, have played only 49 England games between them. Almost all of these coming as substitutes in friendly games or when Cole was unavailable. And I assure you, no matter the shortcomings of the England team (and there are many) you will never see Cole play a bad game for club or country.
So, to put it bluntly, why so hated?
As mentioned, it can’t be because of his ability, so it must be due to his antics off the field. His position as one of England’s best known players doesn’t help. Even people who have never seen a game of football know who Ashley Cole is. And his highly public persona makes his foibles all the more obvious.
Why you dislike Cole could be down to a number of reasons. Is it the driving bans? The arrests? The shooting of a work experience boy from close range with an air rifle? The highly publicized affairs and subsequent divorce from some pop star? Or maybe it’s the move to Chelsea.
The move that made the phrase ‘tapping-up’ common place in the football fan vocabulary. To refresh the memory, Cole met with Chelsea representatives in secret without the permission of his club. While not illegal this was a blatant breach of FA rules and hefty fines were handed out to Cole and Chelsea.
What drew the ire of the footballing community all the more was Cole’s refusal to admit any wrong doing, instead saying that Arsenal’s latest contract offer of a mere £55,000 per week had left him “trembling with anger”. His dismissal of £55,000 per week as derisory led to the nickname ‘Cashley’. When the public view footballers as overpaid, pampered prima-donnas who are completely out of touch with man on the street, it’s occurrences like this that they draw their opinion from.
It’s things like this that have painted a picture of Ashley Cole, a picture of a less than savoury character. To be honest, there is enough evidence in the above two paragraphs to support this view. But that would be a little one-sided and there is a good side to anyone, Ashley Cole included.
It goes unmentioned that Ashley Cole has made more public appearances at charity events and the like than most. More than anyone else during his time with Arsenal. If you Google ‘Ashley Cole Party’ you will see headlines like ‘Ashley Cole Parties in LA’, ‘Ashley Cole Parties with rapstar Drake’, ‘Ashley Cole parties at Chinawhite until 4am’.
Nowhere do you see that Ashley has gone to the leaving parties of Arsenal staff that he was particularly close with while still a Chelsea player. You won’t hear anywhere that he sold his car to donate money to a Lymphoma charity as the disease killed David Rocastle, one of his footballing heroes.
This may not go anywhere near changing your opinion of Cole. If you were to form a negative idea of him based on what you’ve read above then it would still be pretty justified- but that is only what you've read, not seen. Rather it just goes to show that he can’t be all bad. And regardless of your thoughts on what he is like as a person he still deserves respect at Wembley when he lines up against Brazil.
You don’t turn on your TV, or pay to go to Wembley, to see what Ashley Cole is like as a person. You do it to see him play football. And 99 times before now he has done it for England at an extremely high level.
Can you forget his off-field ‘Cashley’ persona and just admire him for the player he is? It should be easy enough. How often do we remember that Bobby Moore left his wife to run off with a much younger air stewardess, just years after he tried to engineer himself a move from West Ham to Spurs?
Nobody’s perfect.