Welcome back to the
fold, Joe Cole. We've missed you. I say 'we' – I've missed
you. Not that you've really been away, rather sort of fluttering
about in football's great peripheral vision. Is it only me who feels
this earnest longing, whose soul weeps into a deep, Cole-shaped void?
I hope I'm not alone in my yearning.
To me it feels as if
Cole's professional career has always been a bit of a struggle, even
when it was going well. Fifty-six England caps, three Premier League
medals, and yet the struggles have remained. Be they holding down a
position for club or country, or reaching for the same orbit of
superstardom as his erstwhile England peers, said struggles have oft
involved large portions of time spent hugging touchlines instead of
weaving magic through the centre of the pitches across the land.
Struggling at the touchline of genius: that's our Joe. “Where's our
Joe?”, people would ask. “Over there”, would come the reply.
“On the touchline. Struggling.”
Cole's wilderness years
– indeed, his career arc as a whole – seem sadly indicative of
English football's unerring and unnerving capacity to figuratively
and literally push true creative talent to the margins (see also:
Scholes, Paul). It shouldn't have been this way of course. Having
burst through West Ham's youth system, Cole went the way only a bona
fide English talent can: thrust into the limelight, hyped beyond all
recognition, then dampened and worn down, the rough penetrative edges
of his cut-glass talent sanded and buffed, moulded into an useful
attacking foil but nothing more. Gradually he became an efficient
attacking bit part; always the supporting role, rarely the leading
man.
In those early days
Cole cut a romantic figure, full of jinks and tricks and wide-eyed
promise, every bit the quintessential playground footballer – a
prepubescent, pre-issues Ronnie O'Sullivan in a rumpled Grange Hill
blazer. Cole always gave the impression of being that kid who spent
his evenings practising with his weaker foot against the garage wall
while his mates hung around behind the youth club cadging cigarettes
and making knob jokes. For a while he triumphed, but somewhere along
the way things fell rather flat.
It's easy to forget
that Cole featured in 26 league matches for Chelsea during the
2009/10 season, the club's most recent league-winning term. But his
importance to the team had by then faded considerably, his subsequent
move to Liverpool signalling the low point of a period of prolonged
stagnation. Following a largely forgettable 2010/11 season hindered
by injury and managerial upheaval, our hero headed across the channel
to Lille in search of his mojo. And whilst it would have been nice to
see him return styled head-to-toe in black, waspishly flicking at a
Gauloise and banging on about Satre to anyone pretending to listen,
his year abroad may prove to be vital (if somewhat more understated),
completing as it does a circular pilgrimage back to his spiritual
home.
West Ham might just be
the perfect venue for Cole these days. For those who aren't regulars
at Upton Park, the discovery of a Sam Allardyce side playing some
actually-quite-pleasing football comes as a vaguely confusing
revelation, like overhearing an accountant recite Shakespeare or
finding out your mum's really into psytrance.
Cole's second debut for the Hammers coincided with Manchester
United's FA Cup third round visit, the man himself coming within
minutes of owning the day, robbed of the match-winning accolades by
Robin Van Persie's already-familiar heroics for the visitors. But
this shouldn't distract from Cole's performance – two game-changing
assists and a sparkling all-round display fully meriting the standing
ovation his late substitution received. Post-match he stood before
the ITV microphones, eyes a-bulge with adrenaline and vigour,
close-cropped hairline fading imperceptibly into his stubble, chin
crimson-flecked following a nasty man-clash, every bit the embattled
Eastend gladiator. Our Joe was back, and not before time.
It was perhaps written
that things would turn out this way. Cole, then still in his
footballing adolescence, was an innocent victim of a terrible legacy,
the collateral damage of the footballing market crash that was “The
Golden Generation”, a man choked by the airless hope of a
smothering label applied by a success-starved footballing nation. The
aforementioned moniker synced perfectly with that particularly
post-colonial hangover we English nurse: the uncanny ability to
overhype and over-sell all that may potentially one day glitter. A
crop of budding talents on their way through? So it is declared: this
shall be The Golden Generation!
Despite necessarily
relegating all future generations to, at best, runner up status (at
worst, the level of base metal – The Copper Clan! The Lead
Lineage!) the tainted, baggage-laden banner heading of Cole's peer
group makes it easy to forget that he made his England debut as long
ago as 2001. He has appeared at three World Cups – one more than
David Seaman, two more than David Platt, three more than David May –
and yet has scraped together a meagre three caps since 2008. Think
back to England's midfield of 2006. There’s Frank Lampard, fellow
West Ham alumni and now a Chelsea ever-present for a decade or more,
celebrated as a club legend by fans desperate to keep him for longer
than his current megadeal allows. Next, Steven Gerrard: the Kop hero
who almost single-handedly dragged his side to a fifth European Cup
and became England captain along the way. Then there’s David
Beckham: globetrotting sports superbrand, replete with model wife and
designer kids, who has put past indiscretions behind him to win over
the cold heart of a nation which has since elevated him to Judy Dench
levels of national treasure belovedness.
Poor Joe feels like the
odd one out in all this, the runt of the superstar litter in many
respects, a man whose time may have passed him by, overshadowed
on-field and off by his glamorous contemporaries. Of course Cole is
not blameless in all this. Questions have been asked throughout his
career as to his application, his willingness – or lack thereof –
to follow team orders. But I cling to the dream that Cole's best days
could still be ahead of him. In that respect I see potentially
something of the Andrea Pirlo's about him, a player who could be
Cole's perfect role model. Pirlo himself started life as a floating,
positionally ill-defined forward, but as times changed and the game
evolved around him, he not only adapted his style to the ways of the
modern era, but also helped shape it too, redefining (or perhaps
un-redefining? No? Fine) the role of the midfield playmaker.
In an age of zippy, sinewy, physically perfect, cookie-cutter
midfield specimens, Pirlo makes for a remarkably cross-generational
vision, a throwback to simpler times; a caveman-genie of patient,
metronomic vision, hitch-hiking through time in a world otherwise
belonging to the tweaked and the toned. And that's where Cole's
possible redemption lies. In an era of flexible frontlines – of
south-facing chance-conjurers and deep-lying thing-a-me-bobs –
Cole’s experience as an attacking jack-of-most-trades could make
him the perfect candidate for a late career renaissance.
Renowned
footballer-politician Michel Platini famously commented that had
Glenn Hoddle been born French, “he would have won 150 caps”, a
sideswipe at England's failure to build teams around such unique
creative talents. I have always felt the same to be true of Cole.
Some would say that great talent is often not appreciated in its own
time, which is all very well in some disciplines, but a little
trickier when it comes to the here-and-now maelstrom of professional
football. A great yet forgotten record can be dusted off and listened
to with fresh ears, its aural spell cast on a new, accepting
audience. But a long-since retired footballer has little to offer
entertainment-wise once his time has passed, the footballer's
eventual legacy paradoxically defined by the narrow parameters of the
moment. The man's value is in what he can offer now – legacies and
standing the test of time are all well and good, but the
under-appreciated talents of a footballer are harder to reassess with
the passing years.
Cole's time is still just about upon us, but he needs to use it wisely, lest his myriad talents be forgotten. He still has the chance to redefine his own legend, so that twenty years from now – when number nines relinquish their fashionable falsehood; when wingers invert themselves so much that they pop out the other side again – I can hold a Joe Cole retrospective and folk will travel from miles around to pay belated homage to his robust genius. “Where was our Joe?” people will ask. “Over there”, will come my reply. “On the touchline. Struggling… but that was only half the story. Say, do you remember Andrea Pirlo?”
Cole's time is still just about upon us, but he needs to use it wisely, lest his myriad talents be forgotten. He still has the chance to redefine his own legend, so that twenty years from now – when number nines relinquish their fashionable falsehood; when wingers invert themselves so much that they pop out the other side again – I can hold a Joe Cole retrospective and folk will travel from miles around to pay belated homage to his robust genius. “Where was our Joe?” people will ask. “Over there”, will come my reply. “On the touchline. Struggling… but that was only half the story. Say, do you remember Andrea Pirlo?”
