Former England midfielder has retired at the age of 37
Tuesday 13 November 2018 14:39, UK
Following the news that Joe Cole has retired from football, we assess a career of astonishing promise - and genuine achievement.
Depending on who you asked, Joe Cole was the 'Cockney Pele' or 'West Ham's answer to Maradona'. Ian Wright was awestruck, while Harry Redknapp was fond of recalling how Cole's progress was the first thing that Sir Alex Ferguson would ask him about whenever they met. And this was all before he had kicked a ball for the first team.
They were ludicrous expectations but a 9-0 aggregate thrashing of Coventry in the 1999 FA Youth Cup final didn't help dampen them. By 2003, the 21-year-old Cole had represented England at the first of three World Cups and signed for Chelsea in a £6.6m move that would bring plenty of success but also transform him into a player very different from the one some had hoped.
Cole's link-up with Jose Mourinho the following year was the catalyst for back-to-back Premier League winners' medals and the two best goalscoring seasons of his career. But for those who cherished Cole the artist rather than Cole the artisan, it had come at a cost. Life on the wings meant restrictions.
He needs to make an impact on me not the crowd.
Even a winner against Liverpool earned chastisement from his manager afterwards, with the customary reminder of his defensive duties. As the tune goes, Mourinho had taught him how to be sensible, logical, responsible, practical by showing him a world where he could be so dependable. It was effective but it did not make the heart sing.
By the time he left Chelsea in the summer of 2010, the story of unfulfilled promise had already been sketched out. Only the details remained. There was a move to Liverpool and Steven Gerrard's eyebrow-raising comparison with Lionel Messi - "anything he can do Joe can do as well, if not better" - before a season on loan at Lille playing a supporting role to Eden Hazard and Dimitri Payet.
Throughout, the suspicion was that Cole was a No 10 just waiting for the man to entrust him with the role. He's not alone. Being a playmaker at a Premier League club is a much-coveted job. Speaking in 2013, Ged Roddy, the Premier League's director of youth, said: "We have to make sure more and more of those players are English. That type of player will emerge if the culture is right."
But there is a danger in making one man a symbol of something greater. Perhaps Cole's passing range would never have developed. Perhaps his dribbling was better utilised in one-on-one situations out wide rather than the centre where the quickest of thinking is required.
As a result, Cole's career advanced like that of a winger rather than a midfielder. The demands of that position seem to have steepened his decline and set him on a path more familiar to the likes of Kieron Dyer, Shaun Wright-Phillips and David Bentley rather than the one signposted longevity and enjoyed by his former West Ham team-mates Frank Lampard and Michael Carrick.
But the key difference between Cole and Bentley - who famously declared upon his early retirement that he "never felt like a footballer" - is that he was willing to embrace the challenge. At Coventry, Tony Mowbray talked of how Cole had "no airs and graces" and was "not looking for favours or extra days off". Whether in League One or Ligue 1, Cole still wanted to play. He still wanted to enjoy it.
There was a Florida swansong to cap it all off. Three seasons with Tampa Bay Rowdies, where he racked up more appearances than for any club since his Chelsea heyday, combining playing duties with a coaching role for his final campaign. But now it's over and time to put the career in context.
The man who has appeared in more World Cups than Gary Lineker, won more Premier League titles than Bryan Robson and more FA Cups than David Beckham, might always be styled as an unfulfilled talent. But those achievements - and the manner in which he accomplished them - would suggest it is a career he can be proud of nevertheless.
He is entitled to retire without too many regrets.
A version of this article was published at an earlier date
