Ashley Cole lifts the lid on his rise from Arsenal prospect to all-time great, Wayne and Ash discuss the coaching bug, and the panel relive the highs, lows, and controversies of a blockbuster career. Plus, the truth behind his Arsenal–Chelsea move, reflections on England’s golden generation, and big questions about where Cole’s managerial future lies.
00:00 – Intro
05:49 – Early Football Memories
08:43 – Transition to Fullback
22:12 – Coaching Ambitions
36:26 – Breaking into the Arsenal Team
44:00 – Influential Figures in the Dressing Room
52:02 – Leaving Arsenal for Chelsea
1:05:46 – Toughest Opponents
1:07:45 – Battling Against Racism and Backlash
1:13:20 – Media Agenda & Criticism
1:17:19 – England
1:21:18 – Tuchel’s Midfield Dilemma
Ashley Cole on the Arsenal contract saga, reneging on promises and his move to Chelsea…
“In my head, I’m going, ‘You took it away. They were my love. That was my club.’ And I did feel a little bit devalued and underappreciated a little bit. So that was where my head and heart was at. I was like, ‘Nah, you’ve took my love away.’”
“I’ve never, ever asked from the age of seventeen. I’ve never said, ‘I want big money, I want big money.’ I want the same as it was. Give me the contract, I’ll sign it. This is my club. This is everything I’ve known.”
“The aim and the conversation about going abroad was (from what I was told and heard) that I was going Real Madrid. I was going to have conversations with another agent who I could sign for teams abroad. So it was Madrid, kind of Barcelona. And again, I don’t know how deep it was. I’m looking to sign a deal here to go abroad. Things changed. Got married. Didn’t actually want to leave the country in the end. And maybe a year and a half later… it’s Chelsea.”
‘‘There was no hidden meeting. I walked into the hotel to have pre-talks. It could’ve been Madrid. So then newspapers are saying, ‘He’s going Chelsea,’ because a waiter said there was a contract on the table for Chelsea. The papers ran with that. I had to deal with all of that.”
Ashley Cole on The Invincibles vs Mourinho’s Chelsea team…
“I loved playing in both teams, but what I will say is… we couldn’t beat that Chelsea team. It was tougher physically. When Jose came to the Premier League, we struggled with it. We couldn’t break them down. I think they won the league two years in a row. Whether it was tactics or just the way they were set up, we just couldn’t beat them.”
Ashley Cole on his toughest opponent and chanting in Spain…
“Joaquin. Spain, away. You get him running at you, and he’s doing the stepovers, and he was physically strong. He was nutmegging me. And of course it was the racial stuff as well. So mentally I wasn’t there. But he taught me a lesson.”
“When you’re seeing Nan’s and Grandad’s, doing the monkey chant in the crowd, it’s like, whoa! Wow. But I had it before. Valencia. Away. I had it as well with Arsenal. One of my first Champions League games. It was similar. And it’s like, how do you react? In real life, you’d probably be fighting. On a pitch, you’re the one that’s going to get in trouble.”
“Mentally it probably did affect me. But going through my career, I’ve probably had a lot on my shoulders. I’ve had to go through a lot, and I’ve always kept quiet. I never want to blame anyone else. I never want to put my stresses onto other people. That’s just how I am. But now, having grown up, I understand that’s probably not the right thing to do.”
“I just brushed it off as if, ‘Oh, I have to deal with this. I have to be strong. I don’t need to speak to anyone.’ I’m not saying I had mental health, but what I went through was hard.”
Ashley Cole on his negative media portrayal…
“They definitely had an agenda against me. One million percent. One million percent. And I think it came from… well, partly me, but also the way the media wanted to frame me.”
“I gave an Audi TT to David Rocastle’s charity auction. I didn’t want publicity. I just wanted to support my idol. But the media spun it as if I was doing it for publicity. That’s when I said, ‘I am done.’”
“Every time a story came out, it was on my shoulders. I just took it. This day and age, I’d go on Instagram or Twitter to back myself up, but back then, you had to deal with it in silence. I was a sitting duck.”
Ashley Cole on the Golden Generation…
“Paul Scholes cannot be the top Paul Scholes with Steven Gerrard in the team because Stevie G cannot be the Stevie G in the team with Paul Scholes. Lampard cannot be the Frank Lampard for Chelsea with those two in the team. So tactically, we set up to win, but were the players open enough to sacrifice a little bit of themselves? People have to be a little bit more selfless, and I don’t think we were.”
“Even if I’m just making overlaps to give someone else space, there was no one else in that pocket. When Waza comes in the pocket… who we got running behind? There’s no support because our midfielders might want to get the ball from the defenders. It just didn’t work.”
“You leave out a top player, of course you’re going to be criticised and asked questions. That’s football. But you have to live and die by decisions that you make. Leaving people out will burn you if you don’t win, but if you win, you’re going to look like a genius in the end.”
Ashley Cole on Jude Bellingham’s England’s selection…
“Moments… you can’t pay enough money for that. Big moments in games when you need someone to deliver, he will deliver. In my opinion, that would be my selection.”
Ashley Cole on the fluid style of The Invincibles…
“It was never coached. Of course, when Thierry first came, I think he played on the left. But yeah, that adjustment just worked. I liked to bomb up and down. Of course, Robert, right-footed, likes to come inside and open the pitch, and he liked to open his body and finish from his right and open the goal. So yeah, it just flowed and just worked. It was nothing. It was like organic. It wasn’t planned.”
Ashley Cole on his relationship with Arsene Wenger…
“At the start, respectfully, there wasn’t kind of a relationship. He showed his trust in me by playing me. I don’t know his relationship with the older players, the senior players, because I was just there. You know, you’re in the dream. You’re in the bubble. But I just turned up for training, trained, and I’m starting. Wow. They didn’t really say a word to me. And I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. It was a good thing – he let me play my game.”
Ashley Cole on his early influences and idol…
“David Rocastle. Yes, so probably now at the age of eleven, twelve, I was on Arsenal’s books, and had a little bit of growing pains in my knee. I had the opportunity to go to Highbury and see Gary Lewin – who had to come to look at my knee.
“David Rocastle was on the bed, and he was, like, the first one that spoke to me. Took time. I didn’t really get to meet the first-team players. They were secure and over the other side. But to see David Rocastle… I was a left winger at the time and a striker, so to get the opportunity to meet him and be around him.. You know, you have these people that influence you just by the words – just by saying, ‘Hello’ and ‘How are you?’ ‘Oh, what position do you play?’ And then ever since that, you know, we looked a little bit alike. I had, like, that long face, that, you know, the kind of little flat top. And yeah, I just wanted to emulate him and play like him. So growing up, he was my idol.”
Ashley Cole on his transition from striker to left back…
“I was a striker. Yeah, I would do all right with the goals. To be fair, I would score maybe thirty, forty, sometimes fifty this season. This is school football though, club football. I played for a team called Puma. Bunch of friends from my school. The dad decided to start a team and we were half decent. We would compete with Senrab, who were a top team at the time. And yeah, I was a striker there and I was really skinny, as I am now. I was slight, you know, I didn’t want contact, I’d just run behind. And at that age group, you know, if you’re quicker than people, you’re one-on-one with the goalie all the time.
“I started to transition a little bit deeper and back in that back line around maybe fourteen when I went to Arsenal. And then fast forward another two years and then it’s first day of pre-season. I think it’s David Livermore does his cruciate. They [the u18’s Arsenal manager] call me over. And now I’m a left back. And that was it. I was an attacking left back.
“Don Howe was the under-eighteens manager, and we had Don Givens. Don Givens – loved him. They must have just seen something in me. I liked to attack and try to put my foot in. I had to find a way to compete against these bigger players, so it was tackle hard and fast. I could get you from our goal to the opposition’s goal quite quick. So they saw that attribute in me and allowed me to bomb up and down and play on the left side alone.”
Ashley Cole on his early career coaches…
“He [Dow Howe] was very influential, and as I said, not just for me but the group. He set the tone from day one of pre-season, and we knew the discipline was a big, big importance for the club. He wanted you to play free, of course, but the details he used to coach were amazing as a defender. Don Howe would have been certainly one in taking pride in actual defending – you know, one v ones, move your feet, show people down the line. Whatever my strength was, was speed, so I’m going, ‘Okay, Don, how do I defend one v one? How do I defend an overlap?’ And he was very specific in the details he gave.”
Ashley Cole on the importance of going on loan…
“That was massive for my career. I felt I went from playing reserve football to going to Palace, fighting relegation, going from playing in front of a man and his dog to now crazy Palace fans that are fighting for their lives. You’re fighting for people’s jobs. I think they were in administration. It was tough. But I’d come from Arsenal. And then it hit me, like, ‘Yeah, I’m fighting for something different here. Now I’ve gained that experience of what it means to really play for three points and be a group that’s fighting for something. And yeah, you go back to Arsenal and play with top, top players who I would just give the ball.”
Ashley Cole on learning from Tony Adams and Martin Keown…
“Going forward in my career, then of course people like Tony Adams, Martin Keown. In the youth team I could attack – if we concede, we concede. We’re winning ten-one, yeah. But when people’s jobs are on the line, managers, kind of older, experienced players… Tony Adams would not allow me to let a cross come in the box.”
“I was certainly coached the defensive principles. But, you know, when you’re going into senior football and you’re playing against top wingers, I made mistakes. My aggression… I tried to jump in and lunge in, and better players was just taking it around me. So I had to learn on the job and with the experienced players. As I mentioned, people like Tony and Martin, they gave me the character building of going, ‘That cannot happen again. You know, I want you to be right next to me.’ And then I learned on the job: I need to be close to Tony Adams. So it’s a sprint, it’s not a jog. It’s a sprint. Do I show him inside? No, because I know Tony’s not going to be there. So I need to show him the line now. I need to work my feet. I need to get my distance right. I need to understand the strength of whatever winger I’m up against.”
Ashley Cole on coaching with England…
“With England, we get them now, we’ve got ten days to work. We do have to cram a lot of stuff in, but we take pride in going, we need to hit this. We need to work on, you know, how you jump and head off one foot. So we take pride in doing that, the extras, and trying to help these players be better, because we understand at the club sometimes, they don’t have enough time. Because there will come a moment, whether it’s in a big tournament where – I don’t know – you’ve not had to deal with crosses in the box, so we might work on crosses in the box. We try to work on every aspect of how we defend, you know, from how we defend the eighteen-yard box to then how we want to build out, but then the second balls, smoothing it out.”
Ashley Cole on his coaching style…
“I look at the fullback who I was coaching [at Chelsea]. He’s a fourteen, fifteen-year-old. He doesn’t have the same profile as me. He doesn’t have my mentality. I’m not going to tell him how to defend like me. I’ll just give him scenarios. If you’re six foot five as a fullback, you can’t move like me. I’m not going to tell you how I would defend. I would just tell you, ‘Look, this is where the danger can come from.’ Body shape and body position might be a little bit more open because you need to see more of the pitch.”
Ashley Cole on his aspirations to become a manager…
“I definitely want to give it a go. I am different, you know. I don’t speak as well as certain managers. I have to find my way in the game. I have to find my own personality, be authentic. But, going back to the start of my journey as a coach, I found a way to lead and push people and bring people on a journey with me. We’re just trying to tell stories and make these players believe what I’m saying.”
Stick to Football is brought to you by Arne Clothing – to watch the full podcast episode with Ashley Cole, Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher, Roy Keane, Wayne Rooney, and Ian Wright please visit: https://youtu.be/DQVwWeJ3Bsk