Ashley Cole: From England’s ‘golden generation’ to a role in its hopeful future

When Harry Kane was presented with a golden England cap at Wembley on Tuesday evening to mark his 100 appearances for the national team, the presentation was led by Football Association chair Debbie Hewitt, Frank Lampard and Ashley Cole.

Both Lampard and Cole were there by virtue of being part of that tiny club — which was nine players and is now 10 — to reach a century of appearances for England. After the presentation, Hewitt, Lampard and Cole posed for photographs on the pitch with Kane, the striker’s wife and two of his daughters just before kick-off.

It was a deeply symbolic moment and not just for Kane. While Lampard was there in a suit, Cole was there in his England training gear, ready to take his place on the England bench alongside Lee Carsley as soon as it was over. It seemed to underline Cole’s new status at the heart of the England men’s senior team.

The news on Thursday evening that Cole has left his job at Birmingham City to focus on his work with the FA further underlines his importance to the new England set-up. Of course, Carsley is still only in interim charge, and was given the role of taking the England team for this international break with a view to doing the October and November internationals too. The FA still has plenty of time to appoint another candidate should they wish to do so.

But over the last few weeks, Carsley has looked and sounded like an England manager, and after two good wins and two clean sheets in their Nations League games against Republic of Ireland and Finland, it now certainly feels increasingly likely that he will stay in the post. And, after Thursday night’s news, that he will keep Cole alongside him.

There was no surprise in late August when it was confirmed that Cole — along with Joleon Lescott and Tim Dittmer — would work alongside Carsley for the England team. He had been a trusted part of Carsley’s staff with England Under-21s since the summer of 2021, a hugely successful coaching partnership given that England won the European Under-21 Championship in Georgia last summer.

After that triumph last July, Cole stopped to talk to reporters, including The Athletic, about his relationship with Carsley. “It would maybe have been difficult for him (Carsley), at times, to give me coaching time but he has trusted me to do whatever I feel works for the team,” Cole said. “I owe him a lot.”

Cole especially enjoys drawing up attacking plans for Carsley.

“A lot of fans will say you can’t play attacking football,” he said. “But me being a defender, I hate defending. I don’t want to work on defensive work. I want to do the attacking play. Cars (Carsley) really gave me the license to come up with certain game plans and style of play.”

That bond of trust will now be integral to the future of the England senior team. At least for a while.

The rise of Cole alongside Carsley is also proof of how the FA is determined to build on the success they enjoyed with the Under-21s. Over the last three years, Carsley and Cole worked with many of the players — Angel Gomes, Noni Madueke, Rico Lewis, Morgan Gibbs-White, Kobbie Mainoo, Anthony Gordon and Levi Colwill — who played for England this month. (Cole Palmer, who missed this camp, was also in that victorious European Championship side.)

Players feel that Cole connects with them well and can help to make them better. After the Under-21 Euros final, Colwill spoke in detail about how Cole had told him to position his standing foot differently when passing the ball forward in order to generate more power. Colwill followed Cole’s advice and was delighted.

“It’s those little things that no one had ever told me,” Colwill said. “He’s been there and done that, and experienced it himself.” Madueke also hailed Cole’s hands-on involvement with his own game, sitting him down with clips to help him focus on crossing with his right foot and finishing with his left. “Ash takes a very personal approach in bettering my game,” Madueke told The Athletic last year.

The appointment also shows a continuity with England’s own history.

Cole was a brilliant player for England, winning 107 caps, and would be most people’s choice as England’s greatest ever player at left-back. He came in at the start of the Sven-Goran Eriksson era and played for England at three World Cups and two European Championships. He was there for the defining moments of the ‘Golden Generation’, for better and worse.

And while some people might have assumed 20 years ago that other members of that team — Lampard, Steven Gerrard, John Terry and Rio Ferdinand — might have ended up coaching England, Cole is in fact the one who has gotten closest. (Gary Neville, it should be said, was also part of Roy Hodgson’s backroom staff in the 2010s.)

The fact that the former Arsenal and Chelsea man had a reputation in his playing days for spikiness and infamously called the FA a ‘bunch of twats’ on social media in 2012 has long been left behind him now. In fact, those who have worked with Cole on his coaching career so far point to his lack of ego, his willingness to learn and his growth mindset.

Cole started out coaching at Derby County and then at Chelsea’s academy after he finished playing, initially working with the Under-15s and Under-16s there before moving up to the older age groups, focusing on defending.

Cole paired up with Carsley at England in 2021 but at club level, he moved into first-team work initially with Lampard at Everton (working on analysis and then set-pieces), then back at Chelsea, before moving to Birmingham City to work with Wayne Rooney and his successors there.

These have been demanding club environments where Cole has been part of a team under pressure. Now he will focus his attention on Carsley and England, where he has already had so much success.

(Top photo: David Rogers/Getty Images)