It was nice of Graeme Le Saux to speak up for his mate. Allow me to join the chorus of approval for Joe Cole. There must be a place for Cole when Fabio Capello names his World Cup 23 next week.
Le Saux is biased, of course. He spoke of Cole's talent and the need to use his inclusion in the initial squad of 30 to drive his case home. I disagree. Cole has been making his case from the moment he laced a boot.
Capello has two genuine No 10s in his squad. One is Wayne Rooney. The other is Cole. Ten is football's magic number, the shirt managers throw to the men who can make a difference, to players not bound by convention, who see the pass and the gap that others do not, in whose imaginations a different game plays out.
The news coming out of Austria ahead of tonight's fixture against Mexico was that Capello is flush with new thought, that Rooney is to slip anchor and replicate his club role at the point of the attack supported by Steven Gerrard. This is to be welcomed and adds even more weight to Cole's case. If Rooney is to be a lone striker in a more advanced position, the need for magic feet to operate behind at some point in a match is met by Cole.
The champagne moment of 2006 – and there weren't many, on the pitch at least – was Cole's strike against Sweden, a masterful dispatch that drew awed gasps. Cole sent the ball on its way with the kind of geometry few can trace. He has it in him to change the course of a match, not necessarily from the start, rather to make an impact when legs are tiring and the game is stretched.
Capello is committed to a starting line-up that precludes Cole's inclusion, whichever formation he chooses. The coupling of Gerrard and Frank Lampard is seen as inviolable, despite the tension that remains in that dynamic. Capello has inched closer than any to a compromise that frees both to duplicate their club roles, but since they fill essentially the same slot at Liverpool and Chelsea, their impact with England is never quite what it is in the Premier League.
There would be some irony were Cole to be excluded by a coach hired to add continental sophistication to a yeoman template. There is a well established English distrust at international level of mercurial feet that reaches all the way back to Sir Alf Ramsey, the World Cup reference point that Capello is seeking to match. Ramsey famously left out Jimmy Greaves for Geoff Hurst in the 1966 final, placing his trust in utilitarian values rather than art. Victory validated his choice and snuffed out the argument for decades.
In one sense, Ramsey's high point may have done more harm than good, for it serves as the eternal justification for the selection of willing legs over creativity. Selection is, of course, never that simple. The coach is required to blend a multiplicity of qualities. However, the list of high-class victims is too long to dismiss entirely the idea that Roundhead thinking has held England back.
I waged war in the playground on behalf of Sheffield United's Tony Currie, who was persistently overlooked in the Seventies. Alan Hudson was another talented playmaker considered ill-fitted for international demands. Shamefully Curry was capped only 17 times, Hudson just twice. Their exclusion explains in part why England failed to qualify for the World Cup in 1974 and 1978. That, and in 1973 a Polish goalkeeper called Jan Tomaszewski.
Glenn Hoddle's international career is one long lament over what might have been. His 53 caps short-changed, with the possible exception of Paul Gascoigne, England's greatest post-66 talent. When Spurs import Ossie Ardiles finally mastered English, one of the first questions he put to Hoddle was why he hadn't won 100 caps. Michel Platini said that had he been born French, Hoddle would have won 150. Johan Cruyff asked for his shirt after a Uefa Cup match at White Hart Lane. Plaudits do not come much higher than that.
Players such as Hoddle, Hudson, Currie and Cole need to be encouraged, to be told how brilliant they are, not to be told to tuck their shirts in, as Ron Greenwood once ordered Hoddle to do. The shirt out was the trigger that freed Hoddle's swagger, a subtle token that spoke of individualism, of romance, of creativity, attributes too often misunderstood in our game. Let's not see the trend continue with the suppression of Cole. Rooney escapes censure because he marries Cole's ability to classic English attributes, an iron will and indefatigable effort. Rooney is the first to acknowledge Cole's technical range. Capello must do likewise.
