Our scout walked in and said: I’ve just watched the best 12-year-old I’ve ever seen
..AND HE DID FULFIL HIS ENORMOUS POTENTIAL SAYS MENTOR CARR
DID JOE COLE fulfil his potential? According to the man who helped nurture him – West Ham legend Tony Carr – Cole’s glittering CV answers that question emphatically.
It is one that has been repeatedly posed during the latter years of Cole’s career.
And it cropped up once again yesterday, following the announcement that he was retiring after 20 years as a professional.
An unbelievably skilful playmaker, the buzz around Cole was huge, due to his youth football feats for club and country. He was labelled the next Paul Gascoigne, at 14 he had an adidas boot deal to rival those handed to senior Premier League players and he embarrassed West Ham’s first-teamers when he trained with them as a schoolboy.
Back then, anything seemed possible.
And Carr insisted: “He has certainly fulfilled his potential. Look at his CV – there are a lot of players that would love to have achieved half of that.”
Then-Hammers scout Dennis Coxall spotted Cole playing in Islington and excitedly reported back to Carr: “I’ve just watched the best 12-year-old player I’ve ever seen.”
West Ham’s head of scouting, Jimmy Hampson, arranged for Cole to come in and Carr recalled:
“The first time we set eyes on him it was just about how to make him stay.
“It was his dribbling ability. Every time he got the ball, he drove at players and beat them with relative ease and was very exciting to watch.
“He did audacious things, things that made you smile. He was cheeky, so to speak.”
Carr recalled his own favourite Cole moment saying: “If you remember in the film Escape to Victory when Ossie Ardiles got the ball and flicked it over his head and the opponent’s head and ran around the other side, well, Joe did that in a friendly game when he was about 13. You couldn’t believe it.”
Cole won his six major honours and most of his 56 England caps after joining Chelsea in 2003, but he never quite fully recovered from a cruciate injury in 2009 and left the club the next year.
Despite injury niggles that followed, he continued his career at Liverpool, Lille, West Ham, Aston Villa, Coventry and Tampa Bay Rowdies before retiring yesterday at 37.
Cole is planning to go into coaching now – after a taste of it at Tampa. He said: “To lend my experience to help other young footballers achieve their dreams, just like I did, is a big passion of mine.”