Tactics and Transfer: Chelsea’s Cole is the standard, whether you like it or not

Former Chelsea left back Ashley Cole is not given as much credit as he deserves nowadays.

It’s hard to find a way to talk about something like football at the moment. With the world in as terrible shape as it is, talking about a game played by a team—Chelsea—in a league that isn’t hasn’t resumed yet seems almost wasteful. That said, as the world turns and we all try to do our part to make sure that it is a better one than it was before, we’ll reflect and give credit where it’s due. I have always subscribed to the principles of this George Santayana quote religiously: “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

So, we’re going to look back this week towards a better time, but also one from which all the lessons that are needed to move forward were present—if not fully learned. This very summer, Chelsea will likely sign a new left back. The player will be expensive. The club has signed countless left backs in the past decade and all of them have been relatively incomplete at best or failures at their worst. They all paled by and perhaps even cracked under the pressure of the greatness of one man, Ashley Cole.

Cole is not a well-liked footballer and he’s not a very well-liked man either. In the public sphere, Cashley, as some people have called him, has been dragged into every sort of issue imaginable it seems. He had a hugely public fall out with his wife, he departed the Invincibles for more money, he wrote about that departure with hilariously terrible taste, he threw darts at youth players, he has been caught smoking in nightclubs and the list goes on.

But, one thing isn’t mentioned as often as it should be.

Cole is easily the best English left back to have ever played the game and without a doubt in the top 10 at the position of all time. I only say that as a polite option to those who might disagree. I think the only humans who even come close are Roberto Carlos and Paolo Maldini—who spent a considerable amount of time also as a centerback, so it is hard to tell.

I even like the term Cashley for him because of how symbolic it was of his time at Chelsea. Here was a player who came to epitomize everything people hated about the Blues in the early days of Roman’s revolution and that we, as Chelsea supporters, loved that they loathed.

Yes, Cole wanted his money. He knew how good he was and Chelsea were willing to give it to him while Arsenal weren’t. He did a job better than anyone else and expected to be paid as such. With the modern morals of the game, he would even likely have been praised for this. Yes, he was a ruthless, cold-as-steel defender who frustrated all opponents and won literally every trophy under the sun. People hated the Blues then and he was a great symbol of the excellence that made it so.

It’s crazy to suggest, but despite all of his controversies, Cole was about as good a professional as any who ever existed. Despite everything going on with him, he averaged 44 matches a season during his eight seasons with the Blues and he was unbelievable in nearly all of them. In a time when the game is incalculably softer and plenty of notable players sit out with hurt feelings—let alone actual injuries—yet feel no shame in collecting their salaries, this should be noted.

The most important thing to remember about Cash’s time at Chelsea is the legendary players he played against. He played against Cristiano Ronaldo in his pomp, this was when he played on the right before switching to the inverted forward role at Real Madrid. Cole kept Ronaldo quietly in his pocket at least two times a year, if not more, during that time and it’s often forgotten.

Who is the other player who Ashley Cole silenced with ruthless efficiency during that time who is also unmentioned? Lionel Messi.

Those great Barcelona-Chelsea matches that the Blues would run out winners of more frequently than the FIFA-Barca heads admit were in no small part down to the fact that Barca’s boy wonder often passed silently through them. One of the things that is unfairly held against Messi in fact is his record against English teams. People act as if he’s been bad against British teams. That’s false, firstly. He’s been excellent against all of them. In fact, the only times he hasn’t been was when he was kept in orderly shape by Cashley. His legacy would be more fairly stated as such: Messi is great against English sides, he’s bad against Cole.

His defensive genius, and that’s what it was by the way, was coupled with beautiful attacking intelligence and technique. These days, I often spend time debating simply how much I need to puke when people discuss “ball-playing centerbacks” or “wing-backs vs fullbacks” because of the infantile idiocy of the whole thing. What you’re debating there is the benefit of bad players. Here’s a hint, there isn’t any. They’re just incomplete bad players, debate over and now handsomely carrying on, you’re welcome. Good footballers can play their positions fully in all respects without dumb asides made to explain their failures. Cole kept wingers in his pocket and contributed to the attack in every single game without fail consistently.

As the Blues look to the market for a left back this summer, they would do well to remember just how much of a genius Cole was, to this point in both the careers of Messi and Ronaldo, who between them have an incredible 1,422 goals scored. Only Cole has kept both silent.

His legacy in football is perhaps tarnished because people didn’t like him, but at Chelsea, it is without reproach. The seventh highest England Cap holder is Chelsea’s greatest ever England International player. He is someone the Blues should look to as the model for a complete and able-bodied player in the market this summer because his excellence is the standard at the position and likely will remain as such for the foreseeable future.