Ashley Cole (born 20 December 1980, Whitechapel, London, England) is an English footballer of Barbadian descent. Cole plays left back for Chelsea and for the England national team, a position from which he often uses his strong pace to try and support the forward players.
Arsenal
Cole started his career at his local club Arsenal as a teenager. He signed as a professional on 25 February 2000. He had made his debut for the first team as a striker on 30 November 1999 against Middlesbrough at the age of 18, although this was his only appearance of that season. Before he fully broke into the Arsenal side, he spent part of the 1999–2000 season on loan at Crystal Palace, where he played 14 league matches and scored one goal, a long-range half-volley against Blackburn Rovers. After an injury to Sylvinho, Arsenal's established Brazilian left-back, in autumn 2000, Cole came on as his replacement, and remained first-choice even after Sylvinho's recovery.
With Arsenal, he won the Premier League twice (in 2002 and 2004), and the FA Cup three times (in 2002, 2003 and 2005). Although injured for much of the 2005-06 season, he recovered in time to play in Arsenal's UEFA Champions League Final defeat to Barcelona at the end of the season. In total he made 228 first-team appearances for Arsenal, scoring 9 goals.
Transfer saga
In 2005, Cole made inappropriate contact with league rivals Chelsea over a possible move, without alerting Arsenal to the fact, in a case of "tapping-up". Found guilty, he was fined £100,000 by the Premier League on 2 June 2005 for a meeting in a hotel in January 2005 between himself, the Chelsea manager José Mourinho, Chelsea chief executive, Peter Kenyon, and his agent Jonathan Barnett. An appeal in August 2005 did not reject the guilty verdict, but his fine was reduced to £75,000. Chelsea were also fined £300,000 and Mourinho was fined £200,000, reduced on appeal in August 2005 to £75,000.
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ashley coleCole signed a one year extension to his contract on 18 July 2005, but a year later departed from the club in acrimonious circumstances. On 15 July 2006, Cole launched a verbal attack on Arsenal; in his autobiography, quoted in The Sun, Cole claimed that the Arsenal board had treated him as a "scapegoat" and that they had "fed him to the sharks" over the tapping up affair. Cole was deliberately left out of Arsenal's 2006-07 team photograph, refuelling press speculation that he would become a Chelsea player.
On 28 July, Arsenal vice-chairman David Dein had confirmed that Arsenal and Chelsea had been in "civil talks" about the player. Chelsea insisted they would not raise their £16million bid for the left back, but Arsenal held out for at a higher valuation of £25million. Negotiations continued throughout August and looked to be heading for deadlock, but eventually Cole signed for Chelsea on August 31 for a fee of £5million, with William Gallas also going the other way. The deal was closed after the transfer window had officially ended, and was not confirmed until an hour and a half after the deadline had passed.
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Cole has played for England at youth and senior levels. He was capped for the England U-20 team at the 1999 FIFA World Youth Championship alongside Stuart Taylor, Peter Crouch, Andy Johnson and Matthew Etherington. However, the team finished bottom of their group, suffering three defeats without scoring any goals. He also made four appearances for England under-21s, scoring once.
Cole made his senior England début against Albania, on March 28, 2001. He played for England at the 2002 FIFA World Cup and Euro 2004, and was named as one of four England players in the all-star squad for the latter tournament. Cole was also an ever-present for England in the 2006 FIFA World Cup; in their second round match against Ecuador he made a crucial block, deflecting Carlos Tenorio's shot onto the crossbar. The match ended with England winning 1-0, but England were knocked out on penalties by Portugal in the quarter-finals. As of November 15, 2006, he has 57 caps for England, though he has never scored an international goal.
Personal life
In 2005 he became engaged to Cheryl Tweedy, a member of the British chart-topping act Girls Aloud. He and Tweedy were married at Wrotham Park, just north of Barnet, Hertfordshire on 15 July 2006. The two currently live in a mansion in Hampstead that used to belong to Patrick Vieira.
In 2006, Cole sued the News of the World and The Sun newspapers for libel after they printed reports of a Premiership footballer and a music DJ engaged in a "homosexual orgy", even though Cole was not specifically named in any of the stories; however, a pixellated photograph of Cole with his likeness removed was printed. Both the News of the World and The Sun later retracted the allegations after legal pressure and paid an undisclosed amount of damages to Cole.
Cole has recently released an autobiography, My Defence, which sold only 4,000 copies in the first six weeks of release. Based on the advance he received, it would require 75,000 copies to be sold before the publisher would break even. Cole's book has been subject to criticism from several Arsenal players, including Jens Lehmann,; at the same time, Arsenal fans launched a campaign on the world wide web encouraging people to purchase a book by former Arsenal player Perry Groves, in an attempt to outsell Cole's.
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