Ashley Cole: More English players should follow defender abroad There is a detail in Ashley Coles story, My Defence, scripted eight years ago which seems suddenly resonant this weekend. In the book the 33-year-old gives his version of events about a rendezvous that turned into a notorious tapping-up scandal, when he met with Jose Mourinho in a London hotel while he was still an Arsenal player. The meeting, Cole suggested, was coincidental as he thought he was only going to chat with the agent Pini Zahavi about possible options if he decided to seek pastures new when the Chelsea manager arrived. But what is interesting now, as the defender prepares to make his debut in Serie A with Roma, is the notion that he went to meet Zahavi purely to talk about moving abroad. Pini told me not to worry about a thing. Whether it was now or later, there were plenty of clubs who would be interested, he wrote, before adding: Barcelona, Real Madrid, Valencia for sure, and these magnificent clubs just rolled off his tongue. He continued: I fired off a few questions about the differences between Spanish and Italian football, the weather, the people, the lifestyles. I asked about the different clubs and how other English players had adapted and made to feel welcome. It was just while I was talking that there was a knock at the door, and in walked Mourinho with Chelseas then chief executive Peter Kenyon.
Posted on: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 21:50:30 +0000