James Olley: Ashley Cole deserves his day but issues were almost inevitable

Ashley Cole wants all the glory and none of the responsibility. The confusion yesterday lay in the fact the England captaincy includes both.

Most football fanatics dream of captaining their side for a day. But those dreams will involve leading your team out and ultimately lifting a trophy, not facing difficult questions about mistakes you made in your private life.

Cole has shown little interest in fighting the tidal wave of antipathy towards him through the media. Contrary to what many may think, the primary desire of those who cover England regularly is simply to hear about his life from his perspective rather than through the lurid allegations from various women desperate for the attention.

I spoke to Cole in 2010 in his first newspaper interview since splitting from wife Cheryl. His entourage managed proceedings — denying us the chance to run the stand-out line from the interview — but what came across was his resignation over the widespread negative perception of him.

“People don’t know me — they just know what people write,” he told me. “My personality is shown on the training ground and around my friends and family. They see the real me so I am just doing my thing. I want to win, work hard, be better and improve. When I wake up in the morning, I want to go to training and that is all I want to do.”

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It is that commitment to his work that saw England’s players back Roy Hodgson’s decision to offer Cole the armband this evening. There can be little doubt he has been a diligent pro, always willing to play for his country and for many years rightly considered one of the finest left-backs in the world.

Cole is only the seventh England international to reach 100 caps and he deserves recognition.

There will be many bemused by the fuss that comes with the England captaincy. Perhaps the traditional notions of the armband being held by a role model are outdated in a sport whose morals have been compromised by floods of cash.

But it is right that the captaincy still matters. The Football Association should have handled it better and Hodgson could have been clearer. Cole will have his day but, perhaps appropriately, not without complications.