Cole furore all part of the England soap opera

THE hypocrisy of the tabloid media knows no bounds.

I’m rarely sufficiently absorbed in the soap-opera that is the England team, to give a monkey’s. But it was a bit rich to see the Red Tops having a pop at those fans who booed Ashley Cole at Wembley on Saturday, when they are largely responsible for much of the resentment felt towards Cole, by perpetuating the image of him as one of England’s avaricious, overpaid “Bentley boys”.

England v Kazakhstan was hardly a mouth-watering prospect and I was half hoping for salvation, in the form of my missus needing some assistance pushing a trolley around Tesco, as I’m sure I’d have found more excitement in the supermarket aisles, than in the first half of this drab affair. However watching on the box, I thought I sensed some complacency in a couple of instances where, with the game still at 0-0, England players seemed to be caught on their heels, hardly breaking their necks to be first to the ball.

Having finally achieved an air of respectability, albeit courtesy of a bog standard set-piece and an own goal, Cole’s casual backpass and his gift of a glimmer of hope for the Kazakhs, was the apotheosis of the sort of lax, arrogant approach that has cost the England team so dear in many matches over the past few decades and it’s the sort of problem I would’ve expected a strict disciplinarian like Capello to have pounced on.

There was some suggestion that it was the Gooners present at Saturday’s game who were responsible for giving Cole so much stick. However while Golden Balls Beckham can do no wrong and receives more adulation from the England crowd for his warm-up routine than Rooney gets for scoring a couple of goals, if it had been any of the other players who’d presented the visitors with a gift-wrapped goal, they’d have been subject to the same angry reaction.

Moreoever, it is the media again who are largely culpable for the way in which the England fans permanently exist on the cusp of this love/hate relationship with the national team, as a result of the incredibly fickle way in which they vacillate between deification of the players one day and accusing them of being the devil incarnate the next.

I’ve always tended to give them the benefit of the doubt, when they’ve offered up “we gave it our best” type clichés, in breathless post-match interviews because I suppose I still cling to some romantic notion that even the most jaded old whores of the professional game must feel some inspiration, pulling on their national shirt.

Sadly it would appear nowadays, for established players, playing for one’s country is merely part of their job description. No matter what they might claim, the evidence suggests it’s just another day at the office.

* Bernard Azulay