It is probably just as well Carlton Cole has learned to focus on the bigger picture. Otherwise, the West Ham United striker might well still be stewing over the call from Sam Allardyce at around 10.40pm on transfer deadline day, dragging him away from Tony Pulis’s sales pitch, which delivered confirmation the plug had been pulled on a move to West Bromwich Albion. With the trill of a mobile phone, the forward was effectively denied a fresh start, some longer-term security and, in all probability, proper first-team involvement.
These days, even with frustration still simmering at life on the periphery at Upton Park, Cole has learned to shrug and offer up a smile when talk turns to that aborted £500,000 move to The Hawthorns. “I had a chance to play football, to feature regularly, and then the manager chose not to let me go 20 minutes before the deadline,” he said. “I was sitting there at the table with the pen in my hand, asking: ‘Where do I sign?’ Then the phone rings and he tells me he can’t let me go because he hasn’t got a replacement in. I ended up effing and blinding in one of the catering rooms. Then it was a case of, OK, time to go home. See you later, Tony.
“It’s fine. I can’t be bothered complaining any more. Sam will tell you that’s why he likes me, because I just get on with my job. He said he needed me but if I’m honest I don’t think he has. I must have played 120 minutes of football since but sometimes you don’t get what you want. I didn’t get what I wanted. Now I have to do the right thing by me and my family and try to earn another deal.”
He has actually managed one start and 168 minutes of Premier League football in the 10 weeks since, as well as 22 minutes back at West Brom in the FA Cup, but the point still stands. His contract expires in June and unless the run-in suddenly yields a flurry of opportunities and goals, he is into the endgame at the Boleyn Ground.
Such uncertainty might have reduced others to introspection, or bitterness that West Ham could not prise Emmanuel Adebayor from Tottenham Hotspur to permit him his move and thoughts focusing instead on where next for his own career. Yet Cole has other distractions.
The 31-year-old spent Sunday evening hosting a charity auction at a plush Knightsbridge venue to raise funds for Football Fighting Ebola. Cole’s mother, Selina, is from Sierra Leone, a country devastated by the virus which has cost tens of thousands of lives, left a generation of children orphaned and destroyed entire communities. Monies generated by the initiative, which has the England full-back Nathaniel Clyne as another of its ambassadors, will support the King’s Sierra Leone Partnership and ensure the crisis in west Africa is not forgotten.
Stewing over his next multimillion-pound playing contract would have seemed somewhat inappropriate given Cole’s uncle is back in Sierra Leone “caught up in it all” and unable to leave as the country deals with the epidemic.
“He says he can’t come back because there are no planes flying out at the moment,” said the player. “He’s going through it all but he’s OK, he’s all right. Many other people are not. There are all these mixed signals at the moment as to how they are all coping. First they say the numbers [infected] are up, then they’re down, but no one really knows. Back here, it’s easy for the general public to forget about what is going on. To start thinking: ‘It’s only Ebola.’ They have to realise people are suffering over there still. This is about creating awareness, keeping it in the news. The hope is we can eradicate the disease. That is why we are here raising funds.
“It’s not just about right now, either. It’s about the future for Sierra Leone, too. To help get the country back on its feet and try to move on. My mother and I already have a foundation, Carlakka, which is helping to build a school. But there are so many kids who have been left without parents, so now we’re going to try to build an orphanage.”
Cole hopes to visit in November for what would be his first return to his mother’s homeland in three years – he used to travel there regularly – but he has already met the president, Ernest Bai Koroma, and has potential future involvement mapped out. “He’s taken to me so hopefully I’m going to be in the running for office ...” offered the striker before creasing up in laughter. “No, seriously, I do want to get into government and they have asked me to become a sports ambassador.
“Everybody in football is privileged because they are seen all over the world, which gives us a platform to help. I’ve always had this head on me. I have always wanted to make a difference. That’s either in you or it’s not – you can’t force it – and that’s my attitude to life. It is my mum’s country, and therefore my family’s country. So one day I will start doing more stuff over there. But that’s not to think about just now. That one’s for the future.”
Cole finds himself at his own crossroads. A player who made his debut for Chelsea 13 years ago this month, scoring on his second senior appearance in a win at Middlesbrough, will privately expect to depart West Ham after nine seasons – there have been 257 appearances and 59 goals in all competitions – and prolong his career elsewhere. West Brom may revive their interest in the summer, though whether they will be willing to offer the same deal through to 2017 that was on the table in February remains to be seen. The striker has mentioned China or the United States as possible destinations.
For all that his impact has been minimal at Upton Park since the window closed, despite the injuries suffered by Andy Carroll and Enner Valencia, there will be opportunities in the weeks that remain given Diafra Sakho may not play again this term and Valencia is back in the treatment room with a foot injury. “I just want to get as much game-time as I can at the moment, from now until the end of the season,” Cole said. “I feel I do have a lot to offer any team who takes me on, and experience as well given I have been playing in the Premier League for over 10 years. I’m trying to have a presence in the team, as hard as that’s been this year. I do feel I could have played a bigger part in the last 12 or 13 games, but the manager chose to go with someone else.”
The team’s form has tailed off in that period, with two wins in 15 games stretching back before Christmas when Allardyce’s side had retained faint hopes of Champions League qualification. It has been suggested the uncertainty that exists around the manager’s own contractual situation – his deal also expires in the summer – has proved unsettling. “I don’t think Sam knows what he is doing, so he ain’t going to be talking about my contract, is he?” offered the forward. “You hear general chitchat but we don’t sit there talking about things like the manager’s future. In football you just don’t know what will happen from one year to the next. It can be fine and dandy one season, and then you have a stinker the next. We don’t know whether Sam will be there or not.
“So you accept that is how the game is and you try to plan ahead in other ways. I’m only 31, even if I’m playing like I’ve retired … No, really, since I was about 28, I’ve been thinking about the future. Trying to put money away, not buying all those flash cars I used to, just trying to be sensible. It’s easy to get sucked in, wasting a lot of money and not going about your career the right way. That’s why it’s so refreshing to see someone like Nathaniel, at the age of 24, involved in a project like this. I commend him on that. You just need to develop. And this is part of my development.”
To donate to Football Fighting Ebola visit virginmoneygiving.com/FootballFightingEbola or text ‘STOPEBOLA’ to 70030 which automatically gives £10
