Is this the most underused player in this country?

Football FanCast
columnist Rob
Facey on why Joe Cole should start for England tomorrow in their crucial
World Cup qualifier against Croatia and why he should be treated like a gifted
child, rather than a naughty schoolboy.

The papers are full of
reasons why Joe Cole must start for England against Croatia tomorrow evening in
an effort to convince Fabio Capello that the Chelsea star is worthy of a starting berth in Zagreb.

The 26 year old midfielder, who has 52 caps to his name, is by no means a certainty to play on Wednesday despite the fact that his raw talent and flair is exactly what a lacklustre England should be hanging onto for dear life at the moment.
The bulldog spirit and “110%” nonsense needs to stop if England are realistic about ever winning a major tournament again.

We must simply learn to play football again. And there is no better modern footballer than Joe Cole.
“What marks Cole out, beyond natural flair,” writes Martin Samuel in The Times “is his versatility, his openness to new ideas and his interest in the way football has evolved.”

This is exactly why it is so criminal that he is consistently left out or misused by England. The Chelsea star has said time after time that his favourite role is that of the continental number 10, just off the striker, but England’s lack of a big target man that a manager can consistently trust, means that Cole is often stuck out on the wing.

Against Andorra, however, he was sidelined behind Stewart Dowining, an average player at best that would never had got a look in if it wasn’t for Steve McClaren’s favouritism allowing him to get his foot in the door.
This ability to ignore our greatest talent is summed up perfectly by Richard Williams of the Guardian, who writes: “There is no greater indictment of English football – and there are many from which to choose – than its persistent reluctance to make Joe Cole feel indispensable. Identified as a star in his early teens, at the age of 26 the Chelsea player has yet to know how it feels to enjoy the unequivocal support of a top manager, either at club or national level.”

This is all he needs, a manager to say that he is on a par with Wayne Rooney. He is on a par with Steven Gerrard. He needs to be trusted with the ball and allowed to play his own game. Sticking him on the wing not only renders his vision useless, as it is harder to pick apart defences when you are expected to track back and cover the opposing fullback, but also he is not the best crosser of the ball in the first place.

The thing is this is all obvious to anyone who watches England play and to anyone who watches the Premier League regularly. He should be trusted to blossom, rather than being held back.
It is no coincidence that there is a national love-in the day before the fixture.

They are telling us nothing new, it is just the media’s gentle warning to the manager that if Joe Cole isn’t played to his full ability and England fail to achieve a desirable result, then the knives will be well and truly out for Don Fabio.

People say that Rooney and Gerrard are the only two players that could walk into any side in the world, but they are as guilty as Fabio Capello and all of the Chelsea managers who have failed to give him a starring role, as Joe Cole should, now more than ever, be mentioned in the same breath as the other two.

He has come off the bench to save Capello’s blushes in the last two international fixtures. It is now time he gets the chance to run the show from kick off.