Black History Month Players: Carlton Cole

  As October is Black History Month in the UK, I will spend this month publishing threads on X (formerly Twitter) on certain players who have been part of a long and distinguished line of Black representation at West Ham United. With this being the second year I have undertaken this exercise, I thought it would be fair to publish a blog post for those who don't have X or find threads on the platform difficult to read. Feel free to read last year's threads, via this link,  but this post and today's thread on X is on Carlton Cole, a striker so good that West Ham had to sign him twice. 

Born in 1983 in South London to parents from Nigeria and Sierra Leone, Cole would grow up living in Croydon and would enter football as a trainee with Chelsea’s youth academy, signing his first professional contract with the club at 17 in 2000. He would have to wait until 2002 to make his debut though, starting his Chelsea career brightly, scoring on his first ever full start for the club. Cole would stay in and around the first team for the rest of 2002, with then manager Claudio Ranieri describing him as the best young player he’d ever coached. However, due to playing in a team with multiple great forwards like Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, Gianfranco Zola & Eidur Gudjohnsen, in addition to further attacking options such as Adrian Mutu and Hernan Crespo, bought in following Roman Abramovich's takeover in the summer of 2003, Cole found opportunities limited & went out on loan to play games and develop further, which became the norm for the rest of his time with the club. Between 2003 and 2005, Cole would go on loans to Wolves, Charlton & Aston Villa, but never got the first team place that he wanted at Chelsea. He would leave Chelsea in 2006 to join West Ham, having scored 8 goals in 31 games for his boyhood club.

Despite scoring on his West Ham debut against Charlton in August 2006, Cole would find his first two seasons with West Ham difficult as he was unable to secure a first team place, once again competing with talented forward options including Dean Ashton, Craig Bellamy, Marlon Harewood, Bobby Zamora & Carlos Tevez. But with the arrival of his former Chelsea teammate Gianfranco Zola as West Ham's new manager in September 2008, Cole’s luck was about to change. With most of West Ham's attacking options injured, it gave Cole a chance to play regularly in the first team.  Cole took that opportunity and never looked back, scoring 12 goals in 32 games in the 2008/09 season, becoming the top striker at the club as the club finished 9th.

During his time with West Ham, Cole would make his international debut for England in 2009, despite being also eligible for Sierra Leone or Nigeria through his parents. He would win all 7 caps for England as a substitute, which is actually an England record & a great pub quiz question (if you so happen to be reading this post & are also planning a pub quiz too). 

Cole would be the club’s top striker until the arrival of Andy Carroll in 2012, staying with the club during a relegation season in 2011 and a subsequent promotion season in 2012, where he would play through an injury to see West Ham promoted, highlighting the love that Carlton had developed for the club. Sadly, Carroll's arrival would see Cole being released in 2013 after 7 years of amazing service to the club. But his time at the club wasn’t over just yet as due to the club struggling to sign a striker (surprise surprise), the club resigned Cole initially on a 3-month contract in October 2013, which would be extended in January 2014 for an extra 18 months. By the time Cole had left the club, this time for good, in 2015, he had made 293 appearances for the club and scored 68 goals in 9 years. At this point in his career, Cole believed his career had 3 years left and bizarrely, he was right, retiring in 2018.

In those three years, Cole would do a little time globetrotting, spending time in Scotland, the USA and Indonesia, before a trial period with AFC Wimbledon failed to result in a contract. He would retire at the age of 34. But his time with Wimbledon, where he also did a little bit of coaching, gave Cole a taste for it and that's part of what he’s been doing ever since retiring. 

Having initially returned to West Ham in 2018 to shadow Jack Collison as coach of the under-16s, Cole has been part of the club’s academy ever since, now coaching the under-16s whilst earning his coaching badges. Additionally, Cole is a club ambassador for West Ham, representing the club in media activities, but also in charity events with the club's charity and community outreach sector, the West Ham United Foundation, with charity work a cause that is close to his heart.

One charitable cause that Cole has championed for is the fight against the Ebola virus in his mother’s home country of Sierra Leone, with Cole becoming involved during the 2014 outbreak of the virus in the country & founding the charity Football Fights Ebola, who can be found on X (formerly twitter) at @FballFightEbola. Wanting football in his own words to “come together and take a stand against the disease”, Cole aims to use the charity to promote public awareness for the virus & keep in the psyche to ensure countries like Sierra Leone are given the resources to combat it. The charity also aims to provide support for children who have been made orphans by the disease. Cole stated his hope to try and build an orphanage & help them with the housing situation. As Cole states: “it's not about right now, it's about the future for Sierra Leone as well.” 

Cole is also a regular face in sports media, regularly appearing on television, where he's often seen on TNT sports as a pundit for West Ham's European games alongside fellow West Ham legend Joe Cole and is often on radio as a pundit. As a man who is a coach, pundit & charity organiser, Cole keeps himself busy, with the man himself stating he is a self-confessed “Jack of all trades”. In fact, in an interview with CityAM from 2019, Cole described being a "Jack of all trades" in the most amazing way. He stated “I don’t like to be pigeonholed into a box, I like to have options. I’m a man who doesn’t just buy the strawberry Haribos, I like to get the mixed ones.”

Haribo analogies aside, it’s not hard to see why Cole is a cult hero with West Ham fans. He is a man who loves the club and always has time for supporters, with this affable nature and desire to do good making him a worthy inclusion into this series. As his famous chant says, always believe in…

Thanks for reading today's post. Today sources were: 

This Interview where Cole discusses his work tackling Ebola: https://www.standard.co.uk/sport/football/carlton-cole-on-his-charity-fighting-ebola-his-family-in-sierra-leone-and-life-after-west-ham-10183674.html 

And what I will forever refer to as "the strawberry Haribos interview": https://www.cityam.com/carlton-cole-interview-former-west-ham-striker-on-his-career-new-life-as-a-coach-and-strawberry-haribos/

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