It would have been easy to scoff at the national newspaper which, upon hearing the news that Liverpool had secured Joe Cole’s scrawl on a piece of headed note paper with rather a lot of zeros on it, immediately drew up the headline “Come in No. 7?. Easy, but erroneous. There were, as Cole agreed terms on his four-year, £90,000-a-week contract, plenty of people around Anfield suggesting that would be the case.
They were wrong, of course. Though it would have been somewhat more pragmatic to take the number seven shirt, Cole elected to negotiate with another new signing, Milan Jovanovic, for the rights to wear number 10. The Serb, a curious mix of feverish intensity and good-natured jollity, acquiesced to Cole’s wishes, plumped for the number 14 and graciously allowed the England international to fill the shirt he wore at Chelsea.
The obvious conclusion to draw was that the mythology of Liverpool’s number seven, the weight of history incumbent upon that jersey, the ghosts of Keegan and Dalglish that haunt its shoulders, was too much for Cole, hardly the brashest soul, to bear. The Anfield club have not formally retired it, as AC Milan have done with the numbers 3 and 6 or Cagliari the number 11, but the sense is that they may as well do. Only Peter Beardsley and Steve McManaman, of those players that followed Dalglish, have added to its mystique at all; Paul Walsh, Harry Kewell, Vladimir Smicer and, most recently, Robbie Keane, did not prove suitable heirs.
But for all that Cole’s decision spoke volumes about the legacy attendant to that number, it also offered an insight into Cole’s self-perception. He sees himself as a number 10. He wore 10 at Chelsea. His strongest position, in his own mind, is that which the number 10 traditionally occupies, the trequartista role behind one or two strikers. The problem he has is that no such position exists in the English view of football.
Like every team, every country places prestige on different numbers. In England, the number nine is prized. The subconscious hierarchy of teams is that the number nine comes first, the talisman, and all else is constructed around it. In Argentina, the number five is of paramount importance, borne by the midfield caudillo. In Germany, too, five is iconic, a legacy of Franz Beckenbauer and the libero system, though the number six, worn by Matthias Sammer, comes close.
But the number 10 is different. In South America, in Latin Europe, the number 10 is something separate, a concept apart. It is worn by the individual, the man who stands apart from the collective. The team exists, packed with destroyers and defenders and water carriers and wingers, and in the middle of the orchestra stands the conductor, the soloist. Little wonder the list of famous number 10s is longer than that of any other shirt.
In England, though, the tradition of 4-4-2 dictates that the number 10 is, well, just another striker, yet another support act for the number nine. Even the 4-5-1 that has now become the de facto formation for most teams relies on two advanced wingers, making the number 10 just another midfielder. Most players who wear that shirt fit one of those two criteria. Even the best of them – Wayne Rooney, Robin van Persie – do not play to different rules to the rest of their colleagues. They are creative, technically superb and, at times, visionary. They do not conduct, they do not define tempo, though. They are just another instrument.
Cole is different. He is cast in the mould of Stan Bowles and Rodney Marsh, legitimate number 10s, fantasistas of the most inspiring and infuriating degree. It is a trait that explains why fans tend to be so keen to see him play – he is seen to furnish a team with magic – but why so many managers have found it so easy to dispense with his services. Guus Hiddink, Fabio Capello, Jose Mourinho and Carlo Ancelotti have all judged him an unnecessary luxury. He is not trusted in the centre, in that withdrawn role, not because of a lack of ability but because that position does not exist in the Premier League, or at least does not exist in the form which Cole requires. Shove him out to the left, then. He can do as much good there.
Whether Roy Hodgson will come to the same conclusion is open to debate. It does not bode well that Cole may find his place taken against Aston Villa tonight by Maxi Rodriguez, a man from a country with a number 10 tradition but with exactly the same problem at club level: Steven Gerrard, a number eight if ever there was one, fills the space where Maxi wishes to play, so he is stationed wide and charged with adapting. The collective always triumphs over the individual. There is only wilderness for the men with no number.
