CARLTON COLE revealed how Jose Mourinho told him he would work in Tesco after a match he did not even play in.
The former Chelsea boy went on to prove The Special One wrong and ended up playing for England.
Cole, 40, has opened up about a brutal rollicking from Mourinho after a defeat he didn’t even play in.
The ex-Blues star told Des Kelly on Hayters TV’s new Football Lives podcast: “We always had a meeting before we went out to train.
“But this one particular meeting wasn’t great for me. I just went in. I knew I was good that weekend, I hadn’t gone out and done anything untoward.
“There’s this whole conversation of what happened at the game the day before usually – that was non-existent!
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“It was all about Carlton Cole not being good enough, and his performance, and ‘you’re going to work in Tesco if you don’t get your finger out’.
“I don’t know why I said Tesco, it might have been Sainsbury’s, there was no Co-op back then.
“Definitely not Waitrose, that was too much glam! Definitely not M&S, that was too much. There were no Aldis back then.
“It was a shock. It was just on me. He was just caning me for at least 10 minutes.
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“I was just like, ‘wow, this is a bit much,’ because I wasn’t even involved in the squad! I didn’t even travel, so why am I involved in this conversation?
“‘Talk to your players that you took! I always remember that. Even the other players were like, ‘wow, he is gunning for you.”
‘I hadn’t even done anything wrong!”
Cole made nine Premier League appearances as Chelsea stormed to a second consecutive title in the 2005-06 season.
Mourinho denied the star a chance to secure a Premier League medal that term as he only played one game from February to the end of April.
Even though he played in the two games after they won the title, he fell a game short of a medal.
And when the Portuguese boss chucked one medal into the crowd Cole was prepared to jump and grab it.
He continued: “That one he threw into the crowd, I saw it going in the crowd in slow motion, mate.
“I was gonna be Michael Jordan and just jump and get that. I wanted to jump, I’d have jumped into the crowd and got that.
“I remember we were up at Newcastle for one of the last games. We’d won the league three games before or something like that.
“And I was thinking, ‘Just give me one minute, two minutes, just give me something so I can get some times’.
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“And I knew why he didn’t do it. He didn’t want me to be involved in that. I took it on the chin and I grew from it.”
Cole would go on to join West Ham that summer and win seven caps for England.
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
