Cole: Joining Kop was a massive mistake for me

Posted Wednesday, March 06, 2013 by The Sun

JOE COLE has admitted he was wrong to move to Liverpool — but could not bear the thought of signing for Spurs.

The midfielder spent over two years in the Anfield wilderness before returning to first club West Ham in January.

And the ex-England player admits he never adapted to life at the Kop and regrets calling Liverpool ‘the biggest club in the country’.

Cole, 31, revealed: “I can only play for teams that I’m passionate about and I think that’s what went wrong for me at Liverpool.

“I didn’t feel a connection with the club or the place that I had at Chelsea and West Ham.

“I had seven great years at Chelsea but the club wanted to go in a certain direction and I wasn’t involved. So I was left with two real options — Liverpool or Spurs.

“Spurs was probably the best option because they were offering me a five-year deal and it meant I could stay in familiar surroundings.

“But I just couldn’t do it, I just couldn’t see myself pulling that Spurs shirt over my head.

“With the rivalry between Spurs and West Ham and Chelsea, it felt a bit mercenary.”

Yet Cole soon realised he was not going to fit in at Liverpool after signing in 2010. He said: “When I joined, the guy interviewing me said ‘you’ve joined the biggest club in the country’ and reeled off the trophies they’d won.

“I just said ‘yeah, if you put it like that, I suppose you’re right’ and Liverpool used that as the headline to the interview.

“I didn’t want to upset anyone so I just went along with it. But obviously they’re not the biggest club in the country any more.

“How do you judge how big a club are? Nottingham Forest won the European Cup twice but they’re not a bigger club than Chelsea.”

Cole, in an interview with the Chelsea fanzine cfuk, also recalls how former Stamford Bridge chairman Ken Bates mocked him for joining the club at the start of the Roman Abramovich era in 2003.

He said: “I rolled in at Chelsea on my first day thinking ‘I’m going to be a big part of this club’.

“Then Sebastian Veron walks through the door with about five agents. Same position as me, costing three or four times as much.

“As soon as I signed, Bates said to me: ‘Congratulations, son, you’ve joined to sit on our bench’.

“I just thought ‘I’ll show you’ and a year later I was playing regularly and Veron was off.”

Now Cole admits West Ham will be his last club. He said: “I was missing London and my family and I had a personal tragedy in December when my brother-in-law died.

“I got an opportunity to go back to West Ham and I don’t want to move any more.”