ON SOCCER: Greed or glamor, Chelsea's Ashley Cole has image problem
LONDON -- With the glamorous lifestyle that comes with having a pop star wife, Ashley Cole seems to have everything going for him as a highly paid soccer player.
He recently picked up a 50 percent pay raise by joining two-time English champion Chelsea and now earns $170,000 a week. He's even being hailed as the world's best left-sided defender and his autobiography is being serialized in The Times of London.
Is this soccer's new superstar? Will Cole be alongside the likes of David Beckham, Ronaldo and Ronaldinho among the big names in the game?
Don't count on it.
While Cole portrays himself as the backstreet kid who has become a star, his image is taking a battering.
"Cashley" Cole, as he is dubbed in the papers, is branded as a money-grabbing, poorly educated, spoiled brat who is dishing the dirt on his former teammates at Arsenal by saying they are lazy, selfish and dominated by a French clique within the team.
Whether he likes it or not, Cole isn't in the same league as Beckham either on the field or in terms of the millions the former England captain has made out of his commercial deals and marriage to one of the Spice Girls. He doesn't have the technical ability of Ronaldo or Ronaldinho.
And his book isn't getting the reaction he expected.
While "My Defense" tries to portray Cole as a misunderstood rising star who has overcome an underprivileged background, the critics ridicule him as a wannabe personality who is making money by blackening the game's reputation.
Soccer is already tainted by match-fixing scandals and racist, violent fans and players who routinely cheat. Clubs face bankruptcy largely because the top teams the pricing the game too high.
Now this upstart is adding to the gloom all for the sake of selling a book.
At first sight, it shows promise -- the story of a young player who was raised by his single mother after his father had walked out. He joined one of English soccer's most storied clubs and went on to play for England at the World Cup.
He was in the Arsenal lineup that reached last year's Champions League final and played for Chelsea in the same competition on Wednesday when the Blues beat Werder Bremen 2-0.
As a player he is a talented, attacking left back who has corrected his defensive faults and is one of the best in his position in the game.
While Beckham married Posh Spice Victoria Adams, Cole is married to Cheryl Tweedy of Girls Aloud -- an all-girl band similar in style to the Spice Girls.
Then it starts to go downhill.
Although Girls Aloud has had some big hits in England, it was formed on a TV talent show. After becoming moderately famous, Tweedy had a court conviction for punching a nightclub employee and the couple sold the rights to their wedding to a magazine that specializes in "B" list celebrities.
In the country credited with inventing soccer, business has long replaced sport and Cole is just the latest star who seems to put his personal bank balance at the top of his priorities.
In the book he describes how he almost crashed his $220,000 Bentley Continental GT when his agent called to say Arsenal would only offer him $104,000 a week rather then the $113,000 he was asking for.
"I nearly swerved off the road," Cole writes. "I yelled down the phone. I was so incensed. I was trembling with anger. I couldn't believe what I had heard."
Cole was apparently furious that Thierry Henry, a perennial candidate for world player of the year with far more talent, was being paid more by Arsenal. He couldn't understand that fans go to see the likes of Henry, Ronaldinho, Beckham and Wayne Rooney rather than him.
Chelsea's initial bid to buy Cole from Arsenal led to hefty fines when the Blues were found guilty of trying to lure him away from the Gunners while he was still under contract. It's known in England as "tapping up."
English soccer rules say that clubs can't do that unless they get the permission of the player's club to negotiate. But Cole and his agent went to a secret hotel meeting with Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho. After that was revealed by a Sunday paper, Chelsea was fined $567,000 by the Premier League, and Cole and Mourinho were ordered to pay $142,000.
Chelsea eventually bought Cole legitimately and he now wears the blue short rather than Arsenal's red one. But Cole wrote that "tapping up" was rife in soccer and he cited other examples, including by former club Arsenal.
Cole said he didn't want to leave Arsenal in the first place. Having felt betrayed by the Gunners after his "years of loyalty," he is now at the very club that broke the rules by trying to buy him without permission.
The drawn-out saga of Cole's transfer across London meant that soccer's reputation took another beating and few people have accepted his efforts to mitigate his behavior in talking secretly with Chelsea.
Maybe the best way for Cole to improve his image is for no one to buy his book.
Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press
This story is from ESPN.com's automated news wire. Wire index
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