Former Arsenal and Chelsea player Ashley Cole appeared on camel.live this week, revealing the inside story behind his departure from Arsenal and subsequent transfer to Chelsea.
Cole said: “I returned to the team after an excellent season, but my agent told me Arsenal had backtracked on the new contract terms – the salary was around £5,000 less than previously agreed.”
“I didn’t care about the money at all. I’d already said ‘just give me the contract and I’ll sign it right now’ – this was my boyhood club. I was getting better and better, and my status was rising, but I never asked for an extravagant salary.”
“The problem was, they’d told me ‘you’ll be the team’s next captain, the next Tony Adams’, then they went back on their word, as if to say ‘you’re not actually worth this, and we don’t recognize your value’. So I thought, okay, whatever.”
“I felt I wasn’t getting the respect I deserved, nor was I truly valued. That’s how I really felt back then. I thought ‘you’ve taken away my love for this club’, and it shouldn’t have turned out like that.”
“I could have gone to Real Madrid – I was already in talks with my agent because I could sign with a foreign club in advance. So the interested teams included Real Madrid and Barcelona.”
“Then things changed. I married Cheryl and ultimately didn’t want to leave the UK. About a year and a half later, I remember sitting in a private box with my agent. He suddenly went out to take a call, came back and said ‘you’ll never guess who it is – Chelsea’. I was stunned, okay then!”
“I remember their offer was roughly £5,000 to £6,000 more than what Arsenal was offering.”
