Coles warn Chelsea: Alonso must earn the role

Ashley and – Ashley Cole and Joe Cole, speaking as former Chelsea team-mates and podcast partners, say Xabi Alonso’s next steps at Chelsea will decide whether he can keep key players and deliver results after his re-appointment. They also revisit Mourinho’s “tough love” in

The World Cup has barely started to fade for some players, yet Chelsea’s next decisions are already looming. Ashley Cole and Joe Cole sit together talking through the group Chelsea say Alonso will work with—Cole Palmer. Reece James. Moises Caicedo and others—and the uncertainty hanging over who stays past this summer.

For Ashley, the danger is distraction. “You have to disconnect,” he says, explaining why a tournament can’t be treated like a background task. “If you go into a tournament thinking of club matters. that is going to cloud your performance.” He insists the only way to force movement one way or another—whether it means staying or leaving—is to play at the top level. “The only way to get a move, or stay at your club, or shut people up, is to perform. Enzo will have that same mindset. I’ve had the privilege to work with him. He’s got a good head on his shoulders.”.

Ashley’s comments come with familiar weight. He was assistant to Frank Lampard at Chelsea towards the end of 2022-23, when he worked with Enzo Fernandez and Marc Cucurella. He sees both as “top-level players today,” and feels Chelsea “should want to keep those, not sell.”

Joe Cole puts the same pressure in different words. “You wouldn’t be human if it wasn’t on your mind,” he says, adding that the future does run in the background. “But you have to be a professional footballer, and the World Cup is so encompassing, so exciting, it does take all your attention.”

Fernandez is away with Argentina and Cucurella with Spain. Each is aware their club futures are uncertain.

Joe’s bigger test for Alonso goes beyond keeping stars. He argues Alonso—whether Chelsea call him “manager” or “head coach”—will be measured by how the club responds when demands clash. “As long as it’s not a PR move,” he says. “I’m really happy with everything the club have been saying. But I’m also aware of how businesses work.”.

He paints a clear scenario: “When Xabi Alonso walks through the door at Cobham, and there’s the first incident where he needs something which is against what the club need, then we’ll see if he’s a manager or a head coach. I’m happy it’s been said. Let’s see it in action.”

Chelsea, however, are already talking in absolutes to some degree. The discussion touches on club sources describing several players as ‘untouchable’. Palmer is one, Joao Pedro another. Even 20-year-old academy graduate Josh Acheampong is among them, per insiders.

Joe challenges that framing. “Because so much money has been wasted at Chelsea. no player is untouchable. every player has a price. because it’s run as a business. ” he says. He contrasts the current approach with the Abramovich era. saying that under Roman Abramovich the club “was run to win trophies first. make money second.” Now. in Joe’s view. “the club is run to make money first. win trophies second. That’s the truth.”.

He insists fans aren’t naive. “Chelsea fans aren’t silly. They know what’s going on.” His instruction is simple: “Let Xabi Alonso do his work, and we move.”

Ashley, though, is more convinced about specific individuals. Cucurella, he says, “initially struggled upon arriving at Chelsea from Brighton,” but now he considers him “crucial to the club.” He also says he would not sell him.

“I came from Arsenal to Chelsea and I didn’t perform straightaway,” Ashley says. “There was pressure and expectation. Now, Cucurella is someone you should keep. He’s a top performer. I’m not in the dressing room. I don’t know the noise. But if the club want to go forward, you have to keep your top players.”.

He also questions what the alternative would require. Hato has performed when he’s had the opportunity. Ashley notes. before asking why Chelsea wouldn’t rather build a competitive squad. “You’re going to be constantly chasing the next one,” he says. “You sell Cucurella. Hato plays. but then you need a solution as a back-up to him. so who will that be?”.

The Colts of the story—two former Chelsea left-sided team-mates who have turned their bond into a media platform—come back to the same underlying principle. It’s not just about retention or recruitment. It’s about standards, timing, and whether a manager can impose discipline without losing the dressing room.

They were together on the pitch at Chelsea and England, and the pair now co-host a podcast called ‘Could It Be Magic?’ with a spin-off series named ‘Could It Be Coming Home?’ Joe will also host in New York, sponsored by Carling.

That friendship shows in how Ashley talks about Mourinho, and how their lived experience with “tough love” shaped the way Joe remembers being pushed.

Jose Mourinho is back in the conversation because he is taking over at Real Madrid again. Ashley frames Mourinho as someone who could handle media pressure by taking it away from players. “Master manipulator of the media. ” he says as he recalls how Mourinho would set the tone before it hit the group.

“In team meetings, he would literally say, ‘Right, today, in the press, I’m going to go at the referee’, or ‘I’m going to go at their manager’,” Ashley recounts. “It was, ‘I’m going to take it away from you guys’.”

Ashley calls it “very meticulous” work—“determined, organised, diligent.”

The same “standards first” thinking echoes in Mourinho’s past remarks about Joe. Ashley points to a moment after a 2-0 win over Birmingham in December 2005, when Mourinho suspected some showboating. Joe was told: “I’ve told him one more match like that and he’s out. He has to play for the team and not for the public and himself.”.

The pair also bring up Mourinho’s December 2006 list of nine ‘untouchables’ at Chelsea. which name-checked one Cole but not the other. Ashley laughs at how quickly football can flip the label: “You’re only untouchable until you’re not. if that makes sense. With that label. you still have to keep the standards high. perform and train at an elite level and have that mindset.”.

He adds the hard truth: “Jose said I was an untouchable. Fast forward when he came back, I wasn’t! That’s football.”

Joe, for his part, believes Mourinho only ever wanted to extract the best. He describes Mourinho and Real Madrid as “a match made in heaven,” and brings the discussion to Kylian Mbappe—arguing Mourinho will put it in plain terms. “Jose doesn’t mess about,” he says.

Joe imagines the conversation Mourinho would have: “There will be plain conversations. I would imagine he’ll go. ‘Listen. do you want to be remembered as a great player who never won the Champions League and left PSG then they won it twice?. Or do you want to come with us and build this team and become the leader we all know you are?’”.

He argues Mourinho will demand both football output and leadership. “Because if he’s not the best player in the world. he’s in the top three. you can’t argue that. ” Joe says. “But you have to play the team, and you have to run. It’s a team game. and you have to be a leader in that team. and build that relationship with Vinicius (Junior) and Rodrygo and (Jude) Bellingham.”.

The same logic, in Joe’s view, explains what Madrid must do now: “They need to rebuild that club and Jose is the man to do it.”

Those standards—earned through pressure and delivered through performance—are exactly what Ashley says he’s seeking in his own next step in football.

Ashley is no longer only a commentator. He became a manager for the first time in March of this year, taking over Serie B side Cesena. He had spent seven years developing as a coach. which included assisting Lee Carsley with England’s Under 21s and winning the European Championship in 2023 and 2025. He has also worked with first teams of Chelsea and Everton.

Ashley says Cesena’s defensive, countering, direct football tradition is why change will not happen overnight. “People are always quick to say. ‘They can’t do it’. and it’s like. ‘Well. have you ever seen them do it?’” he says. “How do you know if they can do it or not?. It’s very easy to say they can’t do it because they’ve played for five years with a low block. long balls. direct football.”.

He adds that after a manager has been sacked, the next coach can’t just repeat the old work and expect different results. “Change something – the style, the mentality, the training, let it build over time.”

Cesena finished 11th out of the 20 teams in Serie B. and Ashley’s contract with the Italian club expires at the end of this month. Ashley’s deal was only a short-term agreement signed when he arrived in March. and unless something changes between now and then. he will be a manager available for hire as of July 1.

“I felt I needed to give it a go myself after the body of work I had done on the grass, leading meetings, organising sessions,” Ashley says.

He admits he’s already in the spotlight. “I need to make sure I’m given the chance to win,” he says. “Because I know exactly what’s going to happen. I’m already there in the firing line of, ‘Oh, he’s not good enough, he can’t do it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah’.”

So he plans the next move carefully—looking for support and time. “I need to choose wisely my next move where I’m going to get people that support me and challenge me and understand you need not a project but some sort of time period where results might not go your way but we’re clear on the way forward.”.

Joe says he wants the chance that isn’t always easy to find for young coaches, and he points directly at the English system. “Ash is absolutely brilliant,” Joe says. “I’ve never seen someone with as much dedication and devotion to his craft.”

He also praises Ashley’s intensity and what he brings into the dressing room. “One thing from watching Ash is, when the time comes for me to do it, that’s the level of intensity you’ve got to put into it.”

Joe believes his friend’s coaching CV should be pulling clubs in. “Ash’s CV just as a coach is phenomenal, forget the player,” he says. “There should be Championship clubs queueing up, even Premier League clubs. To build a team around him, a support network of people.”

And he can’t understand why Ashley had to go to Italy to gain experience. “I can’t for the life of me think why he had to go out to Italy to get the experience,” Joe says. “In this country, we’re terrible at supporting and giving opportunities and putting support networks around young coaches.”

“He’ll be embarrassed that I’m saying this,” Joe adds, before concluding with a blunt call: “but if there is a decent club out there that’s serious, they should be falling over fighting each other for someone like Ash.”

For now. though. the conversation keeps circling back to what everyone at Chelsea will be judged on next—whether the club’s talk about keeping key players turns into action. and whether Xabi Alonso is willing to confront the first real clash between club needs and football standards. In their world, labels like ‘manager’ or ‘head coach’ mean little until the decisions arrive.

Ashley Cole Joe Cole Chelsea Xabi Alonso Enzo Fernandez Marc Cucurella Cole Palmer Reece James Moises Caicedo Joao Pedro Josh Acheampong Thomas Tuchel Real Madrid Jose Mourinho Kylian Mbappe Vinicius Junior Rodrygo Jude Bellingham Carling World Cup