JOE COLE INTERVIEW: Chelsea under Roman Abramovich was like nothing else - whoever won player of the year got free use of his yacht until some of the lads got their hands on it! Then there was the time I slept through the 2009 FA Cup final...

Joe Cole is not through with football. 'Absolutely not,' he says forcibly as a conversational shimmy around the cones and corner flags of his glittering playing career comes to rest upon his professional future and the prospect of coaching. 'I’ve not even started with that side of it.'

Cole intends to coach. He wants to be a manager. He has learned under some of the best and his qualifications are in order except the UEFA Pro Licence, the final stage he will embark upon once he starts in a full-time role.

At present, he is coaching unpaid with Brentford ’s Under 16s, where his eldest son plays in a younger age group. Cole organises it around his TV work at TNT Sports and family life. And, in recent weeks, the launch of an autobiography which has served to stimulate his thoughts towards a fresh chapter, his return to football.

'I’m ready,' says Cole. 'I’ll do it for sure. It’s just a case of the right opportunity. I’ve got to be realistic, six years into a punditry career, there ain’t Championship clubs going, "There you go, there’s a £20million-a-year budget".'

Cole is braced to start down the ladder if he must, like TNT punditry pal Robbie Savage, who stepped into management in the seventh tier with Macclesfield before moving into the National League at Forest Green Rovers.

'Sav’s got something,' nods Cole. And, in truth, it is probably the same burning desire that is driving him back towards football. Just as it drove him as a gifted teenager bestowed with full wonderkid status to maximise his talent with three Premier League titles at Chelsea and at three World Cups with England .

Joe Cole intends to coach. He wants to be a manager. He has learned under some of the best and his qualifications are in order except the UEFA Pro Licence

Cole was a gifted teenager who grew into a star of Jose Mourinho's early Chelsea teams

He won 56 caps for England, scoring 10 times including one of our greatest ever World Cup goals against Sweden in Cologne in 2006

At 44, his principles are strong and authentic, underpinning his fierce belief that the game he loves has been complicated unnecessarily.

'There’s a lot of these new coaches and buzz words go around,' says Cole. 'And everyone starts saying the same thing because they feel a need to sound clever by talking about false nines and inverted full backs.

'Business people come into football, and they love it and want to be close to it, and I feel like they get mesmerised by these words and these coaches. It’s like hypnosis.

'There’s always going to be the tactical element to football of course, but there’s other elements and then you get an ex-player walk in, saying, "If you can get a good group of players and make it a great environment to work in, keep them in a good place mentally, emotionally, physically, spinning plates, pointing them in the right direction, then you’ve got a real chance of being successful at any level", and that ain’t enough.

'They’ll be like, "Pfft, dinosaur". And that’s not the case. It’s actually genius.

'Carlo Ancelotti and Jose Mourinho, their tactical detail was minimal. Just the right amount. Two or three points. Enough to win a game. Their genius was keeping the whole group together. They did it in very different ways. And I think we need a little bit more of that.'

Cole’s love-hate relationship with Mourinho is one compelling theme of his brilliantly candid book, Luxury Player . They clashed. There was friction. There were times, too, when others were appalled on his behalf as the Chelsea boss laid into one of English football’s most treasured talents.

'It was tumultuous,' admits Cole. 'But looking back now I just see the genius in him. We had this discussion, I was in his office and he was like, "I need to be your manager, I don’t need to be your friend. When the season is finished, come to Portugal, we’ll have a glass of wine and be friends but now I’m your manager".

There were times when others were appalled on Cole's behalf as Mourinho laid into one of English football’s most treasured talents

'It was tumultuous,' admits Cole. 'But looking back now I just see the genius in him'

Carlo Ancelotti, who helped Cole win a third Premier League title in 2010, was similar to Mourinho in that he kept his tactical detail minimal and focused on unity

'It clicked with me then. I thought, "None of this is personal". We had rows, many rows. It’s healthy in sport and something we’ve gone away from a bit. You’ve got to be more careful now with how things land. But, in that era, there was no time for that. It was immediate.

'So, we had this back and forth and you know, I was fine with it. I like honesty. Jose is honest. Genius as a manager. And I know he’s a good person, but he’s got to be Jose Mourinho, right? Whatever club he’s at, he’s got to be the lead singer.

'He ain’t there playing the bass guitar. He’s up there at the front. That’s pressure in itself.'

Cole is not entirely sold on the theory that he could not have fulfilled his talent without Mourinho. He fidgets at the idea and says, "Who knows, maybe I would, maybe I wouldn’t" and pivots towards the support of family and friends and the hard-working values instilled by his father George, which forms another key narrative of his life story from the streets of Camden to the top of football.

There were other influential coaches, too, but he recognises the good fortune he had to be part of Chelsea in those golden years, learning under Mourinho and Ancelotti, alongside some of the world’s finest footballers as recruited by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich on a mission to transform the landscape of English football.

'Jose had that aura,' says Cole. 'From the moment he walked into Chelsea, from the very first meeting. Carlo had it in a different way, because he had a humility to him and he made everyone calm.

'Some great managers will put you on edge and make your back straighten. Then there’s some that when they walk into a room you acknowledge them, and you know they’re there, so you watch your Ps and Qs, but you’re relaxed. Carlo had that, but Jose had it the other way.'

Cole corrects his posture and sits up straighter to make the point. 'It must be a thing when soldiers see their old generals. I saw it at the World Cup with Ally McCoist and Graeme Souness, who managed him. Ally, who I love, went back to, "Yes boss, no boss, how are you boss". I think we all have that to a certain degree.'

Cole arrived in the heady first summer under Roman Abramovich in 2003, one of 14 arrivals for manager Claudio Ranieri (centre)

Cole is not entirely sold on the theory that he could not have fulfilled his talent without Mourinho

One of his frequent disagreements with Mourinho led Cole into one of his few private encounters with Abramovich, summoned to see the owner after letting it be known via his agent to chief executive Peter Kenyon that he wanted to leave.

'Going into his office is quite intimidating but I had the bravado of a young man in his 20s,' recalls Cole. 'To my agent, I was like, "Yeah, I’m definitely going, I’m done, I’ve had enough, blah, blah, blah".

'I always found Roman very measured. He said, "What’s the problem?" and I explained my relationship with Jose was broken and I wanted to leave. And he pointed at his head, then his mouth and said, "Sometimes, Jose is a bit too quick from here to here. You’re staying at Chelsea".

'There was a little bit of a silence. We stared out of the window and then I realised it wasn’t a question. So, I was like, "OK boss".

'Might have got a new contract there but there were no clever negotiations from me.'

The Abramovich era was like nothing before. 'Chelsea was the centre of the football world,' says Cole. 'Incredible, like a new football powerhouse had emerged. Roman was a young man who looked like he was having fun. He enjoyed it at the start.'

Suddenly, players became accustomed to the Abramovich helicopter disturbing the tranquil skies of their Surrey training base. Some, including John Terry and Frank Lampard, had enjoyed a holiday on the oligarch’s superyacht.

'Whoever won Player of the Year got the yacht,' says Cole. 'John had been on the yacht. Frank had been on the yacht. So, I was Player of the Year in 2008, the year we got to the Champions League final in Moscow.

'Chelsea was the centre of the football world,' says Cole. 'Incredible, like a new football powerhouse had emerged'

'Going into Abramovich's office is quite intimidating but I had the bravado of a young man in his 20s,' recalls Cole

'I’m thinking, "Can’t wait, I’m going to line it up for everyone". Buying the boat shoes, things like that. But it never quite transpired. I didn’t get on the yacht.

'Change of policy. I don’t know what the other lads done to it. Maybe they ruined the carpet or something.'

On reflection, Cole never wanted to leave. Not on that day in the owner’s office. Certainly not at the end of his contract in 2010 when he was released and joined Liverpool on a free transfer, to clear pathways for emerging young players who, as he says in the book, were never going to be good enough to reach Chelsea’s level.

And yet deep down he knew he was not the player he had been before a knee injury suffered in an FA Cup tie at Southend, 18 months earlier.

Cole had been determined to play on, only to throw a stepover and find his lower leg gave way beneath him. Virtually all ligaments were ruptured.

'I’m proud, all the glories before that in my career, at West Ham and Chelsea in the early years, and England, and everything,' he says. 'But after 2010, I’m still proud of everything because it was done on maybe 70 or 80 per cent. I couldn’t stay fit, and I’m still proud of sticking it out to the end.'

Cole is not proud of his performance at the 2009 FA Cup final, however, when, overwhelmed by his injury plight he went out the night before the game, reported to Wembley feeling worse for wear and slept through the game on a bed of towels in the dressing room as Chelsea, under the interim charge of Guus Hiddink, beat Everton.

'The kitman Mick Roberts clocked me,' says Cole. 'He said, "You don’t look great mate, lie down there" and he barricaded me in between the skips, into the sort of den you’d make for your kids.

'I’m proud, all the glories before that in my career, at West Ham and Chelsea in the early years, and England, and everything'

Cole spent two years with the Tampa Bay Rowdies in Florida, scoring 20 times in 86 matches

'It’s important to be honest. You can’t talk for the whole book about the great times and not talk about your mistakes'

'I slept in there until he came in and said we’d won the FA Cup, and we went out and celebrated.

'Not my finest hour. I let my standards slip but I’ve tried to be honest. It’s important to be honest. You can’t talk for the whole book about the great times and not talk about your mistakes.'

This much he knows from a lifetime in football. It will serve him well as he pursues his career in management.

Joe Cole, Luxury Player is out now, published by Orion.