England likely to drop Ashley Cole against San Marino

Posted on October 10, 2012 by SoccerPunter

Chelsea defender Ashley Cole has personally apologize to Football Association chairman David Bernstein after branding the English game’s governing body “a bunch of t***s”.

Cole was charged with misconduct by the FA on Monday after the England star made a foul-mouthed outburst on Twitter last week in response to the organisation’s criticism of his evidence in the John Terry racial abuse hearing.

Bernstein stressed that England manager Roy Hodgson will decide whether Cole will play against San Marino in this Friday’s Europe World Cup 2014 qualifier at Wembley after some pundits called for him to be dropped as punishment for the Twitter controversy.

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The 31-year-old was quick to delete the tweet and also issued a statement apologising for his rant, but Bernstein revealed that Cole had also said sorry to him in person on Monday.

“He apologised immediately on Friday and he came to see me last night and apologised to me personally,” Bernstein told BBC Radio Five Live.

“He showed real contrition. He said he was really sorry.

“It was a serious apology. He expressed a degree of remorse for what he had done, wished it hadn’t happened.

“I looked him in the eye and really felt that he meant it.”

“He is free to play for England over the coming matches. It is up to the manager to decide whether he plays or not,” Bernstein addd.

With Hodgson left to decide whether or not to play Cole, the only threat to his chances of winning a 99th cap would appear to be if the England manager opts to rest him ahead of the crucial trip to Poland next week.

However, Bernstein did admit that Cole’s actions meant he was unlikely to captain England for what could be his landmark 100th cap against Poland next Tuesday.

Asked about the possibility of Cole being given the armband to mark the occasion, Bernstein, who played a key role in Terry being stripped of the captaincy over the Anton Ferdinand race row, said: “To be absolutely honest I doubt it. We’ve expressed a view on what we need with regard to a captain and I doubt it, but we’ll see.

“We’ve had issues and we’ve stated publicly many times that we have a very high level of behaviour and so on and so forth required from an English captain.”