My nephew Cole is either highly intelligent with a wicked but not easily discernible sense of humour – or he’s ridiculously thick. He’s not really my nephew, but I can’t help wishing he was. I always refer to him as a member of the family because he’s arguably the most interesting sportsman in the world right now – and one of the most naturally gifted footballers this country has ever produced.
Cole Palmer is 23 and comes from Wythenshawe, Manchester. He’s mixed race in that his paternal grandfather, Sterry Cole, came from the Caribbean island of St Kitts and Nevis and emigrated to Britain in 1960 as part of the Windrush generation. His father, Jermaine, is a dental engineer, and his mother, Marie, is a dyslexia assessor. He has two older sisters. As a child, Cole was banned from playing football in the garden of the family home because he broke too many flower pots and ruined the grass.
At the age of seven, he signed for Manchester City and attended private school while progressing through the club’s academy. By the time he turned 14, it was thought he was too scrawny to play professional football – but he was kept on and ended up as captain of the under-18s team, before being sold to Chelsea two years ago for £40 million.
Even today, he looks gangly and a little odd. His haircut is daft – it could be a toupee, but apparently it is a ‘French crop with a mid drop fade’, according to posts on social media. If he walked into your local pub you might think he worked in security at Chessington World of Adventures, or behind the scenes at a Harvester restaurant, perhaps washing dishes. He certainly wouldn’t be front of house.
But he plays football with a fluidity, bravado and intellect that stirs the soul. His grace on the ball is similar to that of Roger Federer at tennis or Tiger Woods at golf – both of whom made their respective sports look easy. Cole sees what’s going on before anyone else. He does things no one else can do – and in every way he’s different. Awkward, shy perhaps, but forever different.
On scoring a goal, there are no cartwheels, no ostentatious removing of the shirt, no kissing teammates; he just crosses his arms over his chest as if playing up to his ‘Cold Palmer’ moniker. If there’s a mid-match fracas, he walks away and won’t get involved.
He doesn’t smile much and his post-match interviews are excruciating affairs. The harder an interviewer tries to get Cole to enthuse about something, the more monosyllabic he becomes.
‘Have you allowed yourself to think what it could be like to wear the senior shirt for the first time?’ he was asked before being picked for England. ‘Not really, to be honest.’ When Cole moved to London, a journalist asked what the differences were between the then Chelsea manager Mauricio Pochettino and Manchester City’s Pep Guardiola. ‘Don’t know. Next question,’ he said.
A friend has just sent me a TikTok video of Cole taking part in a quiz with his sister Hallie and getting most of the questions right. ‘To everyone that says I’m dumb, I’m not,’ he said
Never has the weary cliché about doing your talking on the pitch been more apt than in the case of Colie, as we season ticket holders call him in the East Upper Stand at Stamford Bridge. In last summer’s Euros, the overly cautious (and overrated) England coach Gareth Southgate kept Cole as a substitute throughout the tournament when everyone else would have played him from the start. In the final against Spain – with England a goal down – it wasn’t until the 70th minute that Cole was introduced. Three minutes later, he scored.
Two weeks ago, in the final of the Europa Conference League, Chelsea were losing to Real Betis until halfway through the second half when Cole started demanding the ball from his colleagues and then took total control of the game – so much so that the TV commentator called it simply: ‘the Palmer show’. The match ended 4–1 to Chelsea.
Shortly before the medals presentation, an over-excited female TNT sports reporter collared Cole and tried desperately to put words in his mouth. ‘It must be a great feeling,’ she gushed. ‘Yeah, of course,’ said Cole – and with that, he was off.
Not a lot is known about Cole’s home life – but he’s conscious of family ties. The St Kitts and Nevis flag is emblazoned on his boots, and he gave all his medals while at Manchester City to his mother because ‘she deserves them more than me’. His girlfriend, whom he met when they were both 17, is called Connie and used to work in a nail bar in Stockport. Presumably, she now lives in Cole’s £5 million pad in Oxshott, Surrey, five minutes’ drive away (in his Lamborghini Urus, with matt silver finish and black wheels) from Chelsea’s training ground.
A friend has just sent me a TikTok video of Cole taking part in a quiz with his sister Hallie and getting most of the questions right. ‘To everyone that says I’m dumb, I’m not,’ he said. I think that’s right. My ‘nephew’ Cole isn’t dumb – but he makes others, both on and off the pitch, look wonderfully stupid. And next summer he’ll win the World Cup for England. Just don’t ask him how he did it.
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