Arriving at his training session, Cole was all business, talking mostly in English while throwing in Italian phrases. <\/p>\n
One local staff member was impressed by his willingness to tidy up the equipment, which he said was uncommon for a player who had enjoyed such a successful playing career.<\/p>\n
To Cole, a former schoolboy from east London, that behaviour is normal. Even his new title – ‘Mister’, bestowed on all managers in Italy – is something he is still getting used to.<\/p>\n
“I don’t see myself above anyone at this club,” he said. “Of course I have to be the leader of the group, but I’ll pick up a cone.”<\/p>\n
Cole had some awareness of what he was arriving into in Emilia\u2011Romagna – nicknamed Italy’s ‘food valley’ and famous for parmigiano reggiano, balsamic vinegar from Modena and prosciutto di parma – with his wife Sharon Canu an important sounding board. <\/p>\n
“I certainly didn’t go looking for an Italian wife [when he joined Roma in 2014], but I came back with one,” he joked. <\/p>\n
“Sharon has been great for me. She’s from Rome, but she understands that people in smaller cities really love the club where they live. I have to embrace that.”<\/p>\n
One example is Cole’s routine of buying a five euro ‘piadina’ – an Italian flatbread sandwich – from a stall outside Cesena’s stadium before his media conferences. The food stand also regularly feeds the squad after home matches.<\/p>\n
In this working\u2011class town of fewer than 100,000 people, Cole’s side are underdogs in Serie B – something he identifies with. <\/p>\n
“I liked that the owners have a similar background to me – hard work, graft, underdogs nobody believed in – but they created a really successful business,” he said. <\/p>\n
“They also wanted someone to believe in them and give them a chance.”<\/p>\n
Cesena, like most Italian clubs, rent their stadium and training facilities from the local authority, but Cole has innovated where he can. <\/p>\n
He created a video analysis room and uses a high-angle tactical camera to film his sessions, which he watches back in full every day. <\/p>\n
“I came here thinking something had to change,” Cole said. “We hadn’t won away from home for a long time, so that had to change – it wasn’t working.<\/p>\n
“We’d gone a number of games without a win, so that had to change too. We needed higher intensity in training and matches. The style of football had to change.<\/p>\n
“We had to be more adaptable to the different styles we come up against, and we needed more control in games through possession.”<\/p>\n
In his first media conference, Cole also called out Italy’s failure to qualify for three consecutive World Cups as a sign they needed to be open to new styles of football, which he is implementing before a trip to face Palermo on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arriving at his training session, Cole was all business, talking mostly in English while throwing in Italian phrases.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":588297,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-588296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=588296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/588297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=588296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=588296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=588296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}