In a week when the English press claimed he was on the verge of joining a Major League Soccer club in the US, thus effectively signalling the end of his career, Paul Gascoigne was entitled to a wistful glance at the coverage in the same newspapers of Joe Cole. Cole, you see, is the latest "new Gazza", and has been for about a year now. But the hysteria and hype surrounding him reached new heights last week after . . . are you sitting comfortably . . . he scored his first goal for West Ham, tapping home the winner, from a couple of feet, against Birmingham City (who were without 11 first-team squad players) in the last minute of a League Cup tie, in front of a half empty (or half full) St Andrews. The Sun celebrated this feat by running four articles on Cole, including one which claimed: "He's Paul Gascoigne with brains, the best thing since David Beckham and Michael Owen, he's the lad for the millennium who is good enough to give us real hope of World Cup glory - maybe as soon as 2002." Point of information: Joe Cole has just turned 18 and has started only 11 first-team games for West Ham. (Prediction: He will singlehandedly win England the World Cup in 2002, and after the final he will triumphantly hold the trophy aloft for the passing flock of pigs to see.)
Of course there's more than a 50-50 chance that the fella who wrote that stuff doesn't even believe it himself, but, then, the English football press is in desperate need of a new hero and just now Cole fits the bill. They've fallen out with Alan Shearer, have a troubled relationship with Beckham, Paul Scholes has the talent but doesn't possess the pop star quality, while Jamie Redknapp has the pop star quality but the talent only emerges once every 26 games. Michael Owen? Who? Yesterday's news, they've turned on him too. Anyway, he'll be 20 in a fortnight so he's pretty much reached his sell-by date. Thanks for the memories Michael.
When Kevin Keegan sits down to pick his next England squad they'll be howling at him from the back pages to include Cole (Joe, not Andy), even though the player's club manager, Harry Redknapp, is still weaning him off youth-team football.
Such is the kiss-of-death record of their "he's the new Gazza" forecasts it was almost surprising to see Cole even make it in to the West Ham first team after being tipped for greatness since he first joined the club's youth set-up at 11 - and from then on, we were told, every major Premiership club attempted to lure him away. While cautioning against such hype, Trevor "my old club West Ham" Brooking tends to hyperventilate a bit when discussing Cole's ability, so we'll take his word for it: the boy's a bit special. And yes, the glimpses we've seen of him suggest he has enough talent to one day merit his own range of duvet covers and an advertising campaign for crisps. Both of which Gascoigne once had, the "old Gazza" that is. Eleven years ago he found himself in the position Joe Cole is in now, when he was voted Young Player of the Year by the Professional Footballers' Association, but then he proceeded to waste every scrap of talent he possessed.
I saw Gascoigne play in England a few weeks back and he cut a fairly pathetic figure in the middle of the park, surrounded by 21 finely-tuned athletes. He looked trim, trimmer than he has done in a few years, but judging by his lack of fitness a panicky eve-of-pre-season-training starvation diet had probably helped him shed the pounds, and, consequently, most of his energy and stamina.
Gascoigne was, of course, never the player the English press built him up to be - he showed snatches of genius on a football field but he was far, far from a football genius.
Predictably, the "obituaries" that appeared in the press during the week for his football career were full of sympathy and pity, when the truth is Gascoigne has nobody but himself to blame for blowing it. His troubles were mostly self-inflicted. If, during his career, Gascoigne believed what was written about him then it's no wonder it all fell apart - certainly if he ever took Daily Mail football writer Jeff Powell's musings to heart. "If there is a good woman behind many a successful man . . . then by the reverse token, obsession with the wrong woman can be a good man's downfall. And Paul Gascoigne basically is a good man who became besotted with a woman who was wrong for him," wrote Powell during the week about Gascoigne's marriage to Sheryl, whom he occasionally used as his punch-bag when the mood took him. So, the best career advice Joe Cole could probably be given is to quit reading the hype merchants who'll paint him as the saviour of English football before he even wins a cap, who'll turn on him as soon as they discover he's not quite what they built him up to be and then tell him it was anyone's fault but his if he blows it all through sheer stupidity.
And he must hope the very last thing he becomes is the "new Gazza", on or off the pitch. One was enough.
