James Lawton: Cole makes most of cameo role in latest Eriksson farce

Joe Cole and his grandmother are right to be frustrated. This is a talented kid who is potentially a live, creative force in a new England. He has good feet, bright vision and, for heaven's sake, it also turns out that on an international field he can bend it like Beckham. But we still have scarcely an inkling about his ability to make it as England player. How could we? Cole has become a monument to the futility of what passes for Sven Goran Eriksson's team-building.

On Tuesday, he had another cameo role, in which he just happened to score a spectacular free-kick which brought a flurry of headlines, but no guarantees of a decent chance to prove himself. That he was acutely aware of this plainly took away some of the pleasure of his triumph.

"My goal won the game," he declared, "and hopefully I have staked a claim for [next] Wednesday night [in the European qualifier against Slovakia]. But, I have played 10 games for England and in that time I've only been on the field with David Beckham for 10 minutes. Every time I have dropped back [to the Under-21s]." Yes, he feels frustrated - and so, he said, does grandma. It is a case of both the impatience of questing youth and the wisdom of the ages.

George Cohen, who helped win the World Cup at a time when playing for England, either in a friendly or a competitive match, meant something, was again aghast to see the England coach flood the game at Leicester against the mildly interested Serbia and Montenegro with 10 substitutes, including Cole as a 30-minute replacement for Frank Lampard.

"I thought we had got past all that nonsense with the farce against Australia - I thought that was a point to which even Eriksson couldn't return," he said. "But obviously I was wrong, and I do feel for Joe Cole. He seems to be a prime example of how not to bring on a young player of great promise. Although he has been to a World Cup, we still don't really have a clue if he has what it takes to become a real international. Somewhere along the line judgements have to be made." Cohen homed in on Cole's situation most acutely after England's woebegone exit from last summer's World Cup, when the team subsided into total sterility against Brazil in the quarter-final game.

He said then, "If you are going to take along someone like Joe Cole why not give him a game, something to do. The kid was plainly dying to get on the field and though I'm not sure whether he's quite ready yet - or ever will be - it was a good time to see if he was up to it, because maybe he would do something in a hurry, something which seemed beyond anyone else at the time. There is no doubt he has a bit of imagination, a touch of something different, and if ever a team needed that ingredient it was England."

Unaccountably, given the routine errors of more experienced England players, including the catastrophic mistake of Danny Mills in the World Cup game against Sweden, Cole is still apparently under a shadow because of a mistake he made in another charade of an international game, against Italy last year. In that match he also forced a goal, so in a few minutes he walked between triumph and disaster - a fate which could not be too surprising for someone for whom international football has never been more than a series of passing shadows.

The sense of futility enveloping England could only be intensified by the resumed pairing of Michael Owen and Emile Heskey in attack in the first half. At the time of the Brazilian debacle, Cohen also said, "But what if Cole did prove a vital ingredient in a new England - we're still going to have deep problems down the road if we continue with Owen and Heskey together. Eriksson has to see that they just don't interact."

A fit Wayne Rooney makes Cohen's point the merest postscript of a journey down a blind alley, but the business of properly assessing the potential of a Joe Cole remains in a weird impasse. "To get some idea of the kid's difficulties in trying to establish himself," says Cohen, "you have to consider just one statistic. At the height of their powers, great midfielders like Johnny Haynes, Bobby Charlton and Johnny Giles could expect to be on the ball for no more than two minutes in any match. Now consider Joe Cole's scraps of action and see what chance he has of making a significant mark. You look at it from this point of view and you just have to say, 'Well, it's hopeless'."

Joe Cole may not be the answer, but he deserves the chance to prove that he is. He has the right to something more than a walk-on part in a game of blindman's buff.