GROUP SIX: ASHLEY COLE was one of the last England players to emerge from the home dressingroom here, the full-back eventually striding through the post-match mixed zone offering a "thanks but no thanks" to the waiting media.
Above him the sound had been muted on a plasma screen upon which his wife, Cheryl, sat gawping at Simon Cowell's presumably scathing assessment of the X Factor'slatest warbler. Cole skulked away with little more than a sheepish smile; there was to be only one pantomime villain in town on Saturday night.
This is a player who has grown used to abuse. Every visit he makes back to Arsenal these days sees the vitriol overflow, his messy divorce from the club that had nurtured him still prompting rancour some two years down the line. Cole was not blameless in the controversy surrounding that defection, yet this was a rare occasion when the vilification had been directed on an international stage.
One mistake, a horribly misplaced pass that allowed Kazakhstan to score and had Fabio Capello apoplectic in his technical area, saw his subsequent every touch booed by sections of the crowd. The FA condemned the reaction as "crazy" and "pointless".
Cole is in good company. England players have been abused at Wembley for years, the rerunning on national television of the Graham Taylor documentary An Impossible Joblast week offering a timely reminder of the catcalls that once pursued John Barnes in the national stadium. The winger did well not to be broken by the poisonous atmosphere of a World Cup qualifying game against Norway some 16 years ago, an evening on which nothing he did seemed to come off. Cole, in contrast, may not have been at his best on Saturday but he was guilty of only one really crass error.
That was all it took for all the pre-match pleas from Capello and his players for the booing to stop to be forgotten. The manager remains perplexed at the attitude. "You have to help a player who makes a mistake, not boo him," he argued. The crowd at the new Wembley has developed its culture of heaping criticism upon individuals. Frank Lampard suffered for a period, as much a legacy of the perception he is the personification of money-flushed Chelsea as an inability to stamp his authority on games. There can be little empathy between supporters and players who earn as these do and are seen to quibble over how best to squeeze yet more money from their employers.
David Bentley's refusal to play in a summer under-21 tournament did not go forgotten. The suspicion lingers England's support are on the constant look-out for a figure to berate, the grumbling discontent that this is a team of highly paid under-achievers never far away, though the abuse has become cruelly comical now. Fans, having paid for their seats, have the right to react however they see fit to events out on the pitch. But when players make genuine mistakes, as Cole did, to boo frenziedly seems rather self-defeating.
"It's a lot easier to do well and play at your best when they're not booing you, obviously," conceded Lampard. "You can be the most strong-minded player in the world but, when that happens to you, it makes your game a little bit tougher. The fans need to understand that anyone can make a mistake. By the end, the majority of the fans . . . tried to drown out the booing by clapping."
Cole's error was all the more surprising given he is enjoying his best domestic form since joining Chelsea. "When you hear that aimed at one of the best left-backs not just in Europe but in the world, then it's just not right," said David Beckham. The defender's subsequent eagerness to be involved in the game, searching for the ball down the flank, was evidence of a desire to make amends.
Accusations of laziness, once they believed the game had been won after Alexandr Kuchma's own-goal could be levelled at England, though Cole was not guilty alone of that. There were hints of complacency creeping in before he played his ill-fated square pass, his body shape awkward and his team-mates slow to react.
As it was, a combination of the wake-up call provided by Zhambyl Kukeyev's goal and the visitors tiring late on paved the way for what appears, on paper, to have been a romp. Given the dissent in the stands, that may be the kindest way to remember this occasion.
• Guardian Service
