The former Manchester United and Newcastle striker on the ‘torture’ that followed his lifesaving kidney transplant, his feud with Teddy Sheringham and his hopes for the future
“I’m not ungrateful because I get to live another day,” Andy Cole says as he shivers and pulls on his coat. A cold wind gusts through the sunlit garden where we sit in Alderley Edge. Fifteen miles from Old Trafford, which the former striker still thinks of as the Theatre of Dreams, it’s just me, Cole and an emptying pot of tea. As a Manchester United player who won five league titles, the Champions League and three FA Cups, including the treble in 1999, Cole lived a fantasy life for years, even if his wounded quietness gave the wrong impression that he was surly.
Yet when the 47-year-old says, “I’m never going to be the individual I was before”, Cole is not mourning the end of his career. His lament about the “internal battle” and “torture”, which has deepened his depression and made him consider taking his own life, is rooted in ill health.
Continue reading...posted from The Guardian
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