Ashley Cole was cemented as England’s first-choice left-back for the 2010 World Cup, but who would go to South Africa as his understudy?
With Wayne Bridge making himself unavailable, the choice for boss Fabio Capello came down to either Everton’s Leighton Baines or Aston Villa’s Stephen Warnock, who both made the provisional squad.
When the group returned home from their pre-tournament training camp in Austria, it was still unclear who he would take.
“We were told we’d get a phone call one way or another,” Warnock recalled. “We knew the call would come on the day the squad came out, from a certain number and before a certain time, because they would be announcing it straight afterwards. So I was at home, literally just waiting by the phone.
“To be honest, I wasn’t expecting to go because in the two warm-up games we’d just played, against Mexico and Japan, I hadn’t kicked a ball.
“My England career at that point was the seven minutes I’d played against Trinidad and Tobago two years earlier, in June 2008.
“I’d gone to Austria with an ankle injury that I’d picked up in Villa’s last game of the season.
“I went on holiday but had a scan when I was away and then spoke to the physios when I came back and basically told them I am going to do everything I can to get in the World Cup squad.
“I told them to strap me up and I would limp through training for the first week. When I was in Austria I was having physio every hour of the day I could get it, and I worked on my ankle as much as possible.
“I don’t know if that was being relayed to the management, but when I didn’t play in either game, I thought that was me done, that Capello wasn’t going to take me now.
“I remember exactly where I was when I got the call.
“I am divorced now but I was in the house with my now ex-wife and I went upstairs to my bedroom when the phone rang, because I just wanted to be on my own. I just remember walking downstairs saying ‘I’m going!’ and I was probably in a bit of shock.
“It was Franco Baldini [Capello’s assistant] who rang and I have no idea if he called everyone else to tell them – I didn’t know how it worked, and I didn’t care!
“Baldini just said, ‘listen, you’ve had a great season, we knew what you were capable of anyway and we love your attitude – we think you will be perfect around the camp for training and things like that.
“‘You know Ash is going to be difficult to budge, because he doesn’t get injured and he doesn’t not play, but we think you’re the perfect back-up to him, in terms of your professionalism and everything else’.
“I was like, “yeah 100%, that will do me”. I knew what my role would be anyway, so that was fine.”
While the good news came as a surprise to Warnock, a clue was already out there.
The previous day, England kit manufacturer Umbro had sent muralists to the hometowns of every player in the squad to paint their shirt number in a prominent place as a play on their ‘tailored by’ slogan.
For Warnock, that was a wall on the side of the O’Este restaurant at a busy crossroads in Ormskirk.
