The midfielder, who will now step up his search for a new club after being released by Chelsea, racked up just 44 minutes of England’s four-game campaign in South Africa.
Cole’s absence from Fabio Capello’s starting XI, plus concerns over the manager’s tactics and his reluctance to give the players an early indication of the team, have all been cited as contributory factors to a sense of discontent within the squad.
And with England suffering elimination at the last-16 stage, four years after reaching the quarter-finals of Germany 2006, Cole claims that the time has come to act on the reasons behind the failure of the team to deliver in South Africa.
Cole said: “There are a lot of issues. It is not for me to talk to you guys [media] about it, but we need to just step up.
“I am just devastated, but what can you do? We will go away and start again, but we have to address the problems that are there.
“I don’t want to go into tactics. We just weren’t good enough, but we have to look at ourselves as a group. We haven’t been good enough since the start of the friendlies, so it is back to the drawing board.
“Why is this? I don’t know. ----ing hell, if I knew, I’d put it right. We wanted to do well, but sometimes we just weren’t good enough, plain and simple.
“Fabio Capello is a great manager and we have great players, but there are issues we need to address.”
Steven Gerrard, who captained England during the World Cup due to Rio Ferdinand’s late withdrawal because of a knee injury, insisted that both the players and coaching staff must take collective responsibility for the poor performances in South Africa. The Liverpool midfielder said: “Everyone is to blame. We came into this tournament with togetherness, so it would be very unfair of me to pick out individuals.
“For me it’s the group. If we had won, we would all have had pats on the back, so we have to take the responsibility and the grief ourselves.”
Although a seemingly good goal by Frank Lampard, which hit the bar before bouncing behind the goal-line, was not awarded by Uruguayan referee Jorge Larrionda, Gerrard warned against using that decision as an excuse for England’s exit.
“If you look at the game as a whole we’ve been beaten by the better team,” Gerrard said. “At 2-1, if Frank’s goal would have counted, it could have been a turning point in the game, but we can’t use that as an excuse. Germany scored four and we only got one, which tells its own story.”
In contrast to Gerrard’s magnanimity, Lampard insisted that the 4-1 scorelined flattered the Germans. He said: “Nobody can stand here and tell me Germany were a lot better than us. They were not 4-1 better than us. But things have conspired against us and maybe we have conspired against ourselves at times. It just didn’t go for us.”
Germany now progress to a quarter-final in Cape Town against Argentina. And captain Philipp Lahm claims that Germany’s victory was partly due to England taking their opponents lightly.
Lahm said: “Maybe England were not prepared for this game as they should be. Maybe they under-estimated us because our players aren’t as famous as the England players.
“We knew that we would have chances on the break if we let England attack. It was very important for us to be strong defensively because we always have the quality to get forward with players like Ozil, Podolski, Muller, Klose.
“The reason England’s defence couldn’t handle our players was because we have very good strikers.”
Sir Alex Ferguson claimed last week that Germany’s mid-winter break proves an advantage over England in major tournaments, but Lahm insisted the Germans simply planned better than England. He said: “We have good fitness coaches who have prepared us, not for three games, but for the whole tournament.”
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