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After playing together 126 times for club and country, Joe Cole and Ashley Cole enjoyed no shortage of memorable moments in their careers, from lifting silverware with Chelsea to being part of England’s much-discussed ‘Golden Generation’ in the mid-2000s.

However, the connection between the two goes back much further than that. Ashley can still clearly recall the first time he watched Joe play, long before either of them had come close to breaking through in the Premier League.

What the young Ashley witnessed that day left a huge impression on him.

When FourFourTwo asked why the pair have always got on so well, Ashley responded with a quick joke.

“Do we get on?” he said, before both former England players burst into laughter. “I’ve known Joey since the age of 10.

“My brother played for a local team that used to play down that way and I got the chance to watch Joe literally rip players apart at that age!”

Joe’s quality was obvious from very early on, and the young playmaker had already built a strong reputation across London’s youth football scene long before West Ham United signed him and he emerged as one of the country’s finest young talents.

“So I knew his name then,” Ashley went on. “Then you came and played in a game for Arsenal, right? And again, I was in awe of him.”

Ashley is less than a year older than Joe, and the two regularly came up against each other as they moved through the youth systems at Arsenal and West Ham respectively.

That helped lay the foundations for a friendship that has lasted to this day. Both men went on to reach the very highest level of the sport, eventually lining up together for England at the 2002 and 2006 World Cups, as well as at the 2004 European Championship.

“We played against each other in youth teams,” Ashley continued. “I’ve gone through a lot of my life with Joe being around.

“We had the opportunity to play in the same team, to represent our country together – we had to have a good relationship to play well on the left-hand side, me at left-back, Joey on the left wing.

“We just got on, we’re easy-going guys.”