Prominent reasons why Chelsea's Ashley Cole was not included in England's final 23-man squad

4) Failed to impress in the friendlies

1) England vs Germany

After being dropped from a regular spot in Chelsea, his only chance of getting a ticket to Brazil was to impress Hodgson in the international friendlies. Hodgson included his name in the starting XI against Germany, but the veteran failed to take any advantage of the situation instead looked rusty on the pitch. He was unable to cover Gotze, lacked pace and was often found off position.

In the above picture you can clearly see he let go Marco Reus, luckily Reus had an awful first touch otherwise it surely would have been a goal scoring opportunity.

Throughout the match he struggled to keep up with the pace of the young Germans. Here is another example of his rustiness on the pitch; he loses the ball to Gotze, ultimately leading to a deadly counter attack. By the 52 minute Hodgson had seen enough of Cole’s miserable play, he called him off substituting him with Gibbs.

2) England vs Denmark

In the next friendly against Denmark, he showed an average performance, but it was far better than his performance against Germany. He looked strong going up forward, crossed the ball successfully a couple of times. Although he showed signs of the mistakes he had committed against Germany, also no one could argue the fact that he lacked his old pace and composure on the pitch.

Here he again loses the ball, in a similar fashion as he did against Gotze. This time he was lucky that it didn’t lead to a counter attack. The second picture again shows his negligence, losing the ball to opposition. He played for only 45 minutes then got substituted.

Summing it up

After such poor display both for club and country, even Hodgson had no option other than to select the teenager Luke Shaw. But in matches against Italy and Uruguay his experience could have played a vital role, but the youngster deserves his spot after playing brilliantly throughout the season. Even Hodgson claimed that it was a tough decision to select Luke over Cole.

"Time will tell whether the decision was a good one or a bad one because the circumstances move," Hodgson said. "The circumstances [of an injury] … we might have been better off with Ashley. I can't deny that. I'm certain Luke Shaw wouldn't deny that. Then there might be other circumstances whereby I don't have that problem, I don't get the injury [to Baines], we go through the tournament and we get congratulated because we took a decision to give a very young player a big chance.”

Like Hodgson said, only time will tell whether the decision was a good one or bad one. But after calmly and carefully analyzing Cole's season and the fact that he has grown old, the decision to leave him out of the squad doesn’t seem that bizarre either.