Andy Cole exclusive interview: Memories of the treble, the greatest season in Manchester United's history and that Teddy Sheringham feud

The Dell,  Oct 3, 1998: Of the many memorable staging posts on the road to immortality for Manchester United - from those dramatic 3-3 draws with Barcelona and Bayern Munich in the Champions League group stages to the 8-1 thrashing of Nottingham Forest, that FA Cup semi-final replay against Arsenal at Villa Park, Juventus in Turin and Spurs on the final day - Southampton’s rickety old ground does not readily spring to mind.

But it was the afternoon a crucial piece in the historic treble jigsaw clicked into place and one of the English game’s great strike pairings was born. And the most intriguing bit about it is it was by accident, not design. “I’ll always say the same thing, the manager stumbled upon the partnership,” Andy Cole reflects, his smile widening. “And we went and had the greatest season in Man Utds history. Kinda nice, isn’t it?”

Cole and Dwight Yorke. Yorkie and Coley. They scored 53 goals between them that season as United claimed first the title, then the FA Cup and finally, 20 years ago this Sunday, the European Cup on an unforgettable night at the Nou Camp, slicing and dicing opponents with an understanding that bordered on the telepathic. Yet it was almost the partnership that never was. Cole, after all, would probably have left the club in the pre-season had Sir Alex Ferguson succeeded in signing the AC Milan striker Patrick Kluivert so soon after the arrival of Yorke from Aston Villa that summer.

“They brought in Yorkie, we’re on the pre-season tour and I know the gaffer was trying to sign Kluivert but, for whatever reason, he ended up going to Barcelona,” Cole explains. “If Kluivert had come, I probably would have gone. When the season got started, Dwight was upfront with Scholesy, Teddy, Ole, Giggsy. It wasn’t until Southampton that he finally gave me a go.”

United won 3-0, Yorke and Cole both scored and they never looked back. “I’m a big believer in fate and that was just meant to be - two people who came together at precisely the right time in their lives and who just loved their football together,” Cole says. “Everyone was talking about me leaving but I’d help anyone. So Yorkie came in, he was staying in a hotel just up the road so I said: ‘Come on, out we go. Where do you want to live?’

"I showed him a few areas, we went for dinner, he came round my house and had dinner with my kids, I took him out in Manchester and it went from there. We were total opposites but just got on so well. He’s the life and soul of the party - everyone knows Dwight is in the gaff. If I come in, I don’t want anyone to know. Chalk and cheese. I’ve known him over 20 years and we’ve never had a cross word.”

The same could not be said for Cole’s relationship with Teddy Sheringham, the man who kickstarted that unforgettable 2-1 comeback against Bayern Munich in the Champions League final before another substitute striker, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, now United’s manager, scored arguably the most famous goal in the club’s storied history.

We are sitting in a quiet corner of Caffe Nero in Alderley Edge, the affluent Cheshire suburb Cole has called home for over two decades, and mention of Sheringham prompts him to pause as he puts down his hot chocolate. He knew the question was coming and he has no intention of shirking it.

“We never spoke,” Cole says. “Unless it was going to be another argument between us … no, never spoke. We didn’t exchange a single word while we were there.” Or a civil one, at least. In fact, it was so hostile between them that they would only communicate, out of occasional necessity, through Yorke.

“I’ve got to laugh now but Yorkie was like the go-between … if Teddy wanted to ask me something, he’d ask Yorkie to tell me because, at any stage, my response to him could be anything. I was so volatile towards him. I just wasn’t having him.”

The trigger for a feud that would fester for over 15 years, and almost resulted in blows being exchanged during a half-time tunnel bust-up in the season before the treble success, had been Cole’s England debut against Uruguay in March 1995. Cole, then 23, was waiting to replace Sheringham and had his hand out but the older man just brushed past him without so much as a glance.

“To leave me hanging on the line like that, I felt so embarrassed,” Cole said. “I didn’t even want to go and play the game after that, that’s how embarrassed I felt. Snubbed on the line when you’re making your debut as a young kid, I mean … I think I hit the bar in the game but I couldn’t fathom it, I couldn’t get it out of my mind.”

Imagine Cole’s face then when news came through United that were signing Sheringham in 1997. “The boys knew I didn’t get on with him and they couldn’t stop laughing. ‘Ah, your mate’s coming now, ain’t he?’ Butty, Giggsy used to rip me all the time about it.

“But I just wasn’t having him. I’m not having anyone treat me like that. ‘Don’t let people take liberties’ - that’s how I grew up.”

Ferguson realised he would have to intervene when, at half-time of a league game against Bolton at Old Trafford in February 1998, it all kicked off. “Teddy’s come down the tunnel and said something to me - I think he tried to blame me for something - and the f------ mist came down and I went for him. I didn’t get the opportunity because Skip [Roy Keane] got hold of me and started having a go: ‘What the f--- are you doing?’. And then 10 or 20 seconds later Roy ends up having an argument with Teddy and goes for him himself.”

Sheringham talked this week about how they had buried the hatchet some years ago after a chance meeting in a London nightclub. Cole jokes that drink had been taken but, while Sheringham is unlikely to be the first person he makes a beeline for when United’s treble winners reunite for a “legends” game against their Bayern counterparts at Old Trafford on Sunday in aid of charity, those ill feelings have subsided.

Having undergone a life-saving kidney transplant two years ago, and through as much mental as physical anguish, Cole, now 47, cherishes every element of his United story. “I thank God I’m still here given what has happened,” he says. “I look back on it now totally differently and just say, ‘Wow’. It was no ordinary dressing room. It was a freakish dressing room. I’ve never come across so many people with the same desire. When you talk about a band of brothers, that was a band of brothers.

"Of course, not everyone’s going to get on but when you crossed that white line it didn’t matter. For those 90 minutes it didn’t matter what else was going on, we’d do anything to win.”

The only time in our hour together when Cole looks vaguely embarrassed is when it is pointed out that he is the man who scored the goals that both sealed United’s passage into the Champions League final, and clinched the title. Turin, April 21, 1999 is perhaps best remembered for Keane’s tour de force, when United’s captain - booked and, as a result, suspended for the final - inspired a dramatic comeback from 2-0 down against Juventus at the Stadio delle Alpi. But it was also the night Cole and Yorke’s partnership reached the point of maximum expression. Cole set up Yorke for the equaliser before a stunning piece of interplay saw Cole claim a majestic third.

“That game still sends shivers down my spine,” Cole says. “To this day I can’t comprehend what we did. I remember coming into the dressing room after the game and I think I was having half a moan about something stupid to Yorkie but I didn’t actually understand what we had just done. We went into overdrive.”

Much of what he had learnt from Peter Beardsley at Newcastle, Cole put to good use with Yorke, although, incredibly, they never worked on anything in training. “People ask, ‘How did it work?’ You don’t know how it worked - it just worked,” Cole says. “Yorkie and I were never even on the same team in training - it’d be England versus the Rest of the World in small sided games!

“I always remember Peter used to say to me: ‘Just stand there.' I’d look round like an idiot and say, ‘I can’t just stand there’ but as I got older I understood what he was saying. You can create space just by standing still. I learnt all these things from him at Newcastle so when it came together with Dwight I drew on that knowledge and it just all knitted so well.”

Talking of prior knowledge, Cole’s goal against Spurs, when he lobbed the ball over Ian Walker, to secure a 2-1 win and, with it, the title, was an outrageous piece of improvisation but, in many ways, years in the making. “I’d known Walks a long time because we were at Lilleshall together so I knew every now and then liked to have a little walk, come off his line,” Cole said. “When we were at Lilleshall I used to try to chip him all the time. I had a little split second glance and he couldn’t set himself once he’d gone forward.”

One of Cole’s most memorable moments was a game he was not even involved in - “rested” by Ferguson for, of all matches, that iconic Cup semi replay against Arsenal. Sitting up in the stands at Villa Park that night, what was he thinking when Ryan Giggs intercepted Patrick Vieira’s stray pass?

“Pass it!” Cole says, laughing. “‘Pass it, keep the ball! Then it was: ‘OK, go on then.' Past one, two. ‘Keep going! Keep going!’ He got in the box and if you ask Giggsy I don’t think he’ll have finished too many better than that, if he even meant to put it there! You won’t see a better FA Cup game than that. Freakish. Skip being sent off, Bergkamp missed a penalty. Peter Schmeichel was the best goalkeeper I ever played with but I didn’t think he was going to save it because his record on penalties is terrible - and I mean terrible. So when he pulled off that save it gets you thinking. And then Giggsy picks it up …”

Whether the Champions League final topped that for drama is a debate United fans still enjoy but Cole rates the Bayern game as one of their worst showings of the season. “We just didn’t play well, we were disjointed, couldn’t get our game going,” he says. For once, the Cole and Yorke partnership failed to spark but then United, shorn of their suspended central midfield pairing of Keane and Paul Scholes, struggled throughout.

Cole made way for Solskjaer with nine minutes left. “In a selfish way of course you want to stay on the pitch until the last minute but the manager made a lot of great calls that season and that was another!” Cole says, beaming.

The son of a coal miner who emigrated from Jamaica, Cole looks back now and has to pinch himself about certain moments. “I remember before we flew to Barcelona for the final, we turned up on the tarmac thinking we’d be getting a normal charter flight,” he recalled. “We used to fly Monarch. And then we see Concorde ... Concorde. You grow up as a kid thinking: ‘One day, I’d love to fly on Concorde.’ And we fly to Barcelona on it. I look at things like that and have to chuckle. Concorde. I don’t think I went on my first flight until I was 15.

“But what topped it off for me was getting back here, getting on the bus and seeing Manchester. I’ve seen nothing like that in my life. Nothing. Manchester has been my home for the past 25 years and that day will always stick with me. Yorkie was saying: ‘Come on Coley, come to the front of the bus.’ I think it’s the only time you’ve seen me emotional in a picture. I always knew what Manchester United was about. But, that day, you knew what Manchester United was about.”