Ashley Cole weighs up offers as eight clubs keen to sign Chelsea left-back

Ashley Cole will determine where he is to play next season on his return from a holiday in California with up to eight clubs understood to be keen to secure the former England left-back upon the expiry of his contract at Chelsea.

The defender, 33, confirmed on Monday he does not anticipate extending his eight-year career at Stamford Bridge, where his current deal will end on 30 June. The London club’s manager, José Mourinho, had hoped to retain him for a further 12 months, but the club are now expected to pursue alternative long-term options at left-back with interest established in Sevilla’s Alberto Moreno and Atlético Madrid’s Filipe Luís.
There remains a slim chance that Cole, who played 338 games for Chelsea after joining from Arsenal in exchange for William Gallas and £5m in 2006, could renegotiate terms to remain in south-west London if one of those other targets is not secured, though, for now, he is braced to pursue his career elsewhere and will, ideally, seek a two-year deal.
Monaco, who will compete in the Champions League next term and are backed by the Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, are one of a number of elite clubs to express interest in securing his services. They will be rivalled by Paris Saint-Germain, who had hoped to sign England’s most capped left-back last summer, while the player’s representatives have not ruled out a move to a rival Premier League team. There could yet be interest from Real Madrid if Carlo Ancelotti, who coached Cole at Chelsea, retains his position beyond the end of the current campaign, while clubs in Major League Soccer are also monitoring the situation.
Cole, who retired from international football earlier this month following his failure to make Roy Hodgson’s World Cup squad, took to Twitter on Monday night to suggest his time at the London club had drawn to a close. He removed the statement “Chelsea and England left-back” from his biography and wrote: “I am weighing up my options for playing next season with my agent and sadly it does not look like chelsea will be one of them.
“Thank u Chelsea FC for making my 8 years there a pleasure to work all the staff and players, we’ve been through a lot, good and bad. And of course the fans, how do I start, I can only say thank u for giving the boys confidence to win some amazing trophies – And now I’ll be looking for another journey in my life hope it can be like my others full of fun and of course WIN something.”
The full-back, initially hampered by a rib injury, lost his place in the first-team to César Azpilicueta towards the end of last year and was reduced to a bit-part role thereafter, though he was recalled to play in the critical games against Atlético and Liverpool towards the end of the campaign. Indeed, he captained Chelsea on his last appearance, the 2-1 success at Cardiff on the final afternoon, in the absence of the injured John Terry and ill Frank Lampard.
Of the trio of senior England internationals on Chelsea’s books, Terry has now signed a new one-year deal at Stamford Bridge, while Lampard, England’s vice-captain in Brazil this summer, is still expected to follow suit.