Ashley Cole will not be leaving Chelsea to join Real Madrid, according to Chelsea chairman Bruce Buck.
Cole had been strongly linked to the Bernabéu, possibly involving a swap deal with Kaka, but Buck has rubbished these rumours.
“Ashley Cole is not for sale,” the American said in an interview, “and that’s the bottom line on that. There’s no doubt that he’s going to be a Chelsea player this season.”
“Ashley is a superb player. He is a delight to deal with around the football club, he gets on very well with everyone, he trains very well and he is really a model athlete.
“Obviously, he is not happy with how his private life has become the focus of everything around him and I think we’d like to work with him so that he has a bit of a lower profile.
“We don’t think the problem will change if he went to somewhere else outside of the UK, so I think we want to work with him here to make his personal life more enjoyable.â€
