Former England international Carlton Cole has explained the motive behind his tweet about Ghanaians in 2011 which saw him fined £20,000 by the English FA.

It was a year after the World Cup and Ghana were the team to beat from Africa. Despite going down by one goal, the Black Stars silenced the den of the Three Lions courtesy a late curler by Asamoah Gyan.

However, Gyan’s equaliser was not the only subject of discussion after the game. A tweet by Carlton Cole about the 20,000 Ghanaians who made the trip to Wembley made grounds pretty rapidly.

In the tweet, Cole said: “Immigration has surrounded the Wembley premises! I knew it was a trap! Hahahaha.”

He later deleted the tweet and apologised saying “To my Ghanaian brothers don’t take it so seriously, it’s just jokes! You’ve played well!”.

Nine years later and Cole who was part of the panel on the special edition of PM Express on the Joy News channel revealed why he tweeted that in the first place.

“I’ve got to explain myself on that one. I was punished for it. It was actually a joke. It wasn’t even my joke, it was a Ghanaian friend’s joke. It was unbelievable. All I did, was copy and paste because I thought it’ll be funny. Everyone knows I’m half Sierra Leonean and half Nigerian. So I thought it’ll be fun to have a joke between Africans but then I forgot I play for England."

Cole was charged with improper conduct in relation to his media comments made on the social media site Twitter on 29 March 2011. The former West Ham striker admitted the charge then and was charged £20,000.

“It got taken way out of context and it wasn’t even my joke but I got fined £20,000. I did say to the FA that I will rather give this money to charity than to the FA so I ended up giving it to charity. However, I didn’t learn from that mistake, I made another joke later on in my career and I got fined another £20,000. Comedy is not my main subject,” he said whilst giggling.

Cole went on to explain how exactly fines were effected for professional players.

“They usually take the fines out of your salary. If you are objecting, they make you appear in a meeting. I objected twice and I had to meet the board twice at Wembley. I remember walking into this intimidating room explaining myself and they didn’t understand. So I ended up getting fined instead of a match ban."