THE
STORY OF
MAn UTDTHE
STORY OF
MAn UTDNaturally, there was a hairdryer or two as well. “The main one
was after a game at Bayern Munich [in March 2010],” recalls
Ferdinand. “I disagreed with his tactics in that game. We lost 2-1
and I thought we should have done something different, so I was
screaming and shouting. Then he walked in and just shut the place
down with his screaming and shouting over mine!”
Looking back, who was right that night? “I was right, because we
lost!” he smiles. “But I think he appreciated that when I’d shout or
resist against certain things, tactics or something he was saying, it
wasn’t from a selfish point of view. It was from a team perspective,
because I wanted us to do well.”Ferdinand would go to another World Cup with England in 2006 and
impress again: Eriksson’s men conceded only twice in five matches.
“I saw a stat the other day: I played ten matches at the World Cup
and kept seven clean sheets – that’s an unbelievable stat, so all the
strikers just never did their jobs!” he says. “I loved the big occasions
and the big matches – the build-up, everything about them. I loved
playing for England at World Cups.”
That Ferdinand excelled there said plenty about him, considering
many regard the World Cup as the ultimate test of a player’s ability.
“I don’t agree – the Champions League is,” he insists. “You go to the
World Cup and no disrespect, but you can be playing Peru or some
country that’s ranked 200th in the world. The Champions League is
the elite of the elite – by a smidgen, I think that’s the most difficult
competition to win.”The transfer made him the world’s most expensive defender for
a second time, after French World Cup winner Lilian Thuram pipped
him with a £23m switch to Juventus in 2001.
FFT asks what Ferdinand remembers most about that day.
“Other than the suit?” he laughs, recalling the garish white outfit he
donned for his unveiling. “It was an unbelievable day – although
when I signed, I remember Alex Ferguson asking my mum, ‘Is he all
right, he doesn’t seem happy?’ She said, ‘Until he starts playing, you
won’t see the enjoyment – you’ll see it when he plays.’
“The thing I remember most is the press conference, because
they asked, ‘What do you want to get out of this move?’ I said that
when I finally left Man United, if I could walk out of Old Trafford
with my head held high, having etched my name somewhere in
the history of the club, that would mean I’d done well – that meant
trophies.” He achieved exactly that. “Yeah,” he smiles. “They were
the best years of my playing career. It was hard work over a long
period of time, with a great bunch of people.”
Among those people was his long-time central defensive
partner Nemanja Vidić. “We just gelled,” says Ferdinand. “In a
partnership, having the same attributes makes it more difficult to
work as a pair. We had some similarities, but there were also some
big differences between us. I liked sweeping up behind – if there
was any problem for anyone, I liked to be the security blanket. Vida
loved to attack the ball first. He was the aggressor.”
They were also united by a motivation to win Ferguson’s
approval. “He was different to Harry Redknapp in that he didn’t
really praise me – he was fearful that maybe I’d get big-headed
and think I was the man,” explains Ferdinand. “He thought that a
lot about people from London – I think he had a certain idea about
how Londoners are. But it was probably good for me that he didn’t,
as I always felt that I had something to prove to him. Me and Vida
were the same like that – we used to talk about it a lot.
“Sir Alex would say, ‘Cristiano, Rooney, Tevez, Berbatov, Giggs
and Scholes – brilliant’, but he’d never really name-check us. We
used to think, ‘We’re keeping clean sheets every other week here –
what’s going on?!’ But it kept us hungry. We wanted to prove
ourselves to him and get the recognition that we both felt we
deserved. It was a great bit of management.”“WHEn JOHn TERRY STEPPED UP I THOUGHT
IT WAS ALL OVER. I’D WATCHED HIM TAKE
PEnALTIES In TRAInInG, AnD HE’D ALWAYS
BEEn SO COOL AnD CALM UnDER PRESSURE”
110 The Story of Man Utd FourFourTwo.com