Put it this way, these comments aren’t going to be appearing in the latest tourist brochure for Manchester. Cristiano Ronaldo has already had plenty to say on rainy England, claiming that it’s the worst thing about being a Manchester United player (surely the fat salary and amazing lifestyle go some way to making up for it), and now one of his team-mates has had a good moan.
Nemanja Vidic was one of the Red Devils’ most consistent performers last season and you might think that being from Serbia would mean he wasn’t used to radiant sunshine all the time. However, the Daily Mail reports that the central defender hasn’t experienced anything in Manchester which endears him to the city, claiming that the rail timetable is one of the most attractive aspects!
‘I will never stay to live in England, that’s for sure,’ said Vidic in a Russian magazine.
‘The climate here is something special! You get only a brief glimpse of sunlight before it’s all cloudy again. The winters are mild but in summer the temperatures seldom go higher than 20 degrees Celsius. And it rains, rains, rains!
‘In England they say that Manchester is the city of rain. Its main attraction is considered to be a timetable at the railway station where trains leave for other, less rainy cities!’
‘In future I would like to test myself in another top league. I’m thinking of Spain. At least there will be no reason to complain about the weather.’
I guess it’s inevitable that as the Premier League becomes increasingly cosmopolitan, foreign players are going to complain more about the weather. However, it was their decision to come over in the first place and earn a shedload of cash to play in ‘Europe’s best league’. Do you think Vidic’s comments are disrespectful or has he got a right to an opinion?