Massimo Maccarone’s agent has denied the Middlesbrough striker lashed out in rather specific detail about bosses Steve McClaren and Gareth Southgate.
Maccarone was quoted by La Gazzetta dello Sport, saying:
‘The `magnificent’ McClaren is surely the most hypocritical and false person I have had the misfortune of meeting.
‘He disgusted me by leaving me on the bench for the 2004 League Cup final after having told everyone I was his number one and he was counting on me.
‘At the end, all he could do was mutter `I know, I know’. ‘Only in England can someone with such evident limits become the head of the national team.’
He added: ‘The training methods at Middlesbrough are a quarter of a century out of date.’
On Southgate, Maccarone said:
‘He had promised me he would give me a run of six to eight games. He never kept it (the promise). ‘Maybe that’s the English way of doing things – but for me a promise is a promise.’
Call us naive, but there’s a little too much detail in there for a complete lost-in-translation misquote as his agent seems to be going for. But the man is a player with an axe to grind after a dismal spell at the Riverside, and Ferguson didn’t seem to mind McClaren’s training methods while he was assistant coach at Manchester United – so more than likely it’s just sour grapes.