Manchester United legend Rio Ferdinand has responded to Wayne Rooney calling him arrogant as he also went a bit deeper into what their relationship was like during their playing days together at Old Trafford.
Ferdinand and Rooney were Man Utd team-mates for many years and won a host of major honours together in some of the club’s best times under Sir Alex Ferguson, but it’s clear that they weren’t afraid to tell each other what they thought if one of them was under-performing.
Speaking on Vibe with Five, Ferdinand didn’t seem to mind too much about Rooney calling him arrogant, and said they used to argue all the time, with the former England defender urging the forward to focus more on what did in the penalty area, instead of trying to get involved with everything else as well.
“It was at a signing [event], some of us do these things where you go and talk to an audience. They’re quite funny, you have a few beers and you get loose lips a little bit when you’re in there,” Ferdinand said when asked about Rooney’s remarks.
“Your guard’s down when you don’t see the big cameras and microphones. He said a few things about a few former players, he said about me being arrogant and how we argued and he told tell me ‘do your job’ etc. He’s referring to when on the pitch we would argue, either in front of everyone at Old Trafford or in the training ground – me and him always argued.”
When asked to give an example, Ferdinand replied: “I’d be thinking ‘just shoot man’. Don’t be doing all these fancy passes, let [Paul] Scholesy and them do that. I want you to be up there, cutting edge and bang – be decisive. Wazza could score two goals in a game but not be involved in the game and he would come off with the hump.
“Because he’s a street footballer, he wants to be involved in the 90 minutes playing all the time and I used to say ‘Bruv I just want goals – I don’t care what else you do’. If the ball came up and he weren’t holding it up I’d be screaming ‘Wazza hurry up’. He would go, expletive, ‘you do your own job’ and we’d be back and forth constant but we drove each other like that.”
In the end, Rooney is sure to go down as one of United’s best ever players, becoming more of a poacher as his career went on, so perhaps he took some of Ferdinand’s advice on board.