ManU thread 14/15

[chygry]

They'd never sell him for 50m. That's David Luiz money in pounds. I hope you're talking in euros.

Now the real question is, for how long can Ronaldo play at this level? I'm not saying there's no point to sign one of the best players in the world because he's nearing 30. He does rely quite heavily on his pace, but i don't need to get into describing his other qualities. Waste of time.

Also he'd be looking to get higher wages than he's getting at Madrid at the moment after tax. So that would be quite costly as well. There's this 50% thing in England and 25% in Spain. How much goes for taxes. You know what i'm talking about anyway.

But i'd like a world class defender first. We're stacked in attack right now. LLL....

 

[adedawson]

Rio's been very open... no wonder moyes failed.

Rio on the manager that didn't fit in at Man Utd
MOST of the problems with Moyes seemed to come together for the match that effectively ended our season.
Travelling to Bayern Munich (in the Champions League, having being dumped out of all of the domestic competitions) I was desperate to play and I knew I must be in the team — but on the morning of the game everything seemed wrong.
To practise our set pieces and stuff we went to a public park. It was bizarre! Local people started coming from all over to watch us and take photos and videos.
It was amateurish. I mean, why not just send Bayern an email or a DVD? But worse was to come.
As we’re standing there in public on this bit of grass, the manager just taps me on the shoulder and says: “Rio, listen, I’m not going to play you. I feel we need a bit more pace in the back line.”
It killed me. Inside I wanted to scream and grab him. I’m a team player, so I just had to bite my tongue and stand there. But it was probably the worst single moment I ever had at United.
I’d never been dropped for a big a game like that — and to drop that on me in front of everybody.
Several teammates told me later that my reaction was something they’d never seen from me before.
I went into a daze and even took my anger onto the coach as we waited for him to finish set pieces with the first 11.
I’d never shown my feelings like that in front of my teammates so openly before.
I knew my time at United was coming to an end.
Not being involved in the game, at least I had the chance to watch how it all went wrong.
Sir Alex Ferguson used to give simple, concise, clear instructions.
But before the game, Moyes said that depending how Bayern played, we could use three formations!
He’d let the lads know which one when the game got underway. Danny Welbeck was going to play on the right... or it could be on the left... or behind.
Shinji Kagawa was definitely going to play behind, or the left...
We lost and 13 days later Moyes was sacked — although it wasn’t done in a dignified way, with rumours circulating for almost two days before putting him out of his misery.
I had been very optimistic when he arrived. He was a genuine guy and no one could have worked harder.
He was always the first into the training ground and the last to leave.
He had tried to impose a vision but never seemed to be completely clear what that vision should be.
Unintentionally, he created a negative vibe where, with Fergie, it had always been positive.
He’d slowly lost us. I didn’t enjoy playing under him — long before the end, I’d decided to leave if he was going to stay.
But it wasn’t that Moyes had made one big mistake, it was an accumulation of mistakes.
The ban on chips
Footballers are creatures of habit and for as long as I can remember at United, it was a ritual that we had low-fat chips the night before a game. We loved our chips.
But Moyes comes in and, after his first week, he says we can’t have chips any more.
We weren’t eating badly. In fact, you’d struggle to find a more professional bunch of players than the ones at Manchester United in the summer of 2013.
Then suddenly, for no good reason we could see, it was “no chips”. It’s not something to go to the barricades over. But all the lads were p***ed off.
And guess what happened after Moyes left and Ryan Giggs took over?
Moyes has been gone about 20 minutes, we’re on the bikes warming up for the first training session without him and one of the lads says: “You know what? We’ve got to get onto Giggsy.
“We’ve got to get him to get us our f***ing chips back.”
The pre-match walk Moyes had us going for ten-minute walks together the morning of a game.
We’d never done it before, no one enjoyed it and no one liked it.
I know some people will think we’re being prima donnas but a lot of what we do in a team environment is a question of habit and feeling comfortable.
When lots of little things start changing it’s destabilising.
It doesn’t matter if you are a footballer or working behind a machine in a factory.
Cutting our wings off
A bigger problem was his approach to tactics. Moyes obviously wanted us to change our style... but we weren’t sure what he wanted to change it to.
On our pre-season tour he told me and a couple of others that he wanted us to play a narrow 4–2–2–2 with the wide players coming inside.
I remember thinking: “Have you not read up on this club’s history? This club was built on wingers. It only goes back about 100 years!”
Cristiano Ronaldo, David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, Steve Coppell, Willie Morgan, George Best... that’s quite a tradition.
Changing practices
Moyes’ innovations mostly led to negativity and confusion.
Under Fergie, for example, before a game on a Saturday we always played a small-sided match on a small pitch on the Friday.
We loved it.
We’d get into the mood for the following day by expressing ourselves, having fun, trying stuff out.
You got your touch right, experimented, got the feeling flowing.
We’d done that for years and suddenly — again for no good reason — Moyes changed it by making us play two-touch.
It was especially bad for the forwards who liked to practise their skills and shots and movements. They felt restricted.
You’d come off the pitch feeling blocked, frustrated, like you hadn’t had a chance to express yourself.
We complained but nothing changed. Then people wondered why we looked cramped and played without imagination.
Trying not to lose For years we were one of the best teams at not conceding goals. Fergie’s approach was to focus on the opposition’s weakness.
Yet with Moyes it was always how to stop the other side.
Before every game, he made a point of showing us videos of how dangerous the other team could be.
On the morning of a game we’d spend half an hour on the training ground, drilling to stop them.
There was so much attention to the subject it suddenly became a worry — they must be f***ing good at this to have us spend all this time on it.
That was the different mentality — Moyes set us up not to lose whereas we’d been accustomed to playing to win.
Losing support I think Moyes was entitled to bring some of his staff from Everton but it was an absolute mistake not to keep United stalwarts like the first team coach Mike Phelan, who knew all the quirks and sensitivities of the players.
It meant Moyes missed a lot of the subtleties about players and the culture of United.
Making us cross
The biggest confusion was over how he wanted us to move the ball forward.
Often he told us to play it long. Some players felt they kicked the ball long more than at any time in their career.
Sometimes our main tactic was the long, high, diagonal cross. It was embarrassing.
In one home game against Fulham we had 81 crosses! I was thinking, why are we doing this? Andy Carroll doesn’t play for us!
The whole approach was alien. Other times Moyes wanted lots of passing.
He’d say: “Today I want us to have 600 passes in the game. Last week it was only 400.”
Who cares? I’d rather score five goals from ten passes!
Small club mentality
Moyes brought the mentality of a smaller club. I never had the feeling Moyes knew how to speak like a Manchester United manager.
You’d pick up the paper and see him saying things like “we aspire to be like Man City” or Liverpool were favourites against us.
But this wasn’t Everton, it was Manchester United. We don’t want to survive. We want to win.
Rio Ferdinand's book Ace's new book It was as if he had no confidence in our abilities.
We doubted everything
The mixed messages were even worse. Sometimes he’d say, “I want you to pass the ball.”
Other days it was: “I don’t want you to pass the ball.”
What the f*** do you want us to do, man?
In the pool you heard a lot of guys complaining: “I just don’t know what he wants.”
He had me doubting everything.
In September, after Man City beat us 4–1, he called me and Vida (Nemanja Vidic) into a meeting with the video analysis guy.
“I want to show you a few things,” said the manager.
He had about 15 clips to show us but we never got past clip five.
We talked for about 40 minutes and came out none the wiser. It got pretty heated.
In one instance, Moyes said: “You could have been tighter on Sergio Aguero... ”
I pointed out he was the quickest player in the league, so if they’ve got players good enough to put the ball anywhere they want, going ultra-tight was asking for trouble.
Maybe he had a good point but he never got it across.
Me and Vida came out of there and looked at each other.
“I don’t know what the f*** he just asked us to do,” I said.
Avoiding confrontation
I had the feeling Moyes just wanted to cut the whole video meeting short because he didn’t like confrontation.
That was another difference. Fergie would dig out anyone if he felt it would improve the team — but bad feeling would never be allowed to fester.
Players left in the cold
A part of the art of being United manager is to rotate your squad and keep everyone happy.
At Everton and other clubs below the very top you’ve only probably got 13 players in the squad who believe they should be playing every week, based on their ability.
But at Manchester United you’ve got 22 to 25 internationals who have won titles and cups and they all believe they should start.
Take Chicharito (Javier Hernandez), he was happy for three years.
Moyes starts treating him differently and his confidence goes.
You need to give players the arm around the shoulder.
Players live to play and we feel disappointed and hurt if we’re not picked.
Looking back, I’d say David Moyes was unlucky. He and Manchester United were just oil and water somehow.
His ideas weren’t bad in themselves, they just didn’t fit with the group of players and the tradition and recent history of the club.

 

[adedawson]

more

John Terry and the race row
I NEVER truly spoke out about the incident where John Terry called my brother “a f****** black c***”. We were advised not to by our lawyers.
Instead I watched as the court case that followed damaged football and race relations in Britain, while my brother Anton, the innocent party in all this, had his career damaged and was subjected to death threats.
There were bullets in the post, and unending racist abuse.
My mum had her windows smashed and bullets put through her door, and ended up in hospital with a virus because of the stress.
I’ve always felt not speaking out was wrong, because the legal and football authorities made mistakes all the way through and I regret not saying so at the time.
But, for me, the biggest idiot will always be John Terry.
As England captain and my centre back partner he could have saved everyone a lot of pain by admitting immediately that he had used the words in the heat of the moment, but was no racist.
I think that’s probably what happened and what the truth is. Anton and I would’ve accepted that — instead he never gave us the chance.
I’ve never actually spoken to John about the case.
I no longer talk to him, but even three years later I find it impossible to forgive or forget the pain he put my family through.
We played 30 or 40 games for England together. We’d competed against each other for years.
We weren’t best mates but we were football buddies. Yet he just sat there and watched as my brother went through all that because of his stupidity.
That was the betrayal. He tried to run away from what he’d done.
He allowed that to ruin friendships: him and me, me and Ashley Cole... all gone to waste.
I did think there was always an edge to John, but we got on OK.
He certainly never showed himself to me to be racist.
But from the very beginning he handled the situation badly.
He should have just simply rung my brother and said, “I’m sorry, man. I said it. But I ain’t a racist. If I could take it back I would.”
I’d have thought: “You know what? He’s a stand-up guy. I’ll shake his hand.”
I’d have told him: “I think you’re a p***k for saying it, but you’ve actually come and manned up.”
I’d probably have got hammered — people would have said I was a sell-out for even shaking his hand and accepting his apology, although I wouldn’t have cared.
But John was never man enough to say any of those things.
His “apology” only came nearly a year later in September 2012, after an FA disciplinary panel found him guilty of “using abusive and/or insulting words and/or behaviour” and imposed a four-match ban and a £220,000 fine.
John still maintained his innocence. It was only two weeks later that he issued an apology of sorts “to everyone”, saying that while he was “disappointed” by the FA’s decision “with the benefit of hindsight my language was clearly not an appropriate reaction to the situation for someone in my position.”
But he never apologised to me or Anton and has never hinted he has had a moment of understanding over the damage his stupidity had inflicted on everyone.
With all the uncertainty and bad feeling, my England career was wrecked. John’s lurched on until it, too, hit the buffers.
Strange as it might sound though, I would’ve been happy to play for England alongside him. I’ve played with people I didn’t like for years. There were some at Manchester United I wouldn’t go for a drink with, call or text. But I played with them.
You’re professional about it. If a person can help me win, I’ll play with him, no problem.
John and I would have had a working relationship, and it would have been fine. But no one ever asked. I found that pretty extraordinary because I’d let it be known. People around the club would ask: “Would you play with him?” and I’d say: “Yeah. I ain’t got a problem.”
The England coach Roy Hodgson should have at least asked: “Could you play with John Terry?”
If I said “No,” then, OK, one of us is out of the equation. They can pick the other. But that conversation never took place!
It could all have been handled much better. Over the past few years I never showed my hand over it because I didn’t want people to see I was feeling bad. People think I’m happy-go-lucky and if they asked how I was feeling I would go: “I’m alright, man. I’m cool.”
Then they’d go: “But don’t you think John Terry is a better player than you?” That s*** hurt. I want to play for my country and I should have had 100 caps. The irony was that eventually, when my back problems cleared up and I was playing really well, a clamour started to get me back for England.
Then, at the very last minute, just before Euro 2012, Roy says he wants me in the squad!
That was another case of bad communication — and bad timing.
I was sorting the injury with injections. I had to schedule those and I’d chosen the international break since I was no longer being picked for England. I had to say “No” to Roy because of my treatment. People said I rejected England but that wasn’t the case at all.
The only thing my family wanted out of the John Terry affair was to get people talking about racism — in a thoughtful rather than antagonistic way.
And we never attacked John Terry. We never said he was this or that. Never! That’s why I couldn’t understand why there was so much hatred directed at us.
At the time Chelsea seemed to have no thought beyond wanting to keep their captain in action.
Their fans seemed to think Anton grassed on John. But Anton didn’t grass on anyone! He has always made it clear he hadn’t heard the words on the pitch.

 

[adedawson]

more

CHANGING rooms are full of banter - it’s part and parcel of the atmosphere.
At Manchester United it is the same as anywhere.
Like when Wayne Rooney had his hair weave. We’d been teasing him saying: “He looks like Bobby Charlton and he’s only 21.”
We would be in the changing room fretting. “Oh no, it’s going to rain today. What’s going to happen with his hair? It’s going to be everywhere.”
Anything at all that sticks out about someone becomes a thing you tease them over.
When Cristiano Ronaldo wore tight jeans we used to destroy him: “We can see the veins in your b******s, what’s going on?”
But he would laugh and come back and say: “You English guys don’t know fashion, what are you talking about?”
Sometimes it helps people toughen up and some of the Old Trafford youngsters need that.
Last season I was told that one of them had cried in front of the manager. I asked what the matter was. “I thought I was going to play today,” he explained. I reminded him he was 19 and told him to stop crying like a little baby.
Getting angry about not getting picked, fair enough.
But crying to the manager about not getting picked, that’s mad.
Some kids need to keep their feet on the ground, stay humble. Growing up I had to sweep floors, clean toilets and earn privileges. Young players today get them automatically.
For example, first-team changing rooms used to be no-go zones for any young player. You had to really prove yourself before you went in there.
Nowadays it’s almost nothing.
Adnan Januzaj was in the United changing room from day one, as it was completely normal.
It’s not his fault. He didn’t know there used to be all these little staging posts during a long career. You used to have to climb the ladder slowly.
Money has also created problems with young players in the game. Some are paid so much they think they’ve made it before they’ve got off the bloody training pitch — a lot of young players just want to be rich.
It’s a hard mentality for me to get my head round. For me, the game was always about glory and achieving things as a player.
Sir Alex, of course, was never one to tiptoe around an issue, even confronting senior players.
I remember Ronaldo getting emotional after one game.
When we played Benfica in Lisbon he thought he had to prove to people in Portugal why he’d gone to United. The game became the “Ronaldo show”. He was trying to show his skills and nothing was coming off.
We lost and afterwards the manager absolutely destroyed him. “Playing by yourself? Who the hell do you think you are?”
Ferguson was brave to do that. He knew Ronaldo at that time was the key to us winning anything. If we were going to be successful and dominant he had to be in top condition.
A lot of managers would have been scared of taking him on. I never saw England managers hammering David Beckham like that, or Stevie Gerrard, or Frank Lampard, or Wayne Rooney.
But Ferguson would go for anyone. It didn’t matter if you were the main man.
Gary Neville might have let the ball run under his foot and conceded a throw-in, so we’d come in and Ferguson would muller him. “You’ve been playing for 15 years at a top level and you can’t even control the ball.”
Or he’d say to Giggsy: “You gave the ball away so much in that half.” Giggsy probably wouldn’t have given the ball away any more than anyone else, but as he was the most experienced player, it made everyone else think, “I could be next, I’d better stay on my toes”.
We took Fergie for granted, but now I see he was a genius.
I really didn’t appreciate just how brilliant he was.
It was a mixture of things. He was a master of psychology, knew how to get the best out of every player and created an unstoppable winning mentality.
One of his other principles was to give us freedom to express ourselves. He finished most of his team talks with: “Now go out and enjoy yourselves!” It was never “Do this, do that” because that can take away a player’s flair.
He gave people the confidence to try things and didn’t mind if you made mistakes if you were trying the right things.
There was always a balance between discipline and giving us freedom, but at the same time every player had to adapt to the general pattern of play which was rooted in Manchester United’s history as a team known for exciting, attacking football.
He also had other skills. In the middle of the John Terry court case my mum Janice fell ill when I was in Manchester. He sent Mum flowers and spoke to her on the phone. That’s the touch he’s got. Mum would call me and tell me about it and be so moved. It really gave her a boost.
He probably didn’t even know how much that meant.
Still, I had a good and bad relationship with him. I could be fiery and quite vocal and it didn’t go down well sometimes.
John Terry
Three months after the John Terry court case the anti-rascim group Kick it Out organised a weekend with players wearing a T-shirt saying “One Game, One Community”. There wasn’t a chance of me wearing it.
The group had refused to come to the courtroom with us, so I wasn’t willing to go through the charade of wearing their shirt. My parents probably wouldn’t have spoken to me if I had.
The gaffer exploded.
“Who do you fucking think you are? Not wearing that fucking shirt? I’ve told everyone yesterday you’re wearing it. You’re fucking meant to wear it. F***ing going out and doing your own thing — who do you think you are?”
I said: “You didn’t ask me. I was never going to wear that T-shirt. I didn’t tell you to go on TV and speak about it.”
“That’s it,” came the reply. “You’re fined a week’s wages.”
The next day I had to go and see him in his office and I was expecting both barrels. I went in with my hard hat on. He sat down. I didn’t even sit down. He said: ‘Listen, I know it’s your family, but I just don’t agree with you not wearing the T-shirt. You’ve got to support campaigns like this... I’m a union man.”
I told him: “Yeah, but, boss, you never spoke to me about it. You never understood my situation.” Then he amazed me. He said: “Listen, I spoke to my wife last night and she said to me, ‘Did you ask the boy about it?’. I said no. And she said, ‘There’s your mistake there’.”
He told me that!
Then he said: “I don’t often admit mistakes. I’m not going to fine you. I should have spoken to you. That’s my mistake and I accept that. I still believe you should have worn it, but I respect that you didn’t.”
I was so impressed. My respect for him just went up even more. I think he respected me a little bit more, because I had a belief and I’d stuck to it, even when there was so much pressure on it.

Rio on: Winning
LOOKING back, I realise we never did much celebrating of any of our triumphs at Man Utd.
How many cups and titles did we win? I lost count. But I can only remember one victory parade before we won the league in Fergie’s last season. We really didn’t enjoy things the way we should’ve done. But we kept winning.
I only really started noticing the difference when other teams started doing it.
Manchester City and Chelsea doing an open-top parade... “How the f*** do they think they’re entitled to do that?”
Rio on: In-fighting
WHEN I went to Man Utd people were clashing all the time.
Cristiano Ronaldo and Ruud van Nistelrooy practically came to blows. Ruud even took a swing at me once.
He kicked Ronaldo in training then I kicked him. He tried to swing at me, I leaned back out of the way and said: “Swing at me like that, make sure you f***ing hit me next time.”
We’d laugh about it later.
Rio on: Dress sense
SIGNING for Man Utd was one of the best days of my life – I had to make a bit of a statement.
So I wore an off-white, pinstripe, linen suit, left. It’s gone down as one of the worst ever.
During this year’s World Cup I wore a double-breasted suit on telly. I got hammered for looking like an airline pilot.

 

[adedawson]

All the stuff on john terry is quite the eye opener.

 

[adedawson]

More, On England...

Rio gives verdict on his England bosses
“PLAYING for your country is the greatest thing you can do as a footballer.
For me, to play for England in the 2002 World Cup against Brazil’s Rivaldo and Ronaldo, the best players in the world at that time, was a dream.
All my friends and family were there. I could hear Mum shouting “Rio, Rio” and I knew my dad, brothers, sisters and my girlfriend Rebecca were all in the stadium and, well, it just all got too much for me.
As the national anthem played, I started welling up.
But most of my experiences were tinged with the feeling that we could have been doing much better.
We never seem to be quite good enough as a team and as individual players, we never produce enough moments of brilliance and we’ve never found the right formula for the players we’ve had.
It’s frustrating after nearly 50 years of hurt.
Here are my impressions of the England managers I played under.”
Glenn Hoddle
BY far the best England manager. I was lucky enough to work with him in the late 1990s, when I was still a teenager.
He had a crystal clear vision of how he wanted us to play and how to get us there.
I still think it was a tragedy for us when he was sacked.
If he’d stayed I would have been a different player – and a better player – for England.
Hoddle encouraged me to come out with the ball and sometimes even played me as a sweeper.
I also loved his imaginative training methods.
He’d talk to me about skills I’d done and encourage me to do more.
He would say: “Try things. Don’t worry about making mistakes. That’s not a problem, as long as you don’t make the same ones over and over.”
By 1998 the team was starting to take shape.
Young players were coming through and we were on the cusp of getting really good.
Then he got sacked.
It killed us and I don’t think we’ve ever recovered.
Ever since, I’ve been hoping someone would come in and continue what he started – but it has never happened.
Howard Wilkinson
HOWARD WILKINSON took charge for a couple of games and that was just bizarre.
He was like a school teacher or an Army sergeant.
He had us out doing set pieces the morning of the game in a field next to the hotel.
All he wanted to talk about was set pieces.
“Set pieces win games,” he’d announce, then he’d tell us the percentage of games won by set pieces and... well, I’m afraid he lost me completely.
Kevin Keegan
COMING up to Euro 2000, he said: “Rio, I’m not going to take you. I don’t think you’ve got the experience.”
Then he took Gareth Barry, who was younger than me!
Even more ridiculous was that he said: “If you were Italian, or Brazilian, or French you’d have 30 caps by now.”
I thought, ‘That’s the World Champions, the European Champions and one of the best teams in the world ... but I can’t get in the England squad’.
Sven-Goran Eriksson
I THINK Sven was a bit over-awed by David Beckham.
If truth be known, he was a bit too much of a Beckham fan.
But still, he was a genuinely nice fellow.
I remember one time Wayne Rooney and I were on the massage table just after the story came out about Sven’s relationship with Faria Alam.
The TV was on and as we’re lying there, Faria Alam appears on the screen.
I was going: “Look at her! I bet he was throwing her all over the gaff!”
All of a sudden I notice it’s very quiet and Sven, standing behind me, goes: “Well, it wasn’t quite like that.”
He then starts to laugh, says “goodnight” and walks out.
I’m lying there thinking: “Oh God, what have I done?” while all the lads are cracking up.
But that’s what Sven was like, he made everyone feel comfortable.
He had a good, human side which created a nice atmosphere and we always wanted to play for him.
Steve McClaren
STEVE McLAREN was a much better coach than people gave him credit for.
It’s actually quite hard to say why things went wrong with him and we failed to qualify for Euro 2008.
One problem, I think, was he was just too pally with the players.
There wasn’t that distance you normally get between manager and players.
He’d call John Terry “JT” and Frank Lampard “Lamps”, and play two-touch with us during training.
A lot of the squad saw that not as weakness, exactly, but as something strange.
Stuff just seemed to go wrong, like in Croatia when the ball bobbled and went under (goalkeeper) Paul Robinson’s foot.
That was hardly the manager’s fault!
The truth is that we just didn’t play particularly well throughout that qualifying tournament and the players have to take a lot of the blame for that.
We didn’t perform. It’s as simple as that.
Fabio Capello
CAPELLO was the manager who disappointed me the most.
Don Fabio, who was appointed in 2008, came to us with a sky-high reputation and I couldn’t wait.
But he brought in a prison-camp mentality. What a let-down! With Capello you have to just do what you’re told or you’re out.
We had expected ideas and creativity. Instead, Capello’s attitude was, ‘I’m the boss and you’ll do what I say all day, every day’.
There was never much warmth. He seemed to need to show us how strong and disciplinarian he could be and was so aggressive sometimes it was just ridiculous.
I know people back home were expecting us to win the World Cup but that was ridiculous. There was no chance of doing anything.
Tactically, we were all over the place.
One thing Capello did get right, though, was when he talked about the England shirt weighing heavy on some players.
I’ve been on the bus after a game and heard senior players worrying: “Oh no, that’s going to be four for me in the paper tomorrow.”
You laugh but when you get to your room you think, “That’s an England player saying that! How are we going to have a chance of winning if he’s thinking like that?”
Roy Hodgson
HISTORY may judge that Hodgson’s most lasting achievement was to lower expectations of the national team to a more modest and manageable level.
Then again, modesty isn’t really the point of international football.
My relationship with him never really recovered from the incident in October 2012, when he got chatting to passengers on a Tube train in London and casually mentioned that my England career had reached “the end of the road”.
He apologised after the story appeared in the papers but it was so disrespectful.
Later I felt he mishandled the issue of my possible return after injury and the relationship with John Terry.
In relation to the England team, none of that would have mattered if Hodgson had managed to get us playing well.
But he didn’t.
At Euro 2012 I felt he under-used exciting younger players and was too defensive in his tactics.
Watching Italy’s Andrea Pirlo take us apart with a passing masterclass in the quarter final, the thought occurred to me that if he’d been English, Hodgson and other England bosses might never even have picked him.

 

[yoyo913]

That's interesting about Glenn Hoddle. But it might be a case of him being an impressionable teenager. If Hoddle managed England when Rio was in his 30s maybe he wouldn't hold the same opinion.

 

[Sir Didier Drogba]

If you pick Rio you are a good manager if you dont pick Rio you are a bad manager if you pick and flatter Rio you are world class..... according to Rio. Who gives a fuck what Rio has to say?

 

[Pogba4Now]

If you pick Rio you are a good manager if you dont pick Rio you are a bad manager if you pick and flatter Rio you are world class..... according to Rio. Who gives a fuck what Rio has to say?

Well it is his autobiography therefore it is his opinion, not necessarily the general consensus. But he did reveal quite a lot about what was happening in the dressing room.

 

[Pogba4Now]

Thqnks for posting that Mr. Dawson. Great read

 

[chygry]

Looks like Nani scored his first goal for Sporting in the Champions League. Apparently had a good game too.

 

[Filipower]

So did Porto and Benfica legend Zahovic's son.

 

[chygry]

So did Porto and Benfica legend Zahovic's son.

Just watched it. Well the Sporting defender who assisted him should be awarded with a medal. Brilliant defending. 90th minute too.

 

[MaSsiVe]

With the adequate soundtrack: https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=830117190404112

 

[Pogba4Now]

Looks like Nani scored his first goal for Sporting in the Champions League. Apparently had a good game too.

He scored many of these left footed shots for us. I miss these.

I hope he continues this way so that we can sell him for a better price than a bag of peanuts.

 

[Pogba4Now]

Angel Di Maria and Radamel Falcao are watching the TV at home while Nani is scoring in the Champions League.

 

[Xifio]

that's nothing new for Falcao ...

 

[Mus]

 

[Sir Didier Drogba]

Well it is his autobiography therefore it is his opinion, not necessarily the general consensus. But he did reveal quite a lot about what was happening in the dressing room.

a good player he may have been but Rio Ferdinand is a stain on football, personally if he thinks a manager was nasty to him I say good for that manager.

 

[Pogba4Now]

a good player he may have been but Rio Ferdinand is a stain on football, personally if he thinks a manager was nasty to him I say good for that manager.

I am sure most of the first team players did not get along with him. Let's wait when other players' autobiographies are out.