#2Sides: My Autobiography (3 page)

I played with a lot of fine players but I have to say my best
defensive partner was Nemanja Vidić. One of the things that brought us together was that we were both highly competitive and determined to be the best. We shared a lot of ideas and ideals. He’d had a hard time when he first arrived. He came mid-season and people were saying: ‘who is this guy? He’s not ready to play for Man United.’ He had a lot to prove over his first year or so. It was a big step up coming from the Russian league, to training against the likes of Rooney, Saha and Van Nistelrooy. Physically he wasn’t ready and he didn’t know the game in England at all. At first, he didn’t look cut out for it physically. But he got in the gym, bulked up a bit, watched the game and learnt quickly. And over time he became the great player he is. He was always tough, and he worked out how to play in England. Tackles and challenges that we let go in the Premier League would be fouls in Europe and Russia, so he just needed time to get his head around it.

As partners we complemented each other perfectly. But it’s hard to explain why. It was an instinctive thing. Defenders need to be able to
smell
danger. He smelled one type of danger, I smelled a different type of danger, and then we’d just work off each other’s instincts. Somehow I always knew exactly what he was going to do, and he knew exactly what I was going to do so we dovetailed. Some relationships on the pitch are easy to explain, and you can go and talk about them and go into detail. But they’re the ones that don’t flow naturally. My partnership with Vida was very natural, it just kind of happened.

Part of defending is one-to-one duels. The other part is being aware of the shape around you. If you’ve got 11 players all winning their duels around the pitch, then you’ve got a chance. But you’ve got to be set up in the right way to win your duels. So it’s a bit of both, really. I used to think: ‘As long as I’m beating my two strikers, or the one striker and the number ten behind him, as long
as they think I’m too strong and too quick, and too bright and too switched-on for them, we’ve got a chance of winning.’ And that’s what me and Vida used to say to each other: ‘if we do our job, we keep a clean sheet, we’ll win this game.’

Some time after Ben Foster left Manchester United he gave an interview saying he couldn’t understand the club or the players. One of the things that seemed to bother him was what happened after we won the Carling Cup against Spurs. Ben was in goal that day, played really well and was named man of the match after we won on penalties. But we barely celebrated and he didn’t get to enjoy it as he might have done. You see, our minds immediately switched to the next important match. We had a big league game coming at Newcastle, and then a Champions League second leg against Inter. So, great, we won the cup. We had pictures taken out on the pitch, and then we came in and behaved much like we would after any normal game of football. ‘What’s next?’ The cup was sitting in the corner somewhere and no one took much notice of it. It seems Ben was upset by this. In retrospect it was one of the big, special days of his career but it passed him by a bit.

Looking back, I can understand a little how he felt because now I realise we never did much celebrating of
any
of our triumphs. If you’d asked me at the time, I’d have said Ben should have been thinking, ‘I’m going to be here for another five years and I’m going to have loads more moments like this and I’ll enjoy them once I’ve retired.’ Now I think: You know what? I wish we’d taken the time to enjoy that a bit more. On the other hand, maybe that attitude of never being too pleased with ourselves was part of the secret of winning. In that case, we didn’t just want to win the Carling Cup. We wanted to win the Premier League, the Champions League, everything. That was always the mentality. It’s how we trained. Intensity was always really high. It was relentless. We played to win every game and were never satisfied.

A key part of it, I think, was that we never stood back to pat ourselves on the back. A lot of that came from the manager, but it was in the players too.

How many cups and titles and trophies did we win? I lost count. How many victory parades did we have? I can only remember one before we won the league in Fergie’s last season. And by then I was able to appreciate it more than at other times because I’d fought back from injury and knew I probably wouldn’t have too many more occasions like that. So I relished it. But the previous times, we never really dwelt on our achievement or soaked them up. We’d win the league and immediately think: Right. Onto the next one. Next season, what are we doing? I fancy us next year.

That’s not how it is with other clubs. Burnley come second in the Championship and get promoted to Premier League. What do they do? They celebrate with an open-top bus victory parade to the town hall! Arsenal beat Hull City and win the FA Cup – their first trophy in nearly ten years. What do they do? Organise an
open-top bus tour! Manchester City win the league – they do an open-top bus tour!

In my 12 years at United it just wasn’t something we did. Like winning the league wasn’t that big a deal. Yeah, of course we won the league, we usually do, it’s normal. ‘But shouldn’t we have a parade?’

‘Nah, we’re not doing that again. It costs more than a hundred grand and we’re only going to have to do it all again next year.’

That seemed to be the club’s attitude. We really didn’t enjoy things the way we should have done. But we did keep winning.

I remember when we came back from winning the Champions League in Moscow there were just a couple of hundred people waiting at the airport. We got off the plane, had some pictures taken and then it was basically: ‘Cheers, see you later. See you in pre-season.’ And that was it! No open-top bus tour! If any other club just won the Premier League and the Champions League they’d at least hire a bus! Most other cities would close down and party for a day or two!

I only really started noticing the difference when other teams started doing it. Chelsea won the league, and I’m thinking, fucking hell, look how good that looks! I was jealous. Manchester City and Chelsea doing an open-top parade … How the fuck do they think they’re entitled to do that? These moments are special, things don’t last forever, and we should have done more of that.

But it was part and parcel of the winning state of mind Fergie created at the club. I remember Robin van Persie loving that. He told me that at Arsenal you
wanted
to win, but at United you
had
to win. It was a big difference. And it’s something I really loved too when I first arrived. It was great to feed off that United mentality because I’d always had some of that attitude myself but
I’d never before been in a team capable of winning consistently. Sometimes people misread my state of mind on the pitch. I’ve never shown a lot of emotion – until we win. That’s when you see me explode with relief and joy and you see me screaming and pumping my fists. It’s not so much a feeling of satisfaction. It’s more like a feeling of relief … And then you move onto the next thing.

Growing up, my Mum and Dad ingrained their work ethic into me. Dad worked so hard; he’d work Saturday nights and Sundays and Mum worked all hours looking after other people’s kids. But I’m not sure where my idea of always wanting to be the
best
came from. It wasn’t just in football: in everything I did I wanted to be the best, and the best I could be. We used to race at school all the time and I’d notice there were people who were quick but would say ‘nah, I don’t want to race today.’ Looking back, I realise they didn’t really have a competitive edge; they were never going to be sports people. But if there was a race to be had, even if I thought I might not win, I’d always want to see if I could improve, get faster, get closer to the front. I used to run in my socks because I thought that was faster and my Mum would see the holes and say, ‘What’s going on? You’re wearing through your socks like there’s no tomorrow,’ and I was like ‘Yeah, Mum, but I’m getting
faster
.’ I always had that edge. And I always played football against kids older than me so I had to work harder.

I remember an incident at school when we played in the Metropolitan Police five-a-sides and our goalkeeper was shit. He wasn’t actually even our goalkeeper because our real goalkeeper hadn’t turned up, and this kid took his place and let in a crucial goal that meant we got beat in one of the group games. And I remember going crazy hammering him. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I shouted, ‘You can’t even save a goal, you’re
rubbish
, I can’t believe
it. Next time, put someone else in goal. If you can’t do it get out.’ He started crying.

I said, ‘Why you crying man? You baby, you’re a baby, you’re a baby.’ My Dad had to come over and say, ‘Rio, what’s wrong with you? Calm down.’

I really enjoyed my time at West Ham and Leeds but I never tasted anything near success. When I came to Manchester United, I just bought immediately into the mentality of winning a game and then moving onto the next one until you get to the final hurdle which is winning the trophy … and that’s when you enjoy it. But the whole process is strictly business: don’t take your eye off the ball, don’t look too far ahead, don’t look back. If you haven’t got that element of nastiness, that single-mindedness, that will to win at all costs, if you’ve not got that, then Manchester United isn’t the place for you.

I’m not sure why, but the team that reached its peak in 2008, hasn’t quite had the recognition it deserves. In terms of statistics, it’s the most successful period the club ever had. Three Champions League finals in four years, back to back League titles, three on the bounce and it should have been four … it’s quite a record! I remember a few of the lads talked about it not long ago and the consensus was that we hadn’t yet got the credit we deserved for what we achieved over eight or nine years. In time I think people will probably look back and say, ‘you know what? That was a hell of a team.’

Actually, I was part of three teams. The first was with Ruud van Nistelrooy, Veron, Beckham, Nicky Butt, Roy Keane, Giggs. Then it evolved and we had a transitional period where we didn’t win the League for a couple of years. Then they all left, bar Giggsy and we had a new team with Vidić, Evra, Rooney and Ronaldo, Tevez, and we started winning again. Then you add Carrick, Fletcher,
O’Shea. And then there’s the last team with Nani, and Danny Welbeck, Tom Cleverley, Ashley Young, Kagawa, Chicarito and then we won the league again with Robin van Persie.

If you put our 2008 team up against any team in the history of Man United, I think we’d win. We’d overrun any of them, and we had magic in Ronaldo the other teams just couldn’t stop. The ’99 Treble winners were great but they didn’t have a game-changer like Ronaldo. Think what we had. Up front: Ronaldo and Rooney with Carlos Tevez backing them up. Not bad, eh? In midfield Carrick, Scholes and Owen Hargreaves, and the incredible running of Ji-Sung Park with Nani to come in when you need him. At the back Gary Neville or Wes Brown at right back, me and Vida in the middle, Patrice Evra left back and the great Edwin van der Sar in goal. I don’t care what anyone says. That team ain’t getting touched!

I’m too young to have seen the ’68 team or anything before that, but I reckon we were stronger than anything the club has had going back to the 80s. Older guys can debate about the great teams of the past but we’d have given anyone problems. And not just the old United teams. I think we’d have been too quick for the great Liverpool teams of the 80s and 70s. We’d have had too much firepower for the best Arsenal sides, though their 2004 ‘Invincibles’ would have been our toughest game, because they were a strong, physical, quick, and intelligent side, and in Thierry Henry they had a guy who could create something from nothing.

And has any English team had a winning mentality quite like ours? I was lucky to join and learn from a group of players who knew what it took to win the league, how to make sure you didn’t drop points at places like Bolton and Southampton. Guys like Keane, Beckham, Giggs, Scholes and Gary Neville weren’t fazed by anything. They approached vital matches without nerves. They
made even the biggest occasions feel like just another game. The approach was always: calm, cool, relaxed, focused, clear-headed. Always prepare the same way. Don’t get involved with nerves or extra shouting. Never get carried away by hype or emotion. Never think: ‘we’ve got to win this match to win the league’. Just go out, get your three points, be normal.

The collapse of Liverpool when they should have won the league in 2014 was a perfect example of how not to do it. You can’t blame them for getting emotional over the Hillsborough anniversary. It’s an emotional club with some of the most emotional fans in the country. I understand that very well because United have the tragedy of Munich and United’s fans are incredibly emotional, too. But you saw what happened after the 25th anniversary of the disaster. The Liverpool players seemed to get caught up in the heightened feelings. They started treating each game as something absolutely out of the ordinary, as the be-all and end-all of their careers almost, as the chance to ‘make history’… So they stopped playing their normal game and they ended up dropping points they wouldn’t normally have dropped. In the famous game against Crystal Palace, when they let in three late goals to draw 3-3, you saw them getting agitated and nervous and losing control of the situation. As soon as Palace scored one goal, Liverpool’s positive mentality evaporated and it felt like they were suddenly facing an avalanche. They were looking at each other as if to say, ‘what should we do? What happens next?’

You need to know how to win – and how to keep doing it.

Going back to Ben Foster and that League Cup final, he was thinking ‘come on, let’s just enjoy this a bit’, while the rest of us were thinking: let’s get onto the next thing, it’s just the League Cup, we’ve got other things to win this year …

Win. Win. Win. Just win. If you can’t buy into that, then, sorry, you’re not going to be there very long. Ben Foster, unfortunately for him, wasn’t at Manchester United very long. Some people might see that as nutty but for me it’s just a way of life.

Fergie set the tone; we took our cue from him. When we beat Chelsea in Moscow, it didn’t feel like we’d achieved what we set out to achieve. Not at all. It wasn’t Matt Busby closing a chapter ten years after Munich. It wasn’t Bill Shankly going into the Celtic dressing room after they won the European Cup and telling Jock Stein: ‘you’re immortal now.’ Within about an hour of us lifting the trophy, the gaffer was saying: ‘Right, next season … let’s make sure we’re back here next season.’ It wasn’t: ‘OK that’s finished.’ It was all about winning again. Then winning more. Then some more.

When I was at United we won six league titles, but in my mind it should have been eight or nine. In 2004 we were damaged by my long ban for missing the drug test. When I came out of the team we were three points ahead of Arsenal. If I’d been able to play the whole season, we could’ve won that year. In 2010 we lost by one point to Chelsea – but Drogba’s winning goal at our place a few weeks earlier was offside.

As for losing on goal difference to City in 2012 … how did that happen? At almost the end of the last day of the season, we’d won at Sunderland and City were losing 2–1 to QPR in injury time. It was in the bag. How did QPR
not
hold out in the last couple of minutes? I later found out that their goalkeeping coach Kevin Hitchcock came onto the side of the pitch and was shouting ‘We’re safe! We’re safe!’ meaning results had gone their way and they weren’t getting relegated. To me, that suggests they downed tools. They wouldn’t have been thinking consciously about affecting our game. I just think it’s a natural thing after being under so much
pressure – they felt relief and relaxed in the last couple of minutes. And that’s why what happened happened.

Meanwhile, we were waiting on the pitch at Sunderland. One minute we’re thinking ‘We’ve won because they’ve got to score two goals in the last minute,’ I’m shouting on the sidelines, ‘What’s the score? What’s the score?’ I’m thinking: there’s no way City can score two, we must win now! All of a sudden you hear the Sunderland fans cheering. And you think ‘OK, they got one, but surely they can’t get another one.’ Then the Sunderland fans go again and we’re all looking around at each other thinking: ‘Are they winding us up?’ City can’t have scored two goals in a minute. And you can’t do anything about it. You just walk off the pitch numb. You think, fuck me, what’s gone on here? It was just unbelievable. We’d had a bad time at Sunderland before: the year before, or a couple of years before, sewage pipes broke in our changing room and the ceiling fell in and there was shit all over everyone’s clothes … and then we lose the league up there and their fans are cheering for us losing.