Red: My Autobiography (15 page)

Becks is one of the United greats, but I could understand why the manager – particularly our manager, who was so used to controlling his players – was put out by the attention from the press on one player. It was time to say farewell to my best mate.

Strike!

IT WAS THE affair that earned me the nickname Red Nev, the episode which seems to get brought up as often as any of my on-field achievements. I’ll always be the one who takes the blame over the Rio strike. I’m forever to be seen as the leader of the rebellion.

‘The most hated footballer in the country’ was how the
Sun
branded me, and the strike made the front pages of every paper. It even led the
Ten o’Clock News
, so God knows what recriminations there would have been if we’d actually followed through and refused to play for England.

Would I have walked out? Would I really have refused to represent my country over someone else’s missed drugs test? I can say now that I came closer than anyone imagines.

At the height of the talks, I swear I was ready to grab my bags and leave the England hotel. I knew the consequences would be drastic. At twenty-eight, I would never play for England again. I’d be slaughtered by the media and fans up and down the country. I’d definitely become England’s most hated footballer – if I wasn’t already. But that’s how strongly I felt about it. And only one telephone call stopped me.

From the start I was convinced right was on my side – I still am. We can argue all day about the threat to go on strike, and whether that was the best way to make our point. But I still believe, passionately, that the FA badly mishandled Rio’s case and someone had to stick up for a point of principle.

At United, it was no great secret that Rio had missed a drugs test. We knew he’d screwed up and that he was due to have an FA hearing. I assumed Rio would continue playing and be given a fine and some kind of warning or suspended sentence. I assumed justice would take its natural course. How wrong I was.

It was the week of England’s final group qualifier for Euro 2004 and my dad had just picked up me and my brother to take us to Manchester airport to fly down to London to meet up with the squad when I took a call: Rio had been dropped over the drugs test. My initial reaction was that it was a joke. ‘How can they drop him? He’s not even had his hearing.’ I have been brought up with a strong sense of right and wrong, and from the start I thought this stank.

Before we reached the airport I rang the boss. ‘We’ve got to do something about this. Rio’s been left out and he hasn’t even been charged with anything.’

The boss said the matter had been discussed the previous night when the club had been urging the FA to pick Rio, but they’d got nowhere.

I rang Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the players’ union, and made exactly the same point to him. I wasn’t just going to stand aside and let the FA hang Rio out to dry.

This was never a case of trying to get Rio off the hook. He was wrong to miss the drugs test. At the very least he was daft and forgetful. He was going to get punished for it. My point – and this was what I kept hammering home – was that the FA must wait until the hearing to punish him. For me, it was a clear case of judging before the evidence had been heard. He deserved the chance to explain himself.

I don’t think Mark Palios, the chief executive of the FA, had much interest in listening to those arguments. He hadn’t been long in the job and he’d already set this agenda of cleaning up the game. I saw this as being his chance to prove that he was a strong man. He wasn’t going to back down.

At Manchester airport, Scholesy and Butty felt the same way about Rio’s position. They thought that it was a disgrace. As United players, we had been raised to stick up for each other, so that’s what we decided to do.

But this was not a case of just looking after our own. At the time, Rio was not a particularly good mate of mine. There were plenty of players in the England squad – David James, Kieron Dyer, Frank Lampard – who knew him better. I like to think I would have acted the same way whoever was in trouble, whether they played for Arsenal, Liverpool or Chelsea.

We arrived at Sopwell House and insisted that the four of us, the United lads, had a meeting with Palios. It was the first time I’d really spoken to him.

‘You’ve been a footballer,’ I told him. ‘You’ve actually been in a dressing room, you know what it’s like. You know that some lads sometimes do something silly, step a little bit out of line. What do you do, hang, draw and quarter them? Or do you think, “No, they’re entitled to a disciplinary process”?’

‘I have to do what’s right and proper,’ he kept saying, but this wasn’t law, it was just his opinion. No one except the FA seemed to think it necessary to ban Rio. Not Sven, not Uefa, nor our opponents the Turks. They all came out and said they had no objections to him playing. It was a policy decision by the FA. As far as I could see, it was about one man’s image. Having made a decision, it seemed as if Palios needed to look tough.

‘You’re being judge and fucking jury,’ I told Palios. ‘You’ve just come in here and you’ve wanted to make a point for yourself, the new sheriff in town.’

That hit a nerve and he snapped back. I reckoned there and then that he didn’t have the temperament for a big job like running the FA.

There had been a feeling that under Adam Crozier, his predecessor, it had all been a bit too carefree, particularly when it came to money. Palios was brought in to tighten the belt. He might have been a top finance man but that’s what he should have stuck to – punching numbers into a calculator. Being chief executive of the FA is about being able to manage people, to deal with a crisis – about being the front man for the biggest organisation in British sport. To me, he seemed out of his depth.

‘We’re going to go and talk to the rest of the players, but we want Rio reinstated,’ I said. ‘This is fucking out of order.’ And off I went to see Becks, the captain.

Becks called a team meeting in the hotel. Sven was there for that first one. He was supportive and said he backed what we were doing, but he didn’t want to set himself against the FA publicly, which was a disappointment. I can understand why he felt in an awkward position, but if we’d had Alex Ferguson in charge, I think Rio would have played. Sven was always a diplomat. He avoided confrontation.

So it came down to the players. I spoke for most of the meeting. ‘Look, this could be you next week,’ I said, ‘and this doesn’t just relate to missing a drugs test. This could relate to anything. If we think Rio is getting a raw deal, and I do, we’ve got to defend him.’

We were on a roll now and another meeting was demanded with Palios involving the players’ committee – Jamo, Michael Owen, Sol Campbell and Becks – as well as the lads from United.

Palios kept banging on about how ‘we never leaked this out’ and ‘we never breached Rio’s confidentiality’. And I kept replying, ‘You’re not picking this up. What part of you thinks that you wouldn’t breach his confidentiality when you left him out of the squad? You might as well have announced it on the
News at Ten
.’

Palios made it plain we weren’t going to get anywhere with negotiation, which is when we decided to go for the secret ballot on the Tuesday evening about whether to strike. Was that the clever thing to do? I don’t think anyone would ever say, ‘Yeah, that went brilliantly.’ But would I do the same thing again? I think so, and at the time I certainly couldn’t see any other way. We had to show the FA that we were serious. And we had to find out if everyone else in the squad felt as strongly as the lads from United.

We gathered in a room and tore up a sheet of A4 paper into enough pieces for ballot papers. ‘Yes’ to strike, ‘No’ to go along with Rio’s ban, with all the papers in a bucket so no one would know which way you had voted.

There were twenty-three players in the squad and there wasn’t one ‘No’. It was unanimous. So Becks and I stood there at the front and said, ‘Right, so every single one of you has voted that we’re not going to play this game unless Rio is reinstated?’ There was not a murmur.

By Wednesday morning, news of our vote was out in the papers and it was all kicking off. We were being labelled a disgrace on the front pages and during phone-ins and I sensed a few of the players wavering, now the full consequences of a strike were becoming clear. The FA was saying that we could be thrown out of Euro 2004, which was obviously putting the wind up some of the lads. The media weren’t exactly rushing to support a load of millionaires threatening to go on strike. I could sense a few players wobbling.

They had their reasons, but I didn’t want to be party to a climbdown. I’d staked my reputation on it. The situation felt unstoppable, like a runaway train. I couldn’t be sure how it was going to finish, but I felt I’d gone too far to stop now. In my mind, I couldn’t see any alternative. Unless the FA backed down I was going to have to walk out of the England camp, even though the consequences would be grave.

My brain was frazzled after all the meetings. My head was banging with the pressure. But the more I thought about it, the more I could only see one way out – through the exit. Thoughts of international retirement swirled around my head. I spoke to my dad and warned him. ‘I think I’m going to have to go. This is just wrong.’ He knows how stubborn I can be. He knew I meant it. In the privacy of my room in the team hotel I said the same to Scholesy, Butty and Phil. I was ready to leave.

And I would have gone had it not been for a telephone call from the man who has been the biggest influence on my life outside my family. Without the boss, things could have been very different.

It was just when I was on the edge of a momentous decision that he called. I was with some of the other players. ‘Go upstairs to your room, we need to have a talk,’ he said.

Once I was in my room, he got straight to the point.

‘Look, you’ve trained too hard, you’ve played too hard, you can’t throw everything away. You’ve made your point, you’ve taken it as far as you can, now you’ve got to go and play the game.’

‘Boss, it’s fucking wrong.’

‘I know that, you know that, but you can’t ruin your career over it.’

‘But I’ve gone too far with it. I can’t back down.’

‘You just need to calm down and think that your England career could be over in one hit. What effect does that have on you as a player, as a person? Does that affect United? I can’t let you do that.’

It was when the boss mentioned all these consequences for club and country that I knew the strike was over. I knew I had to back down. If I was going to be bringing pressure and massive aggravation on my own club as well as everything else I couldn’t go ahead, simple as that.

It was written at the time that Rio had talked the players round, but I think I only had one quick chat with him during the whole episode. It was the boss who stopped me gathering my kit together and walking out of the door.

There is a big part of me that wishes I had seen it through to the bitter end, but I know that the manager was doing the right thing by me. It’s hard enough being a professional footballer and staying at the top. He knew that I’d be walking into a whole new world of pain if I’d walked out on my own. I’d be associated with this one decision for the rest of my career. He didn’t want one of his senior players up to his neck in controversy.

I sat on my own for a couple of hours, reflecting on what the manager had said, acknowledging, reluctantly, that I had to follow his instructions. If I walked out now, and defied him, I’d be risking everything.

I went to see Becks and said we’d taken it as far as we could. The FA weren’t going to bring Rio back in, that was fairly obvious. With only a few days to go before the most critical game of England’s season – an automatic place at Euro 2004 was still at stake – I’d go along with the rest of the lads who wanted to back down.

We put out a statement, although even that took a lot of discussion. I’d written a version myself and passed it to Michael Owen and the committee. Michael and Becks showed it to their agent, Tony Stephens, who was desperately trying to get it watered down. I was trying to beef it up, to at least leave something on the FA and Palios.

The statement was eventually released on Wednesday evening. Part of it read:

It is our opinion that the organisation we represent has not only let down one of our teammates, but the whole of the England squad and its manager. We feel that they have failed us very badly. One of our teammates was penalised without being given the rights he is entitled to and without any charges being brought against him by the governing body of the game.

Rio Ferdinand was entitled to confidentiality and a fair hearing in front of an independent commission. We believe the people responsible for making the decision did not give Rio Ferdinand that due process and that has disrupted and made the team weaker against the wishes of the manager and the players.

If there was one line in it which I disagreed with, it was a sentence which suggested that the strike threat was a bluff: ‘In our minds, there has never been any question as to whether we would play in this game.’ That might have been true of some of the squad, perhaps even the majority, but it certainly wasn’t the case for me.

Now we had to get on with the job of trying to get a draw in Turkey to qualify for Euro 2004 knowing that the country were right on our backs, the fans were banned from travelling because of previous trouble, and that the opposition were no mugs.

To make matters worse, we trained on the Thursday morning and were shambolic. ‘I’m not sure we can win this game,’ Becks said. ‘It’s taken so much out of everybody.’ I shared his worries. The lads were dead on their feet. We’d been having meetings until late for two nights running. And when we weren’t talking, I’d been staring at the ceiling, thinking about the consequences of what we were doing.

In the end, getting out of the country was probably what we needed. Escaping that environment helped us focus on the game. We were a bit better in training on Friday, and on Saturday we produced a battling performance. I still don’t know where it came from. It was a real team effort under huge pressure. Becks missed a penalty and there was a fight in the tunnel at half-time, but we came through for a goalless draw which ranks as one of my most satisfying games for England.