Rio Ferdinand--Five Star--The Biography (6 page)

Adams helped counsel Rio and showed a real concern that the teenager might fall victim to the sort of temptations that landed him in jail for drink-driving. ‘Rio is very much a reflection of me. I fear for him,’ he said at the time. ‘I fear for what this whole business can do to him. If he is in touch with what is good and what is bad then he has a chance to correct it and walk away. Rio does seem to have his feet on the ground but you don’t know what’s going on internally, do you? You can only see outside but you don’t know what is really going on. I can only tell him how it was for me – he’s got to help himself. If he wants to use what I am telling him then he does have to go the way I
did. He is a great player and a confident player. He just needs to watch and learn how other players cope.’

Rio did penance at Bisham Abbey while the rest of the squad prepared for the World Cup qualifying game against Moldova at Wembley. With the death of Princess Diana still heavily on the nation’s mind, Hoddle continued to struggle to motivate his players. ‘It will be a difficult, emotional evening but it is an opportunity to lift the nation,’ he said at the time. ‘The three points are, in many ways, secondary; such a tragedy reminds us it is only a game of football. But she was a very professional lady and we have to be professional.’

Hoddle insisted that Rio’s exclusion from the team would have occurred regardless of Diana’s death at the hands of an apparently drunk chauffeur. He said: ‘With an 18-year-old going to court on the day he was joining up with the squad, I had no option. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have slept well at night. At that age we feel that they need to learn a lesson. It is a signal to any young player.’

So, Rio’s chance to be his country’s second-youngest player ever had been dashed. It was a cruel reminder to all up-and-coming young players about their future conduct. Rio knew that he now had to fight his way back into Glenn Hoddle’s good books, even though that anguish was alleviated to a certain extent by the boss’s decision to allow Rio to stay with the England squad.

FA Chairman Keith Wiseman reckoned that Rio’s punishment following his drink-driving offence was a credit to Hoddle’s style of management: ‘This will give Rio food for thought. It will be a lesson learned and he should realise the decision was made for his own good.’ Furthermore, the FA denied that Princess Diana’s death was a factor in the decision not to let Rio play against
Moldova. ‘Rio’s case has nothing to do with this,’ said Wiseman. ‘Glenn Hoddle has certain standards and he expects them to be adhered to. Rio overstepped the mark, he made a silly mistake.’

And Hoddle left the door wide open for Rio when he said: ‘I am not saying that he won’t play for England in the future. He hasn’t robbed a bank and he hasn’t killed anyone but between Harry Redknapp and myself we will see how he reacts to what’s happened.’

Rio’s well-meaning West Ham teammate John Hartson then unintentionally added fuel to the fire by telling one reporter: ‘We have all done it. There but for the grace of God … Rio’s bad luck was to be caught. I feel sorry he has discovered so early in his career how easy it is to slip from the heights. Rio’s punishment is such a painful one – to be left out by England on the eve of his debut – that the lesson will rub off on us all. I can declare hand on heart that what happened to Rio means I’ll never take even one drink and drive.’

But Hartson’s remark to the newspaper reporter – ‘We have all done it’ – raised a few emotional issues with Harry Redknapp. Only seven years earlier the West Ham boss had lost his best friend in a drink-driving accident. Thirty miles south of Rome during the 1990 World Cup, a bus in which the two men were travelling was hit by a drunk driver.

Now Redknapp found himself facing one of his brightest young protégés knowing that he had flouted the law. Redknapp was honest enough to acknowledge his own culpability and that knocking back a few lagers in the players’ bar was seen as the professional norm. As he explained: ‘We must educate young players. Why should they want to get loads of drink down them when it leads to doing silly things and getting into trouble?’

Redknapp also had no hesitation in saying: ‘Rio has been a silly boy, made a big mistake, and now must take his punishment. Glenn Hoddle has my 100 per cent support. We talk to our young professionals at West Ham about the dangers of drink. The days of pouring a crate of lager down their necks after every game are gone. But Rio is basically a sensible boy and I am confident this will just be an unfortunate incident on his path to the top.’

And Redknapp’s assistant, Frank Lampard senior, caught the mood perfectly when he reflected thus: ‘Rio’s a class footballer and he’s had lots of good publicity so far this season. But life isn’t always smooth. Sometimes it’s how you handle the bumps that count. It’s up to Rio to come back even stronger. I’m sure he’s got the character to handle the situation and recover from it.’

The club’s managing director, Peter Storrie, stated: ‘The player deeply regrets his actions. He is very young, he has made a mistake and has paid a high price.’

And Redknapp added: ‘Rio is a level-headed lad. I cannot see this hiccup taking him out of his stride. I will be very surprised if he does not emerge stronger. As with a serious injury, the way a player can face up to adversity has a lot to do with overcoming the problem. I have no worries on that score about Rio.’

Rio’s arrest certainly proved that times were changing. West Ham immediately banned alcohol from the players’ bar. And Redknapp made a point of letting everyone know: ‘I enjoy a drink myself, but I always get a taxi. You can’t tell me that footballers these days don’t earn enough money to catch a cab home. If they can’t, there’s something wrong with them. It’s got to be done the professional way from now on. It’s our responsibility to educate the kids from as young as 11 and 12 to know how wrong it is. Just
think of the advantages, the rewards they can throw away.

‘Young lads these days have got to look after themselves because the best players in this country are earning the same money as the best Italians are earning and their attitude is they would never drink before or after a game – a glass of wine at most. If they were caught drinking more, it would shame them, their families and their clubs, so they just don’t do it. I’m not becoming a Holy Joe. I like a drink and enjoy a bet. But players now are getting such tremendous rewards that they must be seen to look after themselves so that they can play to the very best of their ability.

‘I remember when Kenny Dalglish signed my son Jamie from Bournemouth six years ago, we were talking and he felt there was a problem at Liverpool he would have to deal with. It was just not acceptable to him that players could go out and have a few beers and think it was all right.’

Meanwhile the Professional Footballers Association, no less, was insisting that drinking and driving was not rife among footballers. PFA chairman Gordon Taylor said: ‘I couldn’t agree that it’s widespread. I just find that these days there is more awareness than ever.’

Being kicked in the teeth shook Rio up, but now he saw it positively because he realised that when you are in the public eye you can’t do things and get away with it like an everyday person. In some ways the incident was a blessing in disguise because it made him stand up and realise that as a professional footballer he had to keep himself in order. It wasn’t as if he was doing seriously bad things off the pitch, but after what happened he understood he had to be careful what he did where he went and who he was seen with.

As Rio later explained: ‘It jerked my mind to say to my
friends, I can’t afford to take chances because if I get caught it’s me not them who is going to look the mug. I still go to clubs occasionally but people shouldn’t get the wrong impression. Sure, I got caught out, but the truth is I’m not really a drinker. I prefer to dance.’

However, behind the loyal accolades there were many serious issues at stake. It was rumoured that Rio might miss out on a mind-blowing payday because his five-year deal at Upton Park included some very special incentive bonuses. One of them related to full international caps – and was worth up to £500,000 if he became an England regular.

Now he waited with bated breath to see if he would be included in the next England squad for the crucial World Cup decider against Italy in Rome the following month. There was little doubt that if England did qualify for France ’98 it would leave him with a mountainous task to force his way back into the squad.

Rio’s arrest also sparked a big debate about the pressures being faced by the nation’s young sporting stars. Glenn Hoddle believed that drugs were as big if not a bigger threat than alcohol – and Rio came from a culture where drugs and drug dealers were predominant. As one of his oldest friends told this author: ‘It’s a miracle that Rio didn’t get mixed up with drugs when he was a kid on the Friary Estate. Drugs are everywhere, being offered on street corners. Drug addicts live in rundown flats on the estate. It’s impossible not to be exposed to them.’

Hoddle poured out his fears in one newspaper interview: ‘For thirty years players finished a match and then went down the pub for fourteen pints of lager. But that was in the sixties and seventies. Today we have to change the philosophy with better habits and eating differently. But it’s
much harder these days, with players having so high a profile. They’ve got to change their attitudes.’ He said he genuinely feared that drugs such as cocaine, cannabis and LSD might prove too tempting for some young stars. ‘There is no reason to say don’t drink. But don’t overdo it. Don’t drink excessively. What concerns me is drugs. That’s a much bigger and more dangerous issue than a tipple after the game.’

But the harsh reality was that the harder people tried to deal with the issue of drugs in sport – especially football – the worse the problem became. Many believed that a comprehensive testing programme was the only answer. Evidence accumulated by the Centre for Research into Sport and Society at the University of Leicester seemed to confirm that football had the biggest drug problem of all. The 1997–8 season saw three high-profile positive drug tests – Shane Nicholson of West Bromwich Albion, Dean Jones of Barnsley and Jamie Stuart of Charlton – plus a host of rumours about the use of cocaine before, during and after Premiership games.

Using drugs to enhance performances is almost as old as football itself. Back in the 1920s, the Arsenal side used pep pills to provide what they thought would be extra punch and stamina in their match against West Ham. But the pills left the players so thirsty and out of breath that they stopped using them after that.

Actual drug testing was first introduced during the 1966 World Cup Finals in England. And ever since then the FA has been taking considerable steps towards achieving a foolproof way of detecting drugs. Many believe that footballers get involved with drugs because, the argument goes, the rewards are so high that they are tempted to try anything to get to the top. Drugs appeal because they are a
short cut to success, but this is not something that truly relates to football. It seems more likely that recreational drugs are used as a form of relaxation away from the playing fields and stadiums. Not one of 28 positive drug tests in recent years was for anabolic steroids.

Down in Bournemouth, Rio’s one-time, albeit temporary, boss Mel Machin insisted to the world that the teenager would bounce back following his arrest. He even predicted that, despite the setback, Rio would be an England regular within a year. His assessment was: ‘Rio’s a very decent, level-headed lad with an old head on his young shoulders. He was still 17 when I took him on loan, but he was 17 going on 37! When it comes to young players, he’s the best I’ve ever seen – and that’s saying something. When I was at Manchester City I had Andy Hinchcliffe and David White, who went on to play for England, plus Paul Lake, who would have done so, too, if he hadn’t been so unlucky with injuries. I said when I had him that he was a certainty to play for England. After his experience this season, I expect him to do that within the next 12 months. After all, there’s no substitute for class …’

Rio was determined to take his punishment like a man and still make it to the top. He’d learned his lesson. Nothing would stop him being the greatest. Rio had been the brightest star to ever emerge from Peckham – a place where few make it out of the ghetto. Many saw him as a genuine ‘diamond geezer’ in the shadowy backstreets of south London. Rio had the world at his feet – and his call-up for England should have proved that.

Just a few days before his arrest, he’d even told one reporter: ‘Some of the kids I used to hang around with at my old school in Peckham ended up inside for doing some
really silly things. Thankfully I’ve always had my football to concentrate on, otherwise I could have ended up like that. Fortunately I’ve had my family and friends around me to ensure I keep my feet firmly on the ground.’

Then he got arrested. Suddenly the road for Rio was no longer paved with gold. He’d hit a serious pothole, just as he stood on the edge of making football history. How could he succumb after seeing what had happened to so many of his contemporaries? Some had even been kicked out of football clubs because of their encounters with the long arm of the law.

Even Dave Goodwin, who ran the Blackheath and District Schools League side in which Rio was in a class apart, was tracked down by one intrepid reporter after Rio’s arrest. The coach said: ‘I’m deeply saddened and shocked by all this. Those who know Rio will tell you, without exception, that this incident is so out of character it is quite beyond belief. You can be sure his friends and family will rally round and support him and ensure that he learns from this experience.’

Goodwin said that Rio’s arrest was ‘a real shame’, but he confirmed it was nothing in comparison with what had happened to some of Rio’s other teammates when he was a youngster. ‘At least a couple of them had their apprenticeships cut short at pro clubs because of misbehaviour. It’s all very sad, but sometimes an inevitable consequence of living in an area like south-east London.’