#2Sides: My Autobiography (10 page)

Football’s attitude to gay players is out of tune with the rest of society. I was impressed when Thomas Hitzlsperger came out, but it would have been much more powerful if he’d come out when he was playing. I know it’s easy for us to say, but it would have been great. We often talked about it in the Manchester United changing room. We’d say ‘Listen, man, based on the polls that are done and the latest research – there must be one amongst us who’s gay. Come on. Who is it?’ It was just a laugh but the feeling that came out was always that we wouldn’t be bothered if there’s a gay man in our dressing room. I’d rather someone come out and told me this: ‘Listen, I’m gay man.’ I’m not going to not talk to him or treat him any differently. That was the common feeling even in a macho dressing room like ours: just be the person you are and don’t change and we’ll be fine with that. Whether you’re gay doesn’t bother us. As long as you’re playing football to the best of your ability, and you’re helping us win things, who cares?

My general feeling is that I don’t think someone coming out as gay would destabilise a changing room at all. What would probably happen is that if you came out and said you were gay, it would be
like coming out and saying I’ve had a hair transplant or any other personal thing – you’d get banter but nothing nasty. It would be tongue-in-cheek like when Wayne Rooney got his hair transplant. That’s how changing rooms are: it’s part and parcel of it. ‘Oh no, it’s going to rain today,’ we’d say, ‘What’s going to happen with his hair? It’s going to be everywhere … he looks like Bobby Charlton and he’s only 21.’ Anything at all that sticks out about someone becomes a thing you tease them about. When Cristiano Ronaldo wore tight jeans, we use to destroy him: ‘We can see the veins in your bollocks, 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?’

If someone announced they’re gay, I’m sure the atmosphere in the changing room would be like: ‘Do we say anything about it?’ and then I’m sure after 10 minutes someone would make a joke and it would break the ice and then everyone would just be getting on like normal. How refreshing that would be for football and everything. It would show people that we’ve all got a common goal and that is to win. It doesn’t matter what colour you are or what you’re into, if you’re gay or not, or how you want to dress, whatever you want to do in life; as long as it’s not going to get in the way of winning, it’s all fine. I’m also guessing it would free up a lot of energy that is presumably wasted in people feeling they’ve got to hide something as fundamental about themselves.

Look at Hitzlsperger. Maybe if he’d come out sooner he could have got another 15–20 per cent out of his career. If he didn’t have that stress and pressure of hiding and feeling apprehensive about showing his true feelings, you never know, he might have had 100 caps for Germany. We remember the tragedy of Justin Fashanu – but he was playing more than 30 years ago. I’d like to think being gay in football today would not affect a player’s chances in Britain in this day and age. Society has changed and football is a part of that.

People think it’s just an armband, but being a captain really is a beautiful thing. You lead your teammates out onto the field; your chest puffs out with pride. I loved the role and it was an unbelievable responsibility and privilege to be captain of Manchester United and England. You think of some of the great players who’ve gone before you.

I just wish I could have done it a bit more often. In one case I felt uncomfortable about doing it at all. At Leeds, when I was 22, I felt very awkward when David O’Leary gave me the job. It was the way he handled it: Lucas Radebe was captain when I arrived; he was a top respected player, a top respected man and a great fella at the club. But he’d also had a lot of injuries. I’d only been at the club a couple of months when the manager pulled me out of the physio room. I found myself standing in the corridor with him and Lucas was there as well. O’Leary went: ‘Rio um … Rio, I’m going to make you captain.’ Dropping a thing like that on my toes right in front of Lucas! I didn’t know what to say. Lucas was typically gracious. He smiled and said, ‘Rio, you’re the man, and you’re the
one to lead the club now. I want you to be the captain.’ I just stood there. I said ‘Sorry, man … I didn’t want … I didn’t expect it to be like this …’ I was embarrassed.

Leeds had a special parking space for the captain. But I didn’t want to use it because I felt it was out of order. It became quite a thing. Some of the lads hammered me over it. When I arrived each morning guys like Lee Bowyer, Gary Kelly, Jonathan Woodgate, Michael Duberry and Robbie Keane would be standing there doing a commentary: ‘Will he do it today? Is he going to park there? He is …. He is … He
isn’t
!’ At lunchtime, if I went up first for food, some of them would go: ‘Lucas, to the back! You’re nothing now.’ The lads made it uncomfortable. But it was funny too. Then one day Lucas came to me and said, ‘Rio, just park there, please. I want you to park there. You deserve it. You’re the captain now.’ And eventually I did.

But later, there were times with England and Man United when I thought I should have been captain and it didn’t happen. I can hardly be bitter about it, though; everyone has their disappointments, moments in their career where they feel undervalued. No one has a right to be captain and my attitude was always the same: as long as I’m playing and I’m winning how can I moan? With England we didn’t actually win any honours, but to be captain of your country is a massive honour in itself. I was devastated when I finally got my opportunity to lead the team at the World Cup in South Africa and I got injured; I felt as if it had been snatched away from me.

I was disappointed, though, when I was overlooked by Fabio Capello at the beginning of his time in charge. I felt the way he handled it was almost guaranteed to upset someone. He kind of put me, Steven Gerrard and John Terry on trial, giving us a match each to see how we coped, then finally picked John. It would’ve been far
better if he had just come in and said, ‘He’s captain.’ Bang. That’s it. Or if he had asked the players, or taken an anonymous vote. I didn’t see what he could have learnt from those three games. The problem for me was that you couldn’t help get your hopes up and then get disappointed. It’s one of the biggest things in football. So I was gutted. But I made sure I didn’t let it affect my demeanour around the camp; I just got on with things.

At Manchester United there were times when I thought I could or should have been captain – but the hardest moment was when I actually was. It was the day we won the league on the last day of the season at Wigan in 2008: I’d been acting captain all season because Gary Neville had been injured for a long time. We won the game 2–0 and it was a fantastic feeling. Just after the match but before we went out for the silverware, I was sitting in the changing room when the manager comes to me and says, ‘Ah, can you … um … let Ryan Giggs pick up the trophy?’ My heart just sank, and I was like, ‘Oh no … this is a childhood dream!’

The most important thing is winning, of course. But to do it as captain puts the icing on top. I didn’t say that, of course; I just said ‘Yeah, no problem. It’s fine. Great. Go. No worries.’ I understand why Sir Alex did it. Giggsy had won the league for … I don’t know … the trillionth time. I think it was his tenth one. So it was a landmark moment for him. But I was thinking: ‘Fucking hell, man … this is only like my third or fourth one. And how many more times am I going to get the chance to lift it as captain?’ (None, as it turned out.)

So it was a bittersweet moment. Perhaps Sir Alex was thinking ‘Rio doesn’t need this so much because he’s going to be around for a long time and win a few more of these.’ But you never know what’s around the corner. Over the next year, whenever I saw Giggsy with the trophy on the Sky match-day programme credits I
thought: ‘I might never get a moment like that.’ I carried on being captain for a couple of years while Gary Neville was out with his injury problems. But when Gary retired I started getting injury problems of my own and the captaincy passed me by. My mate Vida got the gig and did a great job.

Giggsy never said a word about Wigan until, in the programme for my testimonial game, he acknowledged I’d given up that moment for him and he said he appreciated it. I appreciated what he said and it softened the blow. In any case, I can’t complain too much; I got to lift the Champion’s League trophy in Moscow a few weeks later and the Club World Cup Championship the following season. I’ve never been one to disgruntle my teammates; the well-being of the team is always more important than how you feel as an individual.

Just before Manchester United sacked David Moyes, I heard a journalist on the radio try to explain the crisis. There had been loads of discussion all over press, TV and social media, most of it ill-informed. But this explanation struck me as particularly bizarre because of the guy’s tone. He was talking as if he was speaking the gospel truth – and at least half of what he was saying was complete bollocks!

‘The club is not going to make the decision until Thursday … the players won’t play for the manager any more … they’ve started calling him “eff-off”…’

What
? As I listened I thought: Where
are
you getting this rubbish information?

On television the same week Roy Keane told the world the players had ‘let the manager down.’ I thought: ‘Who do you know at Manchester United these days? Tell me! Who do you know? Who do you talk to? You left years ago!’

Other people even claimed we deliberately played badly through the season to get the manager sacked. Crazy! Maybe journalists think: ‘I don’t fancy this editor geezer so I’m deliberately going to
to write rubbish this weekend … and he’ll get the blame!’ But I don’t know any players who’d ever down tools like that. At United it would be unimaginable to even think it. We were going to give 100 per cent for whoever became manager after Fergie, because that’s the only way we know; we want to win, so we’ll give the boss everything.

I was actually very optimistic when David Moyes arrived. Sir Alex was a great leader of people, and brilliant at judging people’s character. Naturally, we all trusted his judgment. I think he identified with David Moyes purely on human qualities – and he was right. As a human being I think David Moyes is close to perfect. I like him: he’s a real nice fellow, a genuine guy. His desire to succeed, his work ethic, his integrity are all fantastic. He’s honest, trustworthy and passionate, and I totally see why Sir Alex warmed to him. Moyes was never going to be some fly-by-night manager who’d leave when it suited him; if he’d been successful he’d have stayed as long as the club wanted.

No one could have worked harder: Moyes was always the first one into the training ground and the last to leave. He is a true football man; he tried his best, and I can see why he got the opportunity. He’d proved himself at Everton; he consolidated them as a consistent top half of the Premier League team. But getting that opportunity and taking that opportunity are two different things.

Moyes never solved some of the football problems he faced. He brought ideas and tactics, which had worked for him at Everton, but didn’t adapt to the expectations and traditions of Manchester United. He 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.

I think he was entitled to bring some of his staff from Everton
but it was an absolute mistake not to keep United stalwarts like Mick 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. But I have to stress, we all wanted to work with him and do well for him. It wasn’t like Brian Clough going to Leeds and pissing off all the players by telling them to stick their medals in the bin. It was nothing like that!

It wasn’t even that Moyes made one big mistake; it was an accumulation of mistakes. He slowly lost us. I didn’t enjoy playing under him: long before the end, I’d decided to leave the club if he was going to stay. But I found it all fascinating. I learnt a huge amount. It made me appreciate a lot of things about Fergie I’d taken for granted. If I ever become a manager the experience of my last season at United will stand me in good stead.

The league table never lies. In 2012–13 we won the league by 11 points. I was so proud; I’d come back from my injury problems, had one of my best-ever seasons and was picked for the PFA [Professional Footballers Association] team of the year. Under David Moyes I suddenly found myself out of the team and we finished seventh, 22 points behind City. I can see why the new man wanted to put his own stamp on things. But if it ain’t broke…

A lot of the time it felt as if he was just rubbing our fur the wrong way.

Like with the chips. Footballers are creatures of habit, and for as long as I can remember at Manchester 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. We were
fit, had self-discipline and looked after ourselves diet-wise. 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 pissed off. And guess what happened after Moyes left and Ryan Giggs took over for the last four games of the season? 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 fucking chips back.’

Here’s another tiny thing we were irritated by: the pre-match walk. Moyes had us going for 10-minute walks together the morning of a game. We’d never done it before; no one enjoyed it and no one liked it. He never asked us about it. Maybe it’s what he did at Everton, but we were all going: ‘
Why
are we doing this? What’s the point?’ It wasn’t helping us at all; we were only doing it for him.

I know some people will think we’re being prima donnas about these sort of things. They think: ‘Fucking footballers! All that money! What have they got to complain about?’ But that’s not how it works. If you’re not in a team environment, you won’t understand that a lot of what we do is a question of habit and feeling comfortable. You want to feel good with your surroundings. 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: when you feel good in your working environment you tend to work better. You’re more relaxed. In the end the product is better.

A much bigger problem was his approach to tactics. Moyes obviously wanted us to change our style … but we were never quite sure what he wanted to change it to.

While we were on our pre-season Asian 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, David Pegg, Charlie Mitten, Billy Meredith … That’s quite a long tradition there!’ More to the point, what he was saying went totally against what any of the players here were used to. Playing 4–2–2–2 would mean revamping a big chunk of the squad which was built around wingers who were not the best at coming inside. We didn’t play well in the pre-season games, but we never really play well pre-season. Our form usually kicks in around Christmas and January so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. I want him to do well because that means I’ll do well and we’ll have more success.

But somehow his 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. There wasn’t a strategy behind it; or, if there was, he never explained it to us well enough. Instead of enjoying these games, you’d hear the attackers moaning: ‘I hate this fucking two-touch …’ It went against the grain of how we played. It was especially bad for the forwards who liked to practise their skills and shots and movements; they felt restricted. It didn’t even have much to do with the way Moyes tried to get us to play. Even
I
was moaning about it and I’m a defender: 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 personality or imagination.

There was also the business of preparing to defend set pieces. It wasn’t something we’d ever spent much time on before. Fergie’s approach was always to focus on the other team’s weaknesses. We expected to win every game and he’d say things like ‘They’re rubbish in this area … this is how we’re going to destroy them.’ For years we were one of the best teams at not conceding goals from corners and free kicks. Very occasionally, if a team had a special play, we’d do something on that. With Rory Delap’s long throw-ins at Stoke, for example, Fergie would set us up and ask us, ‘Are you comfortable with this?’ Usually I’d mark Peter Crouch and leave Vida free to attack the ball. Or, if it went over Vida, I’d come and attack it. Just simple little things like that. For most games Fergie would leave the defending to us. We had it
down
: our method was simple, effective and something we always felt very secure about.

Yet with Moyes it was always how to stop the other side, and he was worried about other teams’ corners and free kicks. 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. But our defensive record definitely did not improve. There was so much attention to the subject it suddenly became a worry: they must be fucking 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 every game. Apart from ‘Don’t lose’ I never thought Moyes had a philosophy he 100 per cent believed in and said ‘Right, this is how we’re going to play.’ Did he want to carry on with Fergie’s style or teach us his own style? Would we use wingers or keep things tight and play
percentages? We never knew. I don’t even think he knew or, if he did, he never communicated it to us well enough.

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 actually play for us! The whole approach was alien and we didn’t even win the game.

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 fucking cares? I’d rather score five goals from ten passes! There came a point where I was thinking: ‘Do you actually want us to win, because if you’re going to keep changing things it’s obviously going to reduce your chances of winning.’

Why was he trying to change us anyway? We can’t be too bad: we won the league by 11 points a few months ago! If I were you, I’d just get a couple of trophies under my belt first before trying to change everything. That would make a bit more sense.

At the beginning of the season Moyes told me: ‘I want to go for experienced players.’ After about eight games, we weren’t playing particularly well, he said: ‘OK, I’m going to have a look at the youngsters.’ That’s fair enough. If I was a young player, I’d want old guys out of the team as quick as possible too. But he overdid it. I suddenly went from being one of the best centre-backs in the league to not even travelling with the team and all the defenders were confused. A lot was made up about Moyes using Jagielka as an example to me and other defenders, but that never happened at all!

‘If you’re under any sort of pressure I want you to make sure you’ve always got that ball out to the side,’ he told us. ‘I don’t want you to take any risks.’

He was bringing the mentality of a smaller club. I never had the feeling Moyes knew how to speak like a Man United manager. You’d pick up the paper and see him saying unbelievable things like we ‘aspire’ to be like Man City or Liverpool were ‘favourites’ against us. If you want to survive, he’s right: don’t take risks. But this wasn’t Everton; it was Man United. We don’t want to
survive
. We want to
win
. Of course, when you’re in your own box, you don’t take risks. But when you’re on the halfway line or in the opponents’ half risks do need to be taken sometimes, especially tight, high-level games, if you’re going to win.

It was as if he had no confidence in our abilities. Generally, with all due respect, the players at Man United are at a higher level than those at Everton. But we had the feeling he didn’t trust us to execute things on the field. Even for me the feeling was: he doesn’t trust me, he doesn’t believe in me. No wonder players weren’t going out and producing.

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 fuck 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. Remember, we’re all professionals so want to do what our manager is asking us to do; we want to please him; we want him to take us on and make us champions again. Whatever he says, we’ll do.

In September, after Man City beat us 4–1 he called me and Vida 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 and I had the feeling he just wanted to cut the whole 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.