#2Sides: My Autobiography (16 page)

It’s the 2010 World Cup and I’m living the dream. All my injury worries are behind me. I’m feeling good, I’m feeling fit and I’m going into the biggest tournament on earth as captain of my country. It’s our very first training session in Rustenburg and everything is going fine until the ball comes in and I go for it with Emile Heskey. It’s an innocuous challenge and not Emile’s fault, but as we go down, all his weight somehow falls on to my left knee. I remember shouting out at the time and Gary Lewin, the physio, runs over. I said: ‘My knee, it doesn’t feel right.’

In the ambulance on the way to the hospital, with the searing pain tearing through me, only one thing was going through my mind: that my World Cup might be over before it had even started. I asked the doctor if I’m going to be alright. ‘I can’t tell,’ was his reply. ‘If it’s your ligaments, then you might not.’ I began to cry. The first aid guy was looking at me in a funny way. As I get out on crutches, he says ‘Can I have your shirt?’ I just stare at him. How could anybody be stupid enough to ask me a question like that at a time like this?

I’m in pieces, waiting for my scan and trying not to cry anymore. Then all of a sudden the double doors open and a guy
comes through completely smashed up, loads of blood everywhere. He’s just had a car crash. That was the moment I accepted my situation. I just sat there and thought, ‘You know what? I’ve got to start smiling, man, because compared to this guy I’m fine.’ That gave me the sense of perspective I needed and I accepted the injury. It’s not meant to be, so what can I do? A short while later the scan confirmed it. I’d strained my ligaments and it was going to take a month or two to heal. I thought, ‘Well, that’s it. I’d better move on.’ And that
was
it. My World Cup was over but another world was about to open up for me.

I needed to get away so we rented a villa in Marrakech. I took my family, my agent Jamie and some of my other mates including Jody Morris. There was this new internet thing called Twitter which had started about eight months before in America and a few celebrities and sports stars there were into it. I thought, yeah, OK, maybe I’ll just have a little dip into this … and … flipping hell! It was a revelation! I loved it! At first I thought it might just be a nice way to feel involved in the World Cup. But when I got back home it became a big thing for me in its own right. It enabled me to connect directly with fans. I’d had a pretty frustrating relationship with the media for years because the tabloids insisted on portraying me as someone I barely recognised. According to them, I was a party animal whose only interests in life were red carpets, movie premieres and
bling
. I thought: why are they saying these things about me? They don’t even know me.

Through Twitter I was able to show my real personality and real life. I started tweeting little snippets of my days. Even something simple like ‘I’m doing the school run on the way to training’ would get a reaction.
Really? Haven’t you got a chauffeur to take the kids to school?
Er, no.

‘I’m going to London on the train.’
You mean you don’t have your own private jet or go by helicopter?
Er, no.

I’d tweet something from the train and people would go: ‘
Where are your bodyguards?
’ Why would I need bodyguards? People have some pretty odd ideas about footballers’ lives. Yeah, I really do wake up in the morning and go to work. I fix the kids’ supper with our missus. I do the ironing every now and again.

Twitter also helped change the attitude of some of the United fans. I’d had quite a frosty relationship with some of them because a few years before I’d not signed a new contract immediately. It was normal for these negotiations to take a while: Roy Keane had taken a year; Becks more than a year. We’d only been talking for a couple of months when suddenly fans were telling me to sign the contract immediately. They reckoned the club had stuck by me when I had my ban. It was a fair point; but I had no intention of leaving United and negotiating details on any contract is normal, so why the fuss?

Unfortunately, in the middle of this, I was pictured at a table with Pini Zahavi, my agent at the time, and Peter Kenyon, the Chelsea chief executive. I only bumped into him because I’d popped into the restaurant to see Pini for ten minutes. It was totally innocent. But someone took a picture and it went in the paper and it was made to look as if I was talking about going to Chelsea. The reaction of some of the fans was ridiculous! One night a big group of them came round my house wearing hoodies and baseball caps demanding to know why I hadn’t signed a new contract. After a game at Charlton, as I walked off the pitch, they were bloody booing me! They were shouting ‘Sign your contract! Boo! Go away! Until you sign your contract we don’t want to talk to you.’ My Dad was in the stand that day and almost got into a fight with a couple of fans over it.

I felt the fans hadn’t even tried to understand what was going on and some of them carried on resenting me for a couple of years. They said I should be grateful to United. But people have to take the emotion out and understand that the game has become a business. Yes, it’s a dream to play for Manchester United, but at the same time, United is commercially the biggest football club in the world, and the players have to be commercial too. Fans talk about loyalty and sentiment but it works both ways. If the clubs were loyal and sentimental to their players, then the players would be like that with the club. Yes, United supported me when I was 24, but how much of that was sentiment, and how much was it because I was seen as a valuable asset? They certainly weren’t sentimental about dispensing with my services when I was 35. I don’t think United fans would question my loyalty now. I was always a 100 per cent committed to the club. If I’d had my way I’d have stayed until they had to carry me out. But that’s not how the game works these days.

Being on Twitter has been amazing for me and has allowed me to connect directly with fans to avoid any misleading stories or rumors. At the time of writing I have about 5.7 million Twitter followers, and where United was once suspicious of this new medium, they’ve also embraced it in a big way themselves. I like to think I was a bit of a pioneer in the field! The manager used to worry that it might be a distraction from my football – but I was always totally clear it wasn’t and never would be … and I think I proved that. I only ever did social media stuff in down time – in hotels before games, for example, or while travelling. In fact it was opposite – it’s brought me a lot of joy and helped me with my football.

If we’d had social media when I was a kid, it would have been my dream to go on and be able to see what John Barnes got up to
and to ask him how he trained and how he became such a good dribbler. Twitter allows fans to get that bit closer to the players. I know some players have their agent or their manager do their Twitter or social media accounts for them. But I think fans are cute enough to spot that. I write every one of my tweets myself and just try to give as much of a real account of what’s going on as possible. I think that’s why my relationship with fans has improved over the last four years. These days people judge me more from what they see on social media than what they read in the press.

The great thing about it is that it’s a kind of giant never-ending conversation. It’s not just me making pronouncements to the world – it’s the interactions that are the most fun. I don’t do direct messaging, but I’ve done loads of ‘Q&As’ and competitions where I’d let people win Xboxes or bigger prizes, such as a car or a box at an Usher concert. I love the interaction: every time I hit a landmark figure, like getting to 1 million or 2 million, I’d give away holidays. It was a way of giving something back to the fans. You have to remember Manchester United is a phenomenon all over the world and social media is a world wide platform too, so I’d be chatting to people from Africa, Indonesia – everywhere.

Plus there’s loads of banter. It’s like you get to actually chat with the fans who are shouting stuff from the stands during a match. But some of it gets quite mad. If you haven’t got a thick skin, then, basically, don’t go on Twitter. When you’re playing well and your team is playing well, it’s unbelievable and thoroughly enjoyable. You can take the mick out of people and it’s sweetness and light. But – wow – if you’re not doing well or the team hasn’t done well, or you made a mistake … well, it’s a hard place to be! It’s a fickle world. There’s loads of abuse and it can be a real confidence sapper. To be honest with you, when we lose, I’ve been known to give Twitter a miss for a couple of days!

Then again, fans are entitled to have their say. They care about their team, and they pay their good, hard-earned money to come to games and voice their opinions. That’s part and parcel of the game these days. In the good times, they support you and they’re unbelievable fans and in the bad times they can make you feel a lot worse than you should. But that’s fine. It’s an emotional game and people should express those emotions.

I know exactly how fans feel because I’m an armchair fan myself when I watch rugby or boxing or even when I watch football. I can assure you the game is a lot easier from the stands. You’re thinking: ‘He should have been there … how has he not seen that pass?’ I do it too, and it’s part of the fun. But, trust me, it’s a lot tougher down on the pitch.

Social media is a bit of a double-edged sword: you’ve got to be able to take abuse and accept it because if you retaliate or say something, you get fined. Actually, I think players should be allowed to come back and say a few things as long as you’re not being vindictive or swearing or anything like that. It should be like it is in the changing room: if you dish it out you should be able to take it. If some geezer is absolutely hammering you for ages it would be nice to be able to shut him up a bit.

There are rules, however; the FA want players to be role models but the psychology is complicated. If some of the keyboard warriors who attack you all the time actually ran into you down the pub or walking in the street, they’d be the first to ask for an autograph or a picture. I think they insult you just to get a reaction. It’s safer to have spats and banter with celebrities like Piers Morgan. He’s an Arsenal fan and they weren’t doing well for years so we used to cane him all the time. He’s a bit of a fair weather fan too, so when it’s going well, it’s ‘oh brilliant’ and when it’s going bad he wants Wenger ‘out’. But it’s all good knockabout stuff.

One thing that emerges is that some people don’t seem to see us as human beings. They think of footballers as machines – and they make the excuse that they can do this because we earn lots of money. Football has always been a working-class game but because players are paid much more than 20 or 30 years ago, some people see us as no longer being working class. Some feel that gives them the right to abuse us. You get people who obviously think: ‘You’ve escaped, but I haven’t, so you’re a fair target to vent my anger on.’ I can tell you that the sort of people who dish out abuse would crumble if they were in our position. Their skin wouldn’t be thick enough; they wouldn’t have the personality to take some of the criticism about their family and friends. They couldn’t take it, and they certainly wouldn’t be able to bite their tongue and hold back as we have to most of the time.

What I can’t stand are the crazy, vindictive people who just want to hurt and bully. For instance, I remember seeing a comment from someone saying: ‘I hope you and the kids crash and die on the way to school,’ or ‘I hope you die of cancer.’ One time I was going to Malaysia or Indonesia and someone sent the message, ‘I hope the plane crashes.’ Flipping hell, that’s just mad, man! To be able to write that, you have got to be a real idiot or a there’s something wrong with you. But that’s the way things are: there are a few people like that out there, and when you find them they’re usually some spotty little runt with no mates who’s using social media to take out his frustrations on the world.

Wayne Rooney took my breath away the very first time he trained with the England team. You could see immediately he was the real deal. He was physically ready, mentally cute, very aware of everything going on around him. After his first match against Turkey I remember going into the players’ lounge and seeing him with his Mum and Dad. I said: ‘So when are you coming to United then?’ and they all laughed. But it was a serious question, and I’m so glad he did come.

In his first years with us he was like a coiled spring, always very animated and, it seemed, frustrated with life. He was rebellious, mischievous and funny. He struck me as a very angry young man, always arguing with people outside the training ground, especially on the phone. He seemed to fly into a rage about the smallest things and went through mobile phones like they were sweets. He’d just smash phones up in frustration. Just throw them on concrete. The other players used to laugh about it and say: ‘He’s gotta
calm down
!’ I remember Carlos Queiroz walking past him in an airport when he punched his phone, threw it down and was generally going mad. Carlos couldn’t believe it. He’d never seen
anything like that. But in a way Wayne’s anger worked for him on the field. I think it helped him become the player he could be.

Then he changed. In his early years he’d been petulant and reacted to everything on the pitch, and then, I don’t know what happened, but he did calm down. Somehow he just clicked, and matured. Maybe it just came with getting older. Maybe it was something to do with having children. To be honest, I think he went a bit too far. He cared almost too much. He started saying things like ‘I haven’t been booked this season!’ I remember thinking: ‘Yeah, but you’ve not played as well as before either – you’ve lost something.’ He was more aware of his image. The edge had gone and he was playing differently, thinking too much about not getting booked rather than going out and playing the game the way he could do it. I felt he needed that little bit of devilment in his game. I said to him: ‘I’d rather see you get sent off once or twice and play the way I know you can play.’ I think someone had spoken to him. Probably his agent or someone like that told him it would be better for him going forward. But football-wise I think he needed that old edge in his game. Not in his life obviously, but in his game. I think he lost that for maybe 18 months or two years maybe. That anger disappeared and his performances became less effective.

But after that he was top scorer, scored a hatful of goals up front on his own, as the number nine, which I think is his best position. And that season I thought: ‘He’s grown up now.’ He started to work really hard, doing more shooting practice and stuff like that. I mean he did that before, but two or three years ago he started doing it with greater intensity and seriousness and with more method to it: workmanlike and honing his craft. He’d always done extras … but there’s doing extras and doing extras. These days he tests himself all the time, does everything at match pace, not slow. He stopped taking a touch and having a look. Now it was getting
the ball and … Bang! Bang! I watched him and Juan Mata one day when they put on a clinic. They were unbelievable, hitting the net from all angles, never missing.

So in 2012 he was top scorer and then the following year he says, ‘I want to play number ten. I prefer it. I’m better at number ten.’ I said to him, ‘You’ve just had your best year statistically and in terms of adulation and the media loving you. Why do you want to play ten??’ He’d just elevated himself to a level just below the two best players in the world. He was just below Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo and I thought he could go on and improve and maybe join them. I’d put Inietsa, Xavi in that category, then there’s probably a couple of tiers of players with players like Ibrahimovic, Suárez, Bale, Benzema, Pirlo, Robin van Persie.

By the way, all the talk of a problem between Wayne and Robin was nonsense. Sometimes statistics don’t tell the real story. People noticed that one didn’t pass much to the other in this game or that and decided there was a problem. I didn’t see that. I saw two great players wanting to play well with each other.

But what I found strange was that year Wayne Rooney decided he wanted to play number ten and I just couldn’t understand it! For me his best position is still number nine: when he’s in and around the defenders’ feet he’s cute. He shoots back across defenders and through their legs like Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. He does tight little turns. He knows exactly where to be in the box. He’s become a sniffer as well as a scorer of extraordinary goals. His little movements to make space for himself are so clever.

He does things other players can’t even imagine. Little chips over keepers, unbelievable volleys from distance like the West Ham goal, or the Newcastle goal. I was in the stadium when he scored the overhead kick against Man City which was voted the best ever Premier League goal. I’ll never forget that. I just stood up with my
hands on my heads and said, ‘What the hell just happened?’ Don’t get me wrong. He can still play a killer pass. He’s still one of the top assist makers in the league. I just think he’s more effective up top. I think under the management of Louis van Gaal we will see the return of the Wayne Rooney who terrorises opponents.