Manchester United legend Rio Ferdinand was extremely vocal on the pitch in his playing days, berating his team-mates as one of them responded by giving it straight back to the defender
Dimitar Berbatov claims former Manchester United team-mate Rio Ferdinand “always used to run his mouth” during training and matches.
Berbatov was signed by Sir Alex Ferguson from Tottenham on deadline day of the summer transfer window back in 2008, arriving for a fee of £30.75million. The Bulgarian striker scored nine league goals in his first season as United secured a third successive Premier League title.
But the same high expectations and desire to win that reaped such success also caused friction among Berbatov and his team-mates on occasion. One player with whom he regularly butted heads was central defender Ferdinand.
The now-TNT Sports pundit was no stranger to criticising Berbatov, who would retaliate by taking aim at Ferdinand’s passing ability. The nonchalant forward, 43, told Betfair: “I had it a lot in my career, arguing and screaming with team-mates, and I’m fine with it. It’s all for the purpose of helping the team to win games.
“Rio (Ferdinand) used to always run his mouth and tell everyone what to do, I used to give it back to him by telling him how to defend and to pass it to me, to my feet, instead of clearing the ball high. It’s always good to put a bit of fire in your teammates, it’s a two way street and when you play on that to help you win it’s a good thing.”
Berbatov went on to say that such arguments were not only healthy, but crucial to United’s success. Giving his own perspective on their routine training ground clashes, Ferdinand said on Jake Humphrey’s High Performance podcast: “There are players out there, I know there will be, who will say, ‘Rio used to drill me all the time, he used to pick on me a little bit’.
“Berbatov was a good example. He had a fair amount of success at United but he probably could have done more, especially at the beginning. I remember a training session had to be stopped because before a Champions League final he did not come across the pitch. I had the ball on one side and he was on the other side of the pitch. He’s our centre forward by the way, almost on the left wing.
“I’ve got the ball and I’m waiting for him to come to help me so I can pass to him, or I can go up the pitch. We were being marked out of the game deliberately in the training session. He was still over there. I kicked the ball off the pitch, I was going mad.”
Berbatov spent four seasons in total at Old Trafford, winning another Premier League title and reaching the final of the Champions League twice before losing out to Barcelona on both occasions. He signed for Fulham in the summer of 2012 for a fee of around £5m, with the silky, nonchalant striker enjoying a successful first season at Craven Cottage and moving to Monaco after his second year.
The retired Bulgaria all-time leading goal-scorer (48 goals) will see his former sides go head-to-head today in west London. Yet the circumstances have drastically changed since Berbatov’s playing days, with Fulham now up in tenth place while the once indomitable United sit in a lowly 13th place – 14 points off the top-four.
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