Frank was so clever. He worked out that he’d get into the opponent’s penalty area three or four times in a half, and the ball would fall to him once or twice, and he would score from one of those chances. He never had any weird or elaborate ideas about the game. He just played the odds: ‘If I keep making these runs, I’ll get one chance … and I’ll score.’ And he worked hard enough in training to make sure he was efficient and accurate enough to make that work. For five seasons for Chelsea he was scoring 20 goals a season. From midfield! That’s unbelievable. It can’t be matched. He more or less won Chelsea the league one year, scoring two goals against Bolton on one of the last days of the season.
But the way our friendship went was difficult. And a lot of it was my fault.
When I left West Ham to go to Leeds we were still close but I was up the motorway so it wasn’t easy to see each other. Things changed after he went to Chelsea in 2001, just as they were becoming a strong team; they were nowhere near winning the league back then, but their time was coming. I then went to Manchester United in 2002 and we became direct rivals. United won the league in my first year, then José Mourinho arrived and Chelsea won it a couple of times. We were now playing against each other.
Frank and I never spoke about it directly when we met up to play for England. But we were kind of drifting apart because of the United–Chelsea thing. If you’d asked me at the time I would just have put it down to a healthy rivalry of playing for the top two teams in the country. I wouldn’t want to give him any information about what we were doing or planning because I’d worry he might feed that back to his team. And if Chelsea were winning I wouldn’t want to speak to him anyway because I’d be jealous. I’m sure he felt the same way: he was competitive like me, and he always played his cards close to his chest. When we were winning, there’d been a little bit of ‘I want that to be me, I don’t want anyone else to win it.’ I think it’s just the way we’re built.
It might have been even worse if he’d been at Arsenal because there was more animosity between us and them. But these days I see Patrick Vieira and Thierry Henry, and Martin Keown and we have a good laugh about old times. Hopefully that will happen with me and Frank.
It could just have been me. I know other people manage to maintain friendships with rivals. Wayne Rooney, for example, is good mates with Joe Hart. But I don’t seem to be able to open up and be real pally with people I’m playing in direct competition with. I don’t know why but I just can’t do it. I felt the tension especially when we were with England together. If Chelsea had won the league, or beaten us in the cup or something I’d find myself sitting with Frank or John Terry or Ashley Cole and somewhere at the back of my mind would be the thought: are they fucking laughing at me? It’s something they probably never felt at all. I only recognise it now as I’m looking back. Perhaps it’s the dark side of being obsessed with winning. After all, you have to be a bit nutty to have that drive to keep winning trophies all the time. You don’t want to show any kind of weakness. I wasn’t even really aware of the feelings at the time. And they probably weren’t laughing at me at all. But that was part of why it meant so much to me to beat them in the Champions League Final. I couldn’t bear the thought of life afterwards if they beat us. I don’t know if they ever thought like that or even imagined I was thinking those type of things. But, looking back I think: fuck me! That’s how I was thinking! I don’t think it was healthy and it strikes me now as a bit weird. Perhaps Frank felt something like that as well. But I do regret in terms of our friendship.
In fact I rather regret that I tended not to allow myself to have friendships with people I was in direct competition with. If anything other players were more like acquaintances. There were a couple of exceptions to that: I went on holiday a few times with Ashley Cole, but he had a very different personality: a happy-go-lucky kind of free spirit. But among the footballers who played in my era Jody Morris is my best mate in football and there are others I get on really well with like Michael Carrick. I’ll definitely stay in contact with a lot of the United lads. Ian Dowie, who’s a bit older than me, was a mentor to me at West Ham and we’re still in touch. He’s a nice fella; he looked after me when I was a young player, helped toughen me up. He’s always been there for me if I needed advice.
At United I was close to Nemanja Vidić. We used to have a lot of deep conversations about football and life. But with a teammate it’s different. You’re not fighting against each other to win trophies.
Of course, outside of football I still have the same close friends like Gavin, Ray, my cousin Bernard and my agent Jamie. But they weren’t competitors so there was no problem. I can see now how I shut out most people or didn’t really get involved after I went to Manchester United. I don’t know how Frank feels because we never spoke about this and in fact I’ve only thought about it since I left United. He might feel completely differently. In his book he had nothing but nice things to say about me. He said we’d ‘Lost a bit of that closeness we used to have’ when I moved north but things were fine when we met up with England. Anyway, I hope now that we’re not rivals any more things will change. We are both in our 30s now and even when I saw Frank at the England team hotel in Brazil I sensed a change. It was the first time we’d seen each other since we’d been released by our clubs and our guards had gone down. When we’re back and both living in London I’m sure our friendship will develop again.
5.7 Million and Counting
The double-edged sword
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 in
terests 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. Som
e 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
Necessary devilment
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.
#2Sides: My Autobiography Page 16