The First 90 Minutes.com

Does football need Rio Ferdinand? For some fans, I sense that they would not be particularly concerned if he shuffled off the international stage and Old Trafford down the lower leagues, to Notts County and finish his career with a little bit of ITV punditry. I had never realised that Rio Ferdinand could provoke the same level of passionate hatred that I had always believed was exclusively reserved for a certain set of players including Frank Lampard. 

As a result of a range of random football and non-football reasons Lampard does not endear himself to large swathes of the population. Rooney can have a similar effect, and it was not that long ago when ‘Becks’ was personally loathed, and not regarded as a national treasure like marmalade and Bruce Forsyth. There will always be certain players that provoke rage amongst people but I still did not quite understand why did people dislike Rio Ferdinand could divide fan opinion in such a sharp way? 

When walking around the linoleum clad subways of Birmingham’s dreary Holloway Circus on a muggy Saturday afternoon, it was a bit of a shock when one friend launched into a personal attack about Rio Ferdinand. He is a devout Liverpool fan, but he was berating Rio for his comments about the laptop coverage of the recent Ukraine versus England game. Rio had suggested that football via your PC could be repeated in the future.  

Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion but Rio did come across (possibly unintentionally) as the stereotypical aloof Premiership footballer, surveying his estate from his Cheshire mansion with minimal concern for the crazy life of Britain in 2009. He seemed to be hectoring to his recession-hit fanatical public that they should meekly expect to fork out £11:99 on a regular basis in the future, if they wanted to enjoy the privilege of watching Rio and his mates.  

Within a week, someone else was also criticising Rio Ferdinand to my face with a passion that made me wonder whether they had mistaken me as Ferdinand’s PR agent. I found myself pinned to the wall by the venom of the words. The conversation had been innocently based on whether I should devote a whole Wednesday evening for the excitement of England versus Belarus.  

After reading the various character assassinations of Rio Ferdinand following the Ukraine game, I told the work colleague that I wanted to watch the Manchester United defender. The response was uncompromising, and the colleague was particularly scathing that a top class multi-millionaire could behave in such a Loose Women way by publicly admitting that he was suffering a crisis of confidence, when he is part of a group of workers leading a life that has riches beyond most people’s wildest dreams.  

Regardless of people’s opinions, I collapsed in front of the TV for the game with so many questions bouncing around in my brain. Was Ferdinand really suffering a crisis of confidence to the point that he could not guarantee his seat on the plane to South Africa? Had Ferdinand ceased to be the automatic choice for defender following years as a certain name of the team sheet? Could he be certain that his designer suitcase would be on the baggage carousel at Johannesburg airport? Was Rio going to be another sacrificial lamb for the vultures within football’s judgmental public that seem to love and revel in the decline and fall of England’s greatest footballers? Was this another case of a Manchester United player being jealousy torn apart by the nation, in a distasteful way that is frequently muttered about by the Old Trafford faithful?  

The Belarus match was not a great indicator of the current state of England’s defensive stability or whether Ferdinand was crumbling away like an X Factor reject. The away team played with a fairly impressive, but slightly tentative, passing game. When the ball was at the feet of the away team, the play meandered around the pitch like a jive from a fairly accomplished celebrity dancer doing the jive on Strictly Come Dancing.  

Belarus occasionally bore down on goal on a number of occasions but their threat was sufficiently snuffed out without many problems. I believed that the Ferdinand/ Terry partnership was not in tatters like the wall of a demolished tower of flats. Even the papers were fairly impressed and they generally admitted that Ferdinand had passed the ‘test of his life,’ till the Brazil game in November. 

We would all relish the chance to bar various hapless players from boarding the plane at London’s Luton Airport and Ferdinand is the latest in the long line of players to be a scapegoat for England’s various failings down the years. In contrast to previous sacrificial lambs, I had been was quite impressed how Ferdinand handled the fall out after the Ukraine game.  

We were told that the manager ‘had a word’ with Ferdinand, but this information would help us cement the image in our minds that Capello is the uncompromising general in this sea of over-rich Premiership footballers. Regardless of the various power politics, Rio Ferdinand will be of long term benefit to the game on and off the pitch.  

Like all players, his days of regular international football will end and I hope that he continues his work with underprivileged communities. Ferdinand seems to have never forgotten his South East London upbringing. He is playing for Manchester United Football Club and exposed to the riches that this lifestyle brings but he has not forgotten his roots. 

Yet again, I have to stress that I am not Rio Ferdinand’s PR agent. There have been various incidents during his career that I am less than enthusiastic about. ‘Rio’s World Cup Wind Ups,’ which was Ferdinand’s brief foray into Beadles About styled hidden camera TV programming. 

‘Wind Ups’ was shown on the night after England’s underwhelming opening game against Paraguay in the 2006 World Cup. That programme does not seem to improve regardless how many times that you watch it, but everyone has their slightly questionable moments in their life. Ferdinand can become part of the essential links between the grass roots and the Premiership. He could be worth his weight in gold for many more years in the game.