Rio Ferdinand
From an estate in Peckham, to the World Cup. From winning the Champions League to struggling at QPR. What was it really like in the Manchester United dressing room? Is he happy? What has personal tragedy taught him about being a better person? This is Rio Ferdinand as you’ve never heard him before, openly sharing his secrets to his High Performance life. Winning cultures, elite mindsets, and the tricks you can employ to enjoy success and taste happiness in your own life...whatever comes your way.
TRANSCRIPT
Rio Ferdinand
JAKE: Not only are we in Manchester, we're in a place called Rosso, which is basically the place to eat in Manchester and we're with the guy who helped to set it up. Not only is he a restauranteur, he's also a football pundit, a media mogul, a brand ambassador, he's won everything you can win apart from the FA cup with Manchester United and he's invited us for a High Performance chat in his own restaurant. Rio Ferdinand, welcome to High Performance.
RIO: How you doing?
JAKE: Nice to have you with us. Yeah, very good. Listen, in my experience, massively successful people don't spend much time dwelling on their success. So when we sit here in your restaurant, in your city where you dominated football for all those years, do you reflect, do you think, yeah, life's good, or are you the kind of person that has always moved onto the next win, the next challenge, the next adventure?
RIO: Yeah. I've, I've never sat and dwelled on stuff that I've won in that moment. I think I was, I was always fearful of doing that because I thought if I do that my eye’s been taken off what's coming down the road. So I never ever… I mean probably a good indicator of how intense that was, was we won the Champions League in Moscow and we, after you win the Champions League, you get changed and you go to the hotel where everyone’s … there’s a party or a little gathering for the families and friends and all the players and staff. And within that, within the first 15,20 minutes I was so ecstatic - David Gill, I said, “Mr Gill, how are you doing?” “Rio, brilliant. How are you doing, Rio?”. I said, “Right, so who’re we buying next year? Who’re we getting?” He said “What do you mean?”
JAKE: Is this xxx after the final?
RIO: No, a couple of hours. I was like, he said, “Are you crazy, lad? Just enjoy the night.” I said, “Yeah, but who’we getting? We've gotta win this xxx next year. I want to be here next year again.” And so that's just what was always the way I was. I was scared. I was fearful of just trying to enjoy it too much in the moment, cause I wanted to the future to be a xxx and understand, I want to go there again.”
JAKE: And do you think that's a healthy or unhealthy way to be? It's probably massively rewarding and it probably helps you to achieve a lot, but may be exhausting as well.
RIO: Well I look at it, when I look back and reflect now in retirement, I look back and I see Liverpool are now starting to win. They win a trophy. They're doing a tour, open bus tour around the city. All the fans are out. City win the Carling cup at a time, they're in the city doing an open, open top bus tour and we won the champions league and the Premier League that year in Moscow, arrived back into Manchester, if there was 50 fans there waiting for us to welcome us home, I would be lying. And then we said, the manager said, “Right guys, well done. I'll see you for preseason.” And I sitting there thinking at the time I was fine because that was it. But after I look back now I think, “We didn't even, we didn’t even really celebrate after things we won.” We didn't even really go mad and really indulge and like go, you know actually, and show people that this is the way it means to us. It was very like, um, machine-like. But, again, when you sit there and xxx if we’d gone the other way and become like these other people, would we have sustained the success that we kind of went on to achieve?
JAKE: I wonder whether that is a specific creation of Sir Alex Ferguson at that time, to build a culture like that at Manchester United where it is about, it's about achieving the success, not celebrating the success?
DAMIAN: It's interesting. I've heard Gary Neville speak about when he was asked to sum up his experience at Manchester United in one word. He used to work relentlessness. It was that idea that you, like, once you win something you go again, and that’s just unrelenting.
RIO: Yeah, that’s it, yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, like another example, Ben Foster. He hadn't grown up at Manchester United. He got brought in from Watford I think it was. Great lad - played in the Carling Cup final. We won. He was man of the match, put in a great performance, and I remember xxx xxx when he left the club and saying, no, I was sitting in the changing room and I looked over in the corner and the Carling Cup was just sitting there on its own. And I couldn't get my head around it. They weren’t celebrating, there wasn't a party. There wasn't what I expected, anticipated seeing. And I was all at a time. I can understand it now, but at the time I was frustrated, I was thinking and that's why you’re not a Man United player. That's why you have to leave because you don't understand. You didn't buy into that early enough, that we’ve got a game Tuesday – Champions League. We just won the Carling Cup but what you gonna do? Celebrate? And then all of a sudden put yourself at a negative starting point for the next game against, I don’t know, Roma in the quarter finals of the Champions League. No thanks, we’ve got, that’s bigger, bigger pictures over there. One that, thank you. In the back pocket. See you later. On to the next one.
DAMIAN: But what intrigues me though Rio is that, were you always like that yourself, relentless, or was that something you learnt by going into a different environment?
RIO: I was obsessed with football. From a young kid, I used to travel with far and wide to go and play football to just go and train with one of my best mates, travel through, like, a travellers’ camp where it can be a bit tricky getting through. There’s dogs, wild dogs hanging about and stuff. And people and whatnot, and over different estates to get to a certain patch of grass, which we thought this is a great place to train, and train and train for a few hours and then come back. That's after playing a Sunday League game on that morning probably. But just mad stuff, like, I’d play football, xxx all the time I could get where I’d train and try and get better. I'd always do it. And it was that relentless, the word relentless probably signifies a lot of how I was when I was a kid, like. I was, I was, I was hardworking. I was always wanting to improve and I always wanted to be better the next, the next month. I always, I’d take it as a personal insult or my pride would take a beating or I’d find it embarrassing that I'm not the best, I'm not the best one in my year at school. I’m not the best one in my team. The team need me more than anyone else to play and succeed. I used to always think like that.
DAMIAN: And what preceded that though? Like, why did you think like that, why did you feel you had to be the best to, in anything that you did?
RIO: I don't know.
JAKE: Was it drummed into you?
RIO: No, my Dad wasn’t a football man. My Dad was into Kung Fu. I tell you one thing. My Dad never let me win anything as a kid.
JAKE: So you were constantly striving to be successful?
RIO: So I was striving to be successful at something. So if it was playing cards against him or playing tennis against him or running, racing him, like, or chasing him when he was on a bike. He used to make me run, and he’d go on a bike and say, “Chase me”.
JAKE: So I wonder then whether you, you weren't actually obsessed with football. You thought you were obsessed with football. You were actually obsessed with being the best. Football was your chosen thing, yes.
RIO: Maybe, yeah.
JAKE: But it was about being better than everybody around you.
RIO: And I think also is proving people to people - I can do something, I can be good at that, like my dad for example, like, proven to him that one day I'm going to beat you. Watch, one day I'll beat you in a race.
DAMIAN: And what happened when you did beat him?
RIO: He was, right, I need to be faster than this. Someone over there who beats me, I've gotta beat now. And on my estate, another thing probably as well, I was always the youngest in my group of friends. So if you come to my house and I want to have a gathering or my wedding for instance, all my mates I grew up are there, most of them, and they're all like three, four, five years older than me. So as a young kid playing football, that's good because you're playing against people who physically, who can dominate you. The majority of them are quicker than you. So you've got to find other ways to beat people, other tricks to do things with and to, to, to, to, to get in the better of people that are physically way, way up the ladder than you. The guys who were my age really weren't good enough for football, I used to think. What’s boring playing with these guys. I wanna play with big guys, and then after that when I got to probably like 11, 12, 13 I'd go onto other estates, and play against other kids and other adults, or we’d go and find a group of guys at a place called Burgess Park. And these guys were like men who would turn up in cars. They treated us like adults – kicked you, smashed you all over the place.
JAKE: How did you react to that?
RIO: You couldn't react - because if you react like a baby, they're going to take you off the pitch. So that environment was really, again, I always remember that's a good environment to grow up in as a young kid.
JAKE: It's almost like you didn’t realize how those early sort of formative days were equipping you for when you're standing on a football pitch, winning the Champions League or the Premier League. But actually you can probably trace the journey right back to the lessons that you learned as a, as an eight, nine, 10 year. And there’ll be parents listening to this, or even eight, nine, 10 year olds listening to this, not realizing that the things that are happening today do have a direct impact 20 years later.
RIO: Yeah, definitely. And also, like, the, not only the, the good things, but also some of the bad things. Like, I was 13, 14 years old, maybe 14, I had a growth spurt, as most kids do. And I became like Bambi on ice, like, no coordination. And I'd gone from being someone that West Ham had gone out to go and get and become a school boy for West Ham, and they phoned xxx we want you, come on, to being a sub. And I'm sitting there thinking, “Wow, doubting myself, I'm not gonna make it.”
JAKE: As you know, I'm a big advocate of failure, and the importance of of failing to move forward is the only way of finding sort of where your limits are.
RIO: Um.
JAKE: And I think we equip the kids now – we’re all parents sitting round this table - we equip our children to not fail, don’t we? We make sure that things are put in their way so they always have a sort of nice smooth path to success. But actually that growth spurt where you turn into Bambi on ice, and you suddenly couldn't play football to the level that you were, and there were doubts and question marks, that again is such a sort of formative moment. Like to fail and to fail at a young age, and then to have to find your own way around that failure...
RIO: Yeah, be patient. Kids today got no patience. They expect everything on a silver plate, now. It's about training them and making them aware that, listen, there are going to be failures. There are, and this is what I say to my kids all the time. You are not going to be the best all the time, and you're going to fail at some xxx. You're going to lose. But it's how you come, how you going to react? You gonna cry? Crying’s not problem. It’s fine, cry. But, what are you going to do then to stop that emotion being, coming on again and feeling that pain? And that's what I say to my boys all the time. I I used to cry as a bad looser. I like bad losers. But now the kids are being taught not to lose. There's no winner and loosers anymore. I can't get my head around it. I'll go into the school and I'll see a teacher. I'll go, why is there no first, second, and third? In life, there’s first, second and third. There's last place in life. They're not being brought up to actually understand that the realities in life is they're going to be in that situation at some point.
DAMIAN: You have a certain perception that your talent was obvious from a very early age, and these guys that you were playing football with obviously saw you were a level of ability. But what age did you come to the realisation that it was more than talent that was going to take you to, to where you wanted to to go?
JAKE: Uh, probably. I don't know. 16 probably. I just knew that I had to outwork everyone. By me and Frank Lampard, I was, I was lucky. Sometimes it's good to buddy up with people as well. Me and Frank Lampard are from completely different backgrounds, but we had a common goal, and a common idea of what we wanted in life, which was to be as good footballers as we could be. And we kind of just edged each other on in that respect. Like he was a hardworking guy. I was hardworking, and I saw he would be doing something over there. I can’t let him have the edge on me. I'm going to do that as well. And I was fortunate to have that buddy who I could, I could look at and draw inspiration from the times. Oh, he’s been picked by the reserve team, and he’s only just turned 17. I want to do it at 16 and a half. And it wasn't from animosity or vindictive or being nasty. It was just, like, that was just competition between us, but never spoken about.
JAKE: I guess you would have been in teams and playing with people that had as much ability as you, but the mental approach was so different, the, the lack of hard work really was what, was what meant they didn't get as far as you got in the game.
RIO: There’s loads of players I could name who’ve got more ability than I had probably, but they didn't have the work ethic or the mental capacity to take loads of stuff on board - what comes with it, the pressure, expectations, dealing with all that.
JAKE: How can you learn though too, to take the pressure? Some 15, 16 year olds can take pressure, criticism, scrutiny. Others just simply can't, and I don't know whether you can equip them for that.
RIO: Me and my mates have got er, a little chat group, a WhatsApp group, and one of the common themes all the time is like the kids haven't got, like, the harsh reality banter that we used to have as a kid, so everyone got theirs. Everyone got grilled, everyone got put down on the floor. Without that, I don't know if I could have taken the media attention as well as I have or the negativity that comes from certain calls in the media or in the fan… the terraces, etc.
DAMIAN: There was something about your background that intrigued me, that, that links to this, that you spoke about you did ballet for a number of years when you were there, and I'm interested that from a lad from Peckham...
RIO: Yeah, very definitely. But at first, at first I didn't say anything to my mates. Where are you going? Because obviously I've got to walk off the estate with a backpack on. Where are you going? I'm just going to my mate’s. That lasted a little while. What mate? You never spoke about this mate before. No, I go to, like a dance school. What, you do dance? No I don’t do dance. I go there, there's, like street dancing. And then it became, you know what? I don't care. I go there and I do, like, ballet. What? A few laughs, a few giggles, a few sniggers here and there. But I was confident enough of my place within my group of friends that they aren’t going to affect my relationship with anyone. Cause I know I am someone who can give and take the banter the same and I was very comfortable in my own skin, so I weren’t really bothered about what are they gonna to say. And, by the way, there's loads of girls I meet there as well, by the way, that you don’t know about. Is that alright?
JAKE: It comes back to being a sort of a leader rather than being led, doesn't it?
RIO: Yeah. I will never x to be pigeonholed in my life. I've always been like that. I never knew as being pigeonholed as a kid, but I'll never want it to be, Oh you’re a boy from an estate, you're going to stay there and do that. Hopefully in this restaurant, I remember Sir Alex Ferguson and David Gill saying to me “Well, yes, disgrace. You’re a football player, blah blah. Well if you're going to be here to hold my hand when I retire and give me a job, guaranteed, well I won’t do all this, but I know you won’t. So I need to set myself up doing stuff where I’ll be busy, etc to be able to do stuff in my later life. By the time my time’s up on this planet, I’ve got a fear that people are going to go, he was just a footballer. I want to be known for something else. And that's the type of stuff that stimulates me and keeps me going and keeps me ticking. And that was how I was as a footballer. I'm don’t, I’m not going to be a footballer, I’m not gonna be a good footballer, I’ve got to being a good footballer. What's next? I want to be a top footballer. I want to be elite. I want to be considered one of the best in Europe, one of the best in the world. Now the one thing I did do from an early age, from probably 17, was set targets every beginning of every season - targets – they’re, they’re, you got to stimulate yourself some, somehow.
DAMIAN: And would you do that with anyone, or was that something you’d just do on your own?
RIO: No. I saw a sports psychologist for a short period of time for maybe probably a month or two. It was more about preparation. Sometimes I used to find it hard to prepare for a game. And you ask what do you mean. It's more like, my mind would be on I’m going for dinner after the game, and um, chatting to the boys. What music are you're going to put on today? And I'll just xxx, and I’ll find it hard to just go “concentrate on football, this game”. So then I started getting videos the night before of a game, of a player, who we were playing against. So, don’t know, Suarez, on the Friday, xxx all these clips for when we go on a hotel on Friday, and I would have about 10 minutes’ worth of these clips I can watch from his last few games. So the last thing I see is Suarez before I go to bed. The last thing I think about for probably 30 seconds is Suarez. His best moves. His best tricks. What’s his go-to trick, when he's in the box to get shot off? His best movements. Where is he, what runs he like making. And I’d visualize myself taking the ball off him, I’d visualize my first pass in the game, my first xxx.
JAKE: So even when you’d got to Man United, you didn't think “I've made it”. You were still even then looking for the marginal gains, looking for the little opportunities to be even better.
RIO: Yeah, cause I was scared. I didn't want to be seen as one of the just, also… normal players, in that dressing room. I need you to miss me if I'm not playing. I need you to, I want my, my team mate to go “Flipping hell. Rio – top player, you know”.
DAMIAN: So can I ask you then about, to combine a few of the things about the setbacks and mistakes and about this preparation, during that period when you missed the drugs test at United, and, and your absence was keenly noted that season…
RIO: We were top of the league when I left.
DAMIAN: Yeah, so, so, people definitely noticed you weren’t there. How did you process that mistake of letting down other people, and xxx?
RIO: It was hard, man, it was hard. And I still, the people even now still say, “Oh, there’s no smoke without fire”. But listen, I've proved beyond any doubt at all that I haven't taken any substances at all, through doing like a hair follicle test that do when you go in the army. But you get tarnished with that brush. And I was bitter at first. I hated the FA. I hated all the people at England who were speaking in my face, who smiled at me, but then banned me. I used all of that - hate and bitterness - and I used all of that, reading all them articles and them people saying he's the drug cheat and he's this and he's that. He's not going to come back the same. And when I trained, when I trained, I saw, I visualized all them people. And then, it became again, obsession. I don't think I ever trained as hard and as frequent as I did in that period that I was banned. I trained harder, I was fitter than I've ever been in my life. And that's why when I came back into my first game, I could probably have played two, three games that day.
JAKE: Did you not want to just shout, “This is all nonsense. Here is the truth, or…”
RIO: I was advised not too – badly - by the lawyers at the time. So, I was advised not to speak. I should have spoke at the beginning, and said, “This is my, my flags going in the sand, and that's it. This is, this is, what it is…”
JAKE: xxx believe it or not, you have to tell them your own truth, right?
RIO: Yeah. I was advised, I was advised not to, which I shouldn't have taken that advice, but it was legal advice, and you think, and I'm trying to protect the club as well.
JAKE: Yeah.
DAMIAN: So did you read those articles about yourself?
RIO: Yeah, yeah I did.
JAKE: How was that?
RIO: Yeah, it's not nice, but it was, that was my fuel. It was weird. I, I didn't like it, but I enjoyed it because I knew that when I'm training and things are getting hard in, when I'm running, or I've got to do a certain gym xxx session and I was just thinking I'm gonna, I'm gonna throw that back down that man’s throat, watch, that’s going down his throat. And a few times to be fair, when I came back I did pull a few reporters. Like, you're right, you know, you thought I was gone. You thought I wasn’t gonna to come back, this now, I’m gonna come back better, watch. And that being focused enough to say, you're not gonna beat me.
JAKE: Was there any part of you at any point that thought, “I'm done, I’m going to quit? I don’t want this xxx?”
RIO: No, I thought about just not playing for England again. Just gonna come back and just smash it for Man United, and not having to play for England, and you’re gonna miss me. And, but I just, I couldn't do it in the end. I love football too much to, to have done that. But a lot of people in that situation would have blamed everyone. You’re the reason I'm not playing now. You're the reason my career’s just gone down the drain. You’re the reason. And so, in a lot of humans, being able to blame someone and shift responsibility allows you a way out. That’s where we are now with a lot people. And, and my, if you need the pride and you need the determination not to allow that. You know what I mean? And it would have been easy for me to say, no, that's why I'm rubbish, now. That's why my career has gone down the drain, because you lot have done that, and punished me, and that could have been to my life after that, and lived off it.
JAKE: This is the classic conversation that we've had a couple of times - fault versus responsibility.
RIO: Yeah, yeah.
JAKE: You can argue in this instance it might have been your fault, this happened.
RIO: No, it was. I’ve said that at the beginning. It's my responsibility. I should have been there.
JAKE: But it's not, it's not necessarily your fault the ban was as big as it was and you got treated like you did. But, it doesn't matter, does it? Because as soon as they’ve said “Right Rio”. How long was the ban?
RIO: Eight months.
JAKE: As soon as they said right, eight months, no football, it's no one on the planet's responsibility at that moment…
RH: but mine.
JAKE: … than yours.
RIO: But then that’s where you …
JAKE: It’s so easy, and I think, now, as a society, oh, we love fault. We love to…
RIO: Yeah, yeah. But that’s where it comes from where, like I know, so in my in my mind, I know there’s a date that I come back. Actually, after a little while, it’s Liverpool – the day that I come back. I've got a target now. Probably the best game I could come back to – biggest, our biggest rivals. So that adds a pressure. And I've always dealt well with having that extra pressure on my shoulders. It's just maybe probably refocuses me maybe. And so I had that something to aim at, and that was it. So, and then there’s pride. If I come back and I’m rubbish, I've got to answer questions. Well, you’re not the same Rio, now, are you? Look at you! What's happened? I’d have been so embarrassed to let that happen.
JAKE: And that was your fuel?
RIO: Yeah
JAKE: You rose to that.
DAMIAN: But that's the equivalent of you missing that school bus.
RIO: Yeah, exactly, yeah.
DAMIAN: It’s the pressure.
RIO: True.
DAMIAN: A number of times, you've spoken about your friends from Peckham. You spoke about where you were badly advised at that time. How would you advise people that, when they start to have a level of success, they attract followers? What advice would you give now, having gone through that journey, about how you differentiate between those that are with you because they're worth having or those that are there for other reasons that are probably unhelpful?
RIO: It’s probably one of the hardest things to kind of dissect when you're in the midst of a career. All of a sudden your life goes from being normal paced to being a whirlwind of invitations, people of the opposite sex. Every door you go to is open for you. And everything, everything becomes easier in life. And so there isn't anyone really telling you “No”. And to sit and actually take that all in when it's going so fast, is very difficult. It’s like being in a washing machine, and trying to actually dissect the colours from the whites, while the washing machine’s on. It’s hard. You can’t just, it’s virtually, it’s almost impossible.
JAKE: xxx elite level…
RIO: Exactly.
JAKE: week in, week out. I mean I remember growing up watching you play for England, Leeds, Man United, and I think at this sort of West Ham, Leeds period, I would, I would have said from what I saw looking in the papers, you enjoyed a night out?
RIO: Oh, a lot, yeah. xxx enjoyed it.
JAKE: How close were you then for all that hard work from a six year old on that estate in Peckham to throwing it all away by getting sort of carried along by xxx ... found success.
RIO: But there’s a moment in life. Everyone in their life, there's a moment where you, there’s a decision to be made. And my moment came. So yeah, like you say Leeds and West Ham, especially the early part of Leeds, I overindulged in the nightlife – all the, that kind of the things that come with being a professional footballer. And the Euros came about, Kevin Keegan was manager, and I didn't get picked. I went away that summer – holiday - and I just vowed, like, this isn’t happening again. And I trained that summer, um. That’s when I first ever started training in the summer before I went back to pre-season. So I was training probably for two weeks before that on my own. So when I got back into training I was fitter than everyone else, so all of a sudden, straightaway the manager’s going, oh, that November, I’ve got to move to Leeds, after bing left out of the team, broke the British transfer records, and then it just continued going, escalating from there. So it's having that moment where you go, right.
DAMIAN: Was it at Manchester United you went in, when you realized that everyone was coming back two weeks beforehand?
RIO: When I got to Man United it was weird because, and I’ll roll you back to the beginning of that - is I got there, and I wasn't a, I was a good professional, I thought was a good professional, and I went to United from Leeds, and I saw top professionals, not players, top professionals, professional athletes, who looked after their bodies, who went out and had nights out. They weren’t saints. Went out and had nights out when it was right, players that prepared for training on a daily basis properly, who recovered after training properly. Their standards on the training pitch were up here. And each person who was xxx certain thing I thought he's the best at that, I tried to take a little bit out of their makeup. Like, just loads of stuff like that.
JAKE: And when you first come into that environment where you think West Ham is elite, and you think Leeds is elite, then you go into the Man United dressing room and it is totally different, who, who lets you know what is expected of a player in that environment?
RIO: The players.
JAKE: Not the manager?
RIO: No, because you xxx you can tell a kid all the time. I lot of kids until they see it and they breathe it and they're in it all the time and immerse themself in it. Actually I can follow that now.
JAKE: So that image that we will have externally of, oh you go in, and Sir Alex Ferguson lays down the law?
RIO: No.
JAKE: It was the players letting the other players know…
RIO: He’d layed the law down years ago. What was great about Sir Alex Ferguson is he allowed the leads in the changing room to run that changing room. I could probably count on one hand how many times he’d come into our changing room, and the training grounds. We were there every day. You run it.
JAKE: And how would you, how would you now describe the expectation of the Man United dressing room? So you go in there on day one, what is expected at that period? What was expected of a Manchester United player at that time?
RIO: To expect so win. You, you, you, take a trophy a season, minimum. And like, you wouldn't accept people just, like, tossing it off in training…
JAKE: What would happen if someone?
RIO: I’d be screaming and shouting. I’d call you out. You, I’d embarrass you, whether it’s through humour or straight “What are you doing? What's, what's? Fix up! And losing a game in training because you’re messing about. Are you mad?” No, you're not ruining my day.
JAKE: You came in there as a transfer fee, right?
RIO: Yeah.
JAKE: Were they keen to let you know that despite the fact that you were the record signing, they were the ones that were the winners and you were coming into their environment. Were they keen to bring you down a peg or two?
RIO: Come in, come into it. But a steely welcome. It wasn't like, open arms, ah, oh, song and dance and flowers and… It was “Come and join us”. I had the feeling that they believed I could make, I could make it better as well. Cause obviously they had David Beckham, Scholesie, Buttie, the Nevilles, all the England boys there who I’d played with for England anyway. So they knew if I was good or bad for the team. So, and I believe that they’d maybe told when people have asked “Is he good enough?” “Yes he is.” And I felt that. So that gave me confidence.
DAMIAN: So how did you prepare for that then? So, and again I love that image of you kicking a ball, the xxx those guys in Peckham would invite you to xxx with them.
RIO: Yeah, same, same, it’s just sort of different stage. Like, my first training session was probably the most nervous I've ever been playing football, because these guys are waiting to see what does 30 million pounds look like.
JAKE: And what did it look like?
RIO: It looked like shit at the time. But it, um, cause I was so nervous. But I gradually improved. And again my first season at Man United we won the league. But I didn't feel like I was an integral, vital member of that team. They wouldn’t have missed me if I didn't play, I felt.
JAKE: If you sign for Manchester United, you know, you have a legend walk around Carrington or Old Trafford – Bobby Charlton, someone like that - at what point did you think, yeah, do you know what, I can hold my head up high now in the company of Bobby Charlton?
RIO: Until we won the Champions League…
JAKE: Yeah?
RIO: I felt part of “in awe”, not “in awe”, was the wrong word, but I felt a little bit like, I'm not at that level yet. I can't, I can't look at Robbo. I can't look at Sir Bobby Charlton, and go “How you doing?” without, without real, like, I one, like I'm like you man. Like, I don’t know, you're held in higher esteem or you’re a better player than me. But I've done something that I'm etching myself in the history of this club from my little bit of my percentage that I put in.
DAMIAN: I remember reading an interview that you'd done in 2008 when there was the, ah, the 50th anniversary of Munich, and Sir Alex had brought Bobby Charlton in to come and speak to the squad. And you were the one that came out and spoke most movingly and passionately about understanding your place in the context of Manchester United, in the history of it from the Babes right the way through to the Best, Law, Charlton and so on. Was all that part of wanting to be in the pantheon?
RIO: Yeah, and that’s what scares me about Man United now. Do these players, are they told, are they, about the culture of this club? Is there a culture that they can buy into now? That's what scares me at Man United now. Yeah, we're losing, we're not winning the league. We don't look anywhere near winning the league for the next couple of years probably. But the biggest scare for me is, like, when I went to Manchester United there was a culture, not about winning at a time - yes, there was that - but the backstory of the disaster in Munich, the Busby Babes. I knew that story. I wasn't told it.
DAMIAN: That phrase there “culture” intrigues me. So, culture is effectively about behaviours, just non-negotiable behaviours that people buy into. Now I don't believe you can have more than three behaviours that define a culture, so what would you say were the three behaviours that defined the culture of Manchester United that you experienced?
RIO: Training standards.
DAMIAN: So high standards.
RIO: High standards in training was a culture. Work ethic, and that mentality to win - the hunger, there's a desire, there's a desire there that burns every day you can see…
JAKE: What happens to players that were signed…
RIO: Gone.
JAKE: and didn't have it?
RIO: Get out!
JAKE: Really?
RIO: Yeah, I hated em.
JAKE: Did you?
RIO: Yeah, I hated em with a passion.
JAKE: Cos they were affecting your legacy.
RIO: Yeah, I wanna win. You're, you’re gonna affect me winning. So there would be players out there. I know there’s players out there, that would say “Rio used to drill me all the time.” “You've picked on me a little bit.” Berbatov was a good example, yeah. And he had a fair amount of success xxx when he came, but he probably could have done more, especially at the beginning. I remember a training session had to be stopped because, before a Champion’s League final was, I think, and he didn't come across the pitch. I had the ball 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. And I've got the ball and I’m waiting for him to come to help me so I can pass the ball to him, or pass it up the pitch cause we were, we were being marked out of the game deliberately in a training session. So to play over the press. He’s still over there. I'm screaming. I’ve kicked the ball off the pitch. I'm going mad “Get over here xxx”. In his relaxed typical Berba, “Just wait”. He said, “Barcelona will just keep it and play and wait till the players come over and then play us” I said “We’re not Barcelona, this is Man United”.
JAKE: And you, you talk about FIFO - fit in or f**k off - basically.
RIO: Yeah, that’s a great…
JAKE: But the difficult thing about that I think is that people do need to FIFO but also in a football team or any, any environment, you know if there’s business leaders listening to this podcast, they are trying to create an environment where mavericks and leaders and people with amazing skills can come in and add to the environment rather than come in and be crushed by it. I think that's a quite difficult thing to get right, isn’t it?
RIO: It is hard because I think, like for instance, Wilfried Zaha – huge talent, great individual talent - and maybe it was down to maturity, but he never succeeded at Manchester United. And I think he was, wasn't helped by the club as well, and the management at a time. But uh, he's a player I was on to on a regular basis and he probably said it, would say now looking back, xxx Rio was onto me. But it was for the betterment of the team. It wasn't from they had a personal issue or anything like that. I saw that he could be a great asset. I like, he needs this and that, and I'm gonna try and put it into him and, and get on to him every day.
DAMIAN: You seem like you were pretty strident, if somebody’s not cutting the mustard, you call them out right away. Or like you say, you take the piss out of them to change them. How much room do you think they would have been in the environment for somebody to put their arm around the shoulder and nurture somebody that wouldn't have, that maybe needed that?
RIO: No, no. Sir Alex Ferguson was good at that. Like I remember with Cristiano. We came in once for a couple of days. Where's Cristiano? His Dad had passed away. Sir Alex Ferguson give him I think a few days off – gone back to Portugal. And I’m in there sitting thinking “That’s a f***ing liberty.” As bad as it is. And I look back now, and I think f***ing… bit of, you’ve got to be a bit softer. But at the time I'm thinking, well we need him this weekend, by the way, we need to win this big game.
DAMIAN: Can I ask you about the end of your career then, because I often find it quite strange that your career ended with a bit of a fizzle down by leaving United in ignominious circumstances after that day in Southampton, and going to QPR just seemed a bit of a strange move.
RIO: I think there’s the circumstances, though. There was a back story obviously with my personal life. That remaining busy and in work was important.
DAMIAN: Right.
RIO: But, the way my career ended at Manchester United, it was almost like the book wasn't closed. I've not even said, like, bye to the fans. There's not been a parting of the ways.
JAKE: What happened xxx?
RIO: Well, you normally get an idea if you're gonna get a new deal or not, either one way or the other before the last day of the season. Someone comes to you to see, the CEO, Edward Woodward, would come to you normally and go “We're not giving you a deal.” Or, “We know you're not gonna sign. So look for pastures new.” xxx the season. I didn't get either of them. Last day of the season we play Southampton. Game finishes, and I come in the changing room, and the Directors and stuff always come into the changing room, home and away, and just shake the players’ hands. So xxx Edward would come in, and then he just stood next to me, Edward xxx sat next to me at that point, after the game, my boots all still on, etc, and just said “Listen, we’re not going to renew your deal. Thanks for your services at the club. You’re free to go and just speak to other clubs xxx what you’re gonna do”.
JAKE: Whaaat?
RIO: And I was, like, wow! Is that the way it’s going to be?
JAKE: Why? Why like that? For someone that had done as much as you xxx.
RIO: I don’t know. That was what I thought. Like, surely you could have given a heads up before, so I could actually have had a little bit of a goodbye to the fans.
JAKE: Did you say that to him?
RIO: I did at a later date, yeah.
JAKE: In that moment?
RIO: At the moment, I was just numb. I just sat there, like, whoa! Because it got to, so late in the season, it was the last day of season, I thought, well, they're probably going to be, probably a role for me here somewhere doing something, whether playing or coaching/playing or whatever, or given an option to do something because they surely would have told me before this day. But it never happening, and I just felt that I deserved to be able to say bye to the fans, to people at the club, to dinner ladies, Cath on reception. But I just wasn't afforded that kind of the time to do that, and I was bitter for a little while if I'm honest.
JAKE: That’s weird.
RIO: And that's what really made me start thinking, like, this place isn’t being run properly. This isn’t how the best team in the land, in Europe, in the world, that I consider, should be doing things. And then after that I'm seeing the way that people like other players who'd done 10 or plus more years at clubs leave their club, and I'm thinking, wow, I didn't get this. This is mad. Going to QPR was probably one of the best things I've done because at the time I wanted to be a manager. And going into management from where it was a well oiled machine for 12, 13 years, I hadn't seen any instability really or problems. The place just run itself with its eyes closed. Fergie could have gone away for a couple of days, no one would have noticed, mainly. But, go to QPR, and I saw a lot of how it shouldn't be run, how things shouldn't be done.
JAKE: What was wrong then? How shouldn't it be done? What did you learn there?
RIO: Yeah. Communication from the up to the top to the bottom of the place. No‑one communicated. No-one was singing from the same hymn sheet whether it’s to coaches, staff and players. Players didn’t believe in the management.
JAKE: I remember you telling me you were surprised that suddenly the players were talking about money.
RIO: Yeah. That, a simple thing like that. I’d never spoken about money before in my life in the changing room, ever. None of this, like, what are you on? Oh, I'm on, I'm on 60 grand a week. Flippin hell, I want to sit here for three years, I don’t care. I'm hearing these types of conversations. I'm sitting there going, wow, what is this? This is alien to me. That's why you are who you are. That's why you're here. That's why you’ve not fulfilled potential.
DAMIAN: And did you tell them that? Would you have those same conversations that you’d had a United?
RIO: Yeah, people that I wanted to have the converse… Cos, listen, fortunately at Man United I was fully invested, committed to everything to win, to be successful at Man United. And when you go to somewhere like QPR and you're hearing all this stuff and its negativities flying about, it’s like, how'd you become committed to that? How to you invest in that? So you try and just pull people on the xxx. Some of them just didn't care. So you're fighting a losing battle. So that, I thought was a wow. This is the best thing I've done coming here. It's the worst thing, cause I’ve had a nightmare of a time, here. But, I've seen now, cause I'm not going to go in and be a manager at Man United straight away. I will come to this type of level or lower. And I've seen now what it can run like, and I'm much more aware again of what I'm going into.
DAMIAN: And did that put you off going into management? Or tempt you to do that?
RIO: No, I still wanted to, I've never seen a situation that happened off the field with me in my private life determine that I wasn't going to go into management and I won’t go into management. So, but that, that whet my appetite even more. I'm filled with more, I’ve got more weapons now. I know, I know what to expect.
JAKE: I wonder whether what happened with your, with your wife, your first wife, Rebecca passing away actually means that despite all the stuff that you've done, all the things you’ve seen, all your successes, again, it's something that nobody wants to go through, but you're the kind of person that learns from every opportunity or every eventuality in your life and that maybe this is a, this was a reminder at the right time for you, that after an amazing career actually family and being there now for your kids and being there with Kate and maybe that now becomes the most important thing in your life.
RIO: Yeah, it is 100%. Listen. You wouldn't wish that on anyone. Yeah? There were probably the two, three years that I had, and my mom passed away as well, it was like, phew, you can’t, that’s not on the script – shouldn’t be on the script – for anyone. But, again I've got three kids that will be relying on me to make sure that I stand up and I, I get going again. And I could be an inspiration to them. I can show them steps in life, and be that kind of person they look to for inspiration or for guidance or just to watch and learn.
DAMIAN: Can I ask you on something a bit more personal then, about that period of your life, that you want to set the example for your children in terms of habits and things like that. What kind of help did you give them then in terms of processing real profound grief like that?
RIO: I had to ask a lot of people. I had to speak to a lot of people. Um, cause it's something that I had no knowledge of. I had no understanding of it. I'd never had grief like that before. So I didn't know. I couldn't pass on information to my kids and try and guide them without being informed. So I had to ask questions. And then, that's why I've done that documentary.
DAMIAN: Right.
RIO: Because it was an informative process. It was therapeutic, and it was lots of findings to help my children which then would help others.
DAMIAN: And what were the main lessons you learned from that, then?
RIO: To communicate. Talk. “You alright today?” I never used to say that to my kids, really. It's weird. “How are you today? Is everything alright? Sit down. Let's just talk about, is, are you missing anyone or anything or do you miss anything? Is there anything that I can do to, to make you feel better? What can, what can we do? Or do you want to go out with one of us? xxx, do you just wanna go out with Kate? And spend time with just you and Kate?” Having them moments of communicating and making the kids part of that, understanding that process was huge because communicating with my children, as much as I was an unbelievable communicator in a changing room, I was a great communicator emotionally, but at home I wasn't.
DAMIAN: And again, I don't wish this to be crass cause that's something deeply personal, but do you think if you'd have had the ability to ask people that - are you okay, how are you getting on in the dressing room? - that, that dressing room xxx could have been even stronger, or done better?
RIO: Yeah. Yeah. I think I could have probably helped someone like Anderson more, if I was a bit softer. Anderson had unbelievable talent. I’d see him play against Steven Gerrard and Cesc Fabregas in his early days. He was unplayable, but he couldn't maintain that, and there were different reasons. I won't go into it, but there are different reasons why, and if I wasn't so harsh or piss-taking with him to try and prick him to get to step out of what he was being like, and if I put my arm around him more, it might have been a difference. It’s sort of learning curve, init? If I had my time again I would definitely be someone, I could put my arm around someone.
JAKE: Talking of a learning curve, we're going to finish with just a few real quick fire questions.
RIO: Yup.
JAKE: The first one is: what advice would you give to a young Rio, just starting out?
RIO: Enjoy the moment more, at the time. But then I always say, well, well that would have affected me winning more then, so why would I want to do that?
JAKE: That’s the winner’s mentality coming through again.
DAMIAN: Are you happy?
RIO: Yeah, could say that I'm probably the happiest I've ever been.
DAMIAN: So if anyone was listening to this, and wanted to access happiness, what advice would you give?
RIO: Talk, communicate. I know it’s simple, it sounds simple, but I've become a much better communicator. I’ve become a better person. I’ve communicated more probably since I've met Kate, cause she's helped me do that. She's a good communicator. You always feel lighter after, you feel better.
JAKE: Listen, to have, sort of, seen you go through that journey over the last five or six years, to hear you sit here and say you're the happiest you've ever been is absolutely wonderful.
JAKE: My final question for you is how important is legacy to you?
RIO: Massive. My biggest goal in life now, other than family and stuff, is to, yes, you, you've played football, you want to be appreciated for what you've done, and respected for what you’ve done, but I want that again to be repeated and another, another, another life. That's what I want. I want to be successful in another sphere.
DAMIAN: What’s your one golden rule to live a high performance life?
RIO: To apply yourself, correct every day. Apply yourself, and it’s not one, there can’t be one, and to set targets.
JAKE: Thank you very much, mate.
RIO: Cheers guys. Cheers.