#2Sides: My Autobiography (14 page)

Football is a psychological game so you’re having individual duels with opponents all the time. You’re trying to read them and dominate them.
What’s the striker thinking?
He doesn’t seem as quick as me; he’s not as strong as me; he’s not comfortable when I’m around him; I think he’s scared of me. If I go up for a header and leave a bit on with an elbow, or I rub my studs down his back a little bit … I know players who, if I do that in the first couple of minutes, they won’t come near me again. They’ll look for somewhere else to play for the rest of the match. We’re all looking for that edge. Strikers have their tricks; we have ours.

Sometimes the battle is verbal. I’m a fan of trash-talking, although it’s not something I hear very often on the field. Maybe that’s because, when I was playing for United we won most of the time and players who trash-talk and get beaten lose face. But it’s one of the things I love about American sports. The interaction you get in basketball and NFL is just fantastic. I dream about that stuff. If I’d been a striker, you’d never have shut me up. I’d have
been box office! I’d have been shouting from the rooftops. Before every game, I’d use social media and the papers to call out the centre-back I’d be facing in the next game. ‘You’ve got no chance tomorrow. I’m going to destroy you …’ And I’d keep it going in the game. I’d leave my defender for dead and get a shot off. Then I’d say: ‘Do
not
let that happen again because I will punish you next time. Look at you! Get your legs on. You got no legs. Where’s your legs?’ I’d work on his confidence. First time he touches the ball: ‘Ooh, you look nervous. The fans can see it too. They can see you’re in bits. I’m worried for you. This just ain’t the stage for you … this is too big for you.’

That’s the way to do it. I might even put my arm round his shoulder. ‘Listen, man, I’m here for you if you need me, yeah?’ There’s no point insulting the guy. ‘You’re a mug, you’re a bastard’ is water off a duck’s back. ‘I don’t think you’re really up to this level, man’ is better. Or: ‘I’m going to take it easy today. I’ll still destroy you, but I won’t go full pelt because I feel sorry for you. I don’t want to end your career.’ Next time he touches the ball he’ll be a nervous wreck.

Sadly, I could never get involved in that sort of thing because I’m a defender. As a defender it’s just asking for trouble. Let’s say for 90 minutes my striker hasn’t touched the ball; I’ve bullied him all game – he’s got no chance. I’m quicker than him, smarter than him and even if he does bring the ball down, turn and face me, I’ll take it off him. Then, in injury time, he gets a lucky deflection and the ball ends up in the back of the net! If I’ve been trash-talking him all game, he can turn round and absolutely open me up. It’s like when I played against Fernando Torres. Usually he didn’t get a sniff. But once in a while he did OK. And what happened? People said: ‘Torres ripped you apart in that game.’ You think to yourself, ‘Well, I’ve played against the geezer about eight times now and he
ain’t touched the ball in five or six of them …’ But that’s the life of a defender.

Different players have different ways of trying to unsettle you. When I was 18, I played against Ian Wright, who’d been a hero of mine when I was growing up. The ball was down the other end because we had a corner, so I was standing on the halfway line, marking him. He was kind of staring at me. Then he starts pointing at my head. He’s going: ‘Look at you, look at you. You skinny this and that, you think you’re fucking good, don’t ya?’ and he’s trying to touch my head. As I move his hand away, he goes ‘Yeah, I’ve got you! I’m
inside
your head now. I’m inside there.’ I thought: ‘cheeky bastard’. I hated him. But after the game he comes up all friendly and joking and goes ‘no, no, that’s only on the pitch, blah, blah’ I was like: ‘I don’t like this guy.’ Though I grew to be friends with him later.

Craig Bellamy had a style all his own. He used to trash-talk his own teammates. He’d say things like: ‘Look at him! What’s he doing on this pitch? He’s rubbish! … Look what I’m having to play with! … How the hell am I having to play with this crap?’ It wouldn’t be fair to tell you the names of the people he mentioned. I never knew if he was doing it seriously or was just trying to get a percentage on me. But he was hilarious.

Occasionally you get people who just get it completely wrong – like Danny Shittu at Watford. It was the first day of the season, Watford’s first day back in the Premier League, and he was in the tunnel making noise. He might just have been plain nervous, but lots of teams promoted from the Championship do that. They think shouting makes them sound big. But we were a quiet team. We preferred to go out and let our football do the talking. Anyway, Danny hadn’t quite got the hang of the intimidation thing because what he was shouting was: ‘Come on boys! They’re only human.’
We were all looking at each other as if to say: ‘What was
that
? Is he joking?’ We just smelt fear when we heard that. You’ve got to be shouting the right stuff, man!

To be fair, Watford played well. I think we won 2–1, but it was a tight game. It was often hard to play against newly promoted teams in the first weeks of the season. When the new fixtures come out, the first games I look for are always Liverpool, Man City, West Ham – because they’re my old club – and then the newly promoted teams. You want to avoid them early in the season. You’d rather play them after ten games or so, when their adrenaline’s gone. Newly promoted teams often cause a few upsets early in the season because they’re high on being in the top league.

And so, of course, are their supporters. Then again, noisy crowds never bothered me. We played at Galatasaray and Besiktas in Istanbul and those grounds were so loud before kickoff it was just bananas. But at the same time, you don’t hear what the crowd is saying. Anfield is noisy but you don’t really hear what’s going on. Celtic is probably the loudest I’ve heard. The roar there before a Champions League game was unbelievable. I know the fans at these places were trying to intimidate us, but I always found it a turn-on. The hairs on the back of your neck stand up and you look at your teammates and say ‘Yes! This is why we play football!’ Then you go out and go straight into it. I love the passion and intensity. The more fans against us, the more satisfying it is when you win. So it’s an incentive.

What bothered me was silence. I always found the hardest players were the ones you couldn’t read – the ones who showed no emotion. People like Bergkamp, Raul, Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, and Zidane weren’t just incredible technicians, they were deadpan. You could stare at them; you could try and nudge them; you could shout. And they’d just blank you. One time when I was quite
young, at Leeds, I asked Dennis Bergkamp: ‘Do you want to swap shirts after the game?’

‘I don’t swap shirts,’ he said, just completely cold.

It made me feel even more inferior to him, which is to say he just fucking absolutely stomped me out like a cigarette. I thought, ‘you bastard!’ I hated him when I played against him after that. And I stopped asking people to swap shirts. I realised it might give them an edge over you.

Like Raul, Bergkamp used to play positions where you couldn’t get near him. You couldn’t touch him or do anything to disrupt his game; all you could do was try to read his passes and maybe intercept them. But it was hard. I remember Thierry Henry making a run and scoring from one of Bergkamp’s passes. He was in that perfect number ten position and I couldn’t go out to get tight. The pass slid by. They were two great players on the same wavelength – well played – nothing you can do about it.

Shearer was another one you couldn’t read.
What’s he thinking? Have I got him now?
With 90 per cent or 95 per cent of strikers you can see if they’ve mentally thrown in the towel or not. But guys like him … you just never knew. Some wouldn’t even acknowledge your existence. You try a little flick of the head; you try to make eye contact. Nothing. And not knowing is the worst thing. It’s like when I was younger: if I got into fights it was always the quiet guys who worried me. Dealing with someone shouting and screaming? No problem. You know where he’s at. He can come at me at 100 miles an hour and I’ll be ready. But the guy who doesn’t say a word, who doesn’t even look at me, who shows no emotion … I have no idea what he’s going to do. It’s much harder.

Kevin Davies, Duncan Ferguson, Dion Dublin and Les Ferdinand. Sometimes I liked the direct battle. And sometimes I enjoyed
refusing
the battle. They’d try to run or jump into me or
want me to elbow them … so I’d just play around them. I’d surprise them by letting them take a touch then hitting them with a tackle. When I was younger I was skinny and weighed ten stone wet, so there was no point going into a strength match with a Duncan Ferguson. So I might touch him on the left side of his back as the ball’s coming into him. As he took a touch one way, I’d surprise him by coming the other side. I could do little tricks like that because I knew what I was up against. But the cold, clever, silent types? They were freaky.

Over the last few years I’ve been exploring things I find interesting outside of football. Of course football remained my top priority. But life is short and there are lots of other things I’ve been discovering. Like a lot of footballers, my outlook used to be quite narrow. I had no real interests outside of football apart from clubbing. I was such a party animal that parts of my life between the ages of about 16 and 22 are a blur. That got me nowhere. Then I got a lot more professional. I became a dad and a husband as well. My horizons widened.

I never planned to get involved in the fashion business or in social media, or have a magazine and interview musicians and film stars. In each case, I just followed my instincts and was curious about how the world worked. For instance, I started a restaurant purely because one day a friend said: ‘do you fancy starting a restaurant?’ He said a place had become available in Spring Gardens. Was I interested? It was an Indian restaurant we both knew because we’d eaten there. It was a nice place, but it had an obvious flaw for the centre of Manchester: it didn’t sell alcohol! The owner wanted to get out of a lease so we looked into it and
said OK, yeah, we’ll take it over. We decided to turn it into an Italian and call it Rosso. That means ‘red’ of course, as in United, but the name doesn’t hit you over the head with the fact. I didn’t want to put my own name on it, or make it associated with the club. I wanted it to succeed on its own terms or not at all.

No one in my family had ever been involved the restaurant business before – but that was part of the attraction. It took a couple of years before it became successful and now it’s doing well. The food is good, the place is always full and it’s probably one of the most vibrant restaurants in Manchester. It even got voted Restaurant of the Year in the North West. When I was in Manchester I might go there twice a week or once in six weeks. But it’s a great building with lots of character and I enjoy it there. The fact that it makes money is not the buzz. For me, seeing people enjoying themselves, and being able to sit with them and enjoy the food and the atmosphere in your own restaurant, is special.

Of course, I had a bit of a battle with the manager about it. As soon as Sir Alex got wind of it he called me in and said, ‘What are you
doing?
I don’t want you to have a restaurant. You’ll be sitting at a bar with alcohol and all that stuff. You’re a
footballer
….!’ To his ears it didn’t sound respectable. Maybe he thought I would turn into an alcoholic. I suppose everyone at the club remembers George Best and his boutique on Bridge Street, and other players who had pubs or nightclubs. I tried to put the manager’s mind at rest. I said, ‘I’m not going to be making pizzas or serving drinks! It’s just some of my mates who are going to use my name and build it up. If it works, it works, if it doesn’t it’s just something that we tried.’

I’d thought it all through carefully. The most important thing was that it wasn’t going to affect my football. In fact it would do the reverse. Instead of clubbing or going on betting sites or
whatever, it would give me a nice interest. I’d reached the age where I knew exactly how to get myself into the best possible state of mind and physical condition to play. Football 100 per cent came first, and nothing ever interfered with that. Previously I’d always said ‘no’ to business propositions. But by my late 20s, I had worked out exactly what I needed to do to prepare for games. I knew what would be a distraction for me and what would be good for me. And at that point I said OK I can concentrate on outside things
as well
. I’m not sure I ever entirely won the gaffer round but once I had explained myself he never did anything to stop me.

In his book he talks about not approving of me doing stuff outside of football but he gets the story about P. Diddy slightly wrong. I’d done a programme with him before and he’d said he’d give me a shout when he next came to England. While we’re in Denmark for a Champions League game P. Diddy calls me to say ‘Hey, I’m in Copenhagen performing, can you come to the show?’ I said ‘no’ because we had a game the next day so he said he’d come to the hotel, to meet the lads. It’s a PR opportunity for himself obviously. He wanted a picture with the team. So I said alright and immediately went to the manager. I told him the idea and he’s going ‘
Pee
Daddy? What? Who?’ He’d never heard of him. Meanwhile, all the lads were going, ‘Get him over, man! We want a picture!’ I said, ‘Boss, the lads want to see him and he wants to come over but he just wants to take just a picture and then he’ll get off.’ And he went ‘Yeah, OK, no problem.’ So that’s what happened. He came, shook the gaffer’s hand and everything, and that was that.

Ferguson saw the interviews and the magazine as a distraction. If I had a bad game or a couple of bad games he’d pull me in and say: ‘What do you want to be? A fucking TV star or a singer … or a footballer?’ And I kind of laughed it off because I knew it had
no bearing on the way I was playing. I never let it interfere with training or preparations for a game in any way.

My #5 magazine and fashion stuff was much more of an experiment, more of a case study.

I started the magazine in 2010. Pete Smith at New Era suggested it. I said, ‘Are you mad? Who’s going to buy a magazine that I produce?’ He said, ‘No, no we’ll do it online and we’ll do it for free.’ I said: ‘how can you print a magazine for free?’ And they explained the concept: it costs massively less online than printing hard copies. There is really no risk involved. And then you see how many people want to upload it. So I said, ‘OK, all right. Let’s try it.’ I liked that it was free and environmentally friendly. So I thought, ‘Let’s have a go.’

At first the idea was just to try doing three editions over a six month period and see what happens. I would interview stars and those would be the main cover stories. The rest of the magazine would be written by other people. So the first one I did was 50 Cent, who at that time was the biggest rapper on the planet. I knew someone who knew him and he was in London, so I went and met him and we got on really well … and the rest is history. Since then I have interviewed sports stars, musicians, people in film and fashion and I’ve loved every minute of it. I enjoy being out of my comfort zone. I’d never interviewed anyone before but here I was meeting people I respected from different fields. The interviews were filmed and I just asked what interested me: how did you get where you are? What stimulates you now? How do you prepare for a concert? What is your process? How do you come down after doing a concert with a hundred thousand people screaming at you? I have enough trouble getting back to normal after the high of playing a game of football: how do you cope?

I get to meet some of my heroes. These are people I’m genuinely thrilled to meet. Of course I get nervous because I’m a fan as well. My most nervous time was when I met Roger Federer the day after he’d broken the Wimbledon record for the most number of wins. I actually went in and sat with him and interviewed him for an hour! A whole hour! He loves football, he’s seen me playing and he made me feel at ease. There was good banter between us. He’s so graceful in everything he does. I love the way he carries himself, and there’s a brilliant coldness about the way he plays and wins. The way he’s sustained that over a long period makes me respect him even more. He’s beautiful to watch, and I love that his one-handed backhand is a throwback to an earlier era. I think he saw my feelings of awe – I couldn’t hide it – but he was warm and calm and gracious. And then he goes: ‘If you ever want to come back or if you ever want some … some … um … my tennis shoes or anything like that just let me know.’ And I’m thinking, ‘Shit! This is
Roger Federer
!’

When I met Will Smith I saw the difference between a star and a
superstar
. You get 10 minutes with that guy and not a second longer! But he’s warm, and he’s
really
with you for that 10 minutes. Sometimes we’re scheduled to do a 20-minute interview with someone and I get an hour. I could have sat with Jamie Foxx a whole day. Mickey Rourke’s had an unbelievable life, so to read his story then be able to sit down and speak with him was unbelievable. When I met Usain Bolt after he broke one of his records I asked him what he eats and he goes: ‘Chicken Nuggets. And I love dumplings.’ I was like ‘
What?! Really?
’ It was just like the people who ask me how I get around London and when I say ‘By tube’ they go ‘
What?! Really?
’

Meanwhile, we’d called the magazine ‘#5’ because that’s my number, and then that became a brand in its own right. It was an
idea I had jointly with New Era. We thought: can this become a brand? The thinking went: we’ve got a logo, now what happens if we put it on something … like a cap? Why caps? They’re simple. No one needs to try one on because one size fits all. And this was the experimental bit: ‘let’s do it purely on social media with no advertising or PR at all.’ This was just about the time everyone was getting into Twitter, early 2011 or so. I happened to see a game on TV when Ray Wilkins was commentating and he kept saying ‘stay on your feet … you gotta stay on your feet … he has to stay on his feet there.’ He must have said that about 25 times! So I made that a hashtag of it. Whenever I saw someone lying down in an airport I’d take a picture, tweet it and put the hashtag on it: #stayonyourfeet. Someone did a slide tackle: #stayonyourfeet. I did it everywhere, and it became a meme.

When we went on tour to Asia I had my first foray into fashion: I had a load of ‘Stay On Your Feet’ T-shirts made. Amazingly, they sold out almost immediately, just through social media. Everywhere we went people were wearing the shirt and shouting in the stadium: ‘stay on your feet, Rio!’ I thought ‘This is mad! It caught on so quick!’ We’d sold so many T-shirts out of nothing so we thought: let’s see if we can do something else through the magazine. We already had 500,000 subscribers and I had 2 million followers on Twitter, and about the same number on Facebook, so … we thought: ‘Let’s go!’

So I started promoting the caps. When I did an interview I’d give the person a cap. Some put them on. Some didn’t. I wouldn’t ask them to do it but I could say ‘Here’s a present …’ Jamie Foxx sat the whole interview with it on. Lewis Hamilton too. Nicole Scherzinger went and bought one! It had just been an experiment, but all of a sudden it was taking off. Every time we bring out a new colour cap it sold out. Next, we tried hoodies – and they sold
out too. One time I went to Dubai and Tinie Tempah says to me, ‘Rio, man, where’s my hoodie?’ While I was filming a World Cup preview with Olly Murs for the BBC he goes: ‘Rio, I’m going on holiday with four mates and we all need caps!’

It’s all gone so well that now I’m restructuring the business to do it properly to take things to another level. I’ve got all the big high street shops interested. Buyers from department stores are saying, ‘Rio we want your track suits and your T-shirts!’ But we have to take it carefully and make sure the clothes are good enough before we take that step.

We’re just trying small runs of stuff at the moment to see if there’s an uptake. Of course, there’s a team around me at New Era who manage things day to day. But in terms of ideas, colours and styles I have to be involved.

Is this a new career? Probably not. With the fashion and the magazine and all the rest I’m still just exploring and playing. People give me ideas all the time. ‘Do this,’ or ‘Dude, put money into that,’ but at the end of the day it’s my name and my reputation at stake. So far it’s going well and hopefully it will continue to grow. But if it doesn’t, we’ll move on to something else. The main thing for me is that it’s a good experience, learning about business, media, PR and so many other things. I never had time to go to college – but I’m learning my way.