#2Sides: My Autobiography (17 page)

I was a bit of a difficult so-and-so for a couple of years after Mum and Dad split up. They’d grown apart but they never explained anything to me and I blamed Mum for it. I thought it was her decision. One day when I was brushing my teeth and washing my face in the bathroom my Dad came in and said: ‘I’m going to be gone for a little while.’ I replied ‘All right’ and didn’t think anything of it. A few months then went past. ‘Is he coming back or what?’ I asked and Mum said ‘No.’ After that I made life difficult for her. I wouldn’t listen, I was a bit disruptive and then she … One night I heard a man’s voice. It was in the middle of the night about two or three years after Mum and Dad split up. We lived in a tiny flat so I could hear it clearly. I came out of my bedroom and walked into the living room to see a man sitting on the sofa and my Mum sitting on the other sofa. I went ‘Who’s this?’ And she went: ‘just go to bed. I’ll speak to you in the morning,’ and I said, ‘No, just get this guy out of the house.’

From that day I was difficult. I told my Dad straightaway and he went mad. There were a few scenes. It was difficult for my Dad to see another guy in the house with his kids. Now I’ve got kids of
my own I can understand why he was upset. I just never gave the new guy, Peter, a chance. I’d say to him, ‘It’s my remote control. Give me that. It’s my TV. You’re not part of this house’ and stuff like that, which put Mum in such a bad position. She’d met someone after a few years of being alone and I was making it ultra difficult for her to have a relationship. One day at my auntie’s she just broke down and said, ‘Listen, you’ve got to understand!’ That led to a long talk about relationships and how things just don’t work out sometimes. And it was just … it was one of those good conversations and I felt bad. I thought ‘I’ve been acting like an idiot.’ From that day on, while I didn’t automatically like the guy, I was going to respect my Mum’s decision that she needed to have a life as well. It was a big moment really.

A couple of years later my Mum married Peter and I made a speech saying ‘listen, as long as you look after my Mum and make her happy, then I’m happy.’ And he has done. He’s been perfect for Mum. He’s been brilliant. My Mum couldn’t have met anyone better. And we get along great with him now. He’s bought into the family: he’s a football fan now, he loves Man United and he’s great with my kids. He’s become a terrific grandparent. Meanwhile Dad met someone else too – Lisa – and I must admit I made it a lot easier for her to get into the family. At first I had reservations about her. ‘She’s not my Mum. What’s she doing here?’ But it was a quicker transition than for Peter. So the family is much bigger now. There’s me and Anton of course. Then there’s Sian and Jeremiah, Mum’s children with Peter, and Lisa’s children with Dad who are Chloe, and the twins Anya and Remy. And I have to say Lisa’s been great as well.

Ultimately, I think it’s all broadened my understanding. I know why there were so many problems in the past, and I understand a lot more about how the dynamics of relationships affect kids.
When my Mum and Dad were together I always used to say I was the lucky one in my class. Until they split up, and then I was thinking: my Mum and Dad are the same as everyone else’s.

Dad could quite easily have gone and lived in another part of the country. In fact he thought about going back to the Caribbean. But I was lucky that he made the conscious, concerted effort to stay around. He moved to the next estate so although he was no longer in the house he was still ever-present in my life – so, emotionally I wasn’t too badly affected. Perhaps if he had moved away I would have had a bigger reaction. Dad went out and worked all the hours God sent, all over London, and was always around for me. Sometimes you see kids who turn to drugs and drink and various vices and, when they look back, they blame it on the moment when one of their parents walked out and left them. So I’d say I was fortunate, in that he didn’t give me that excuse.

I never believed in marriage until I had kids of my own because my Mum and Dad never got married. I thought that was the norm. But now I realise it’s a good thing for everybody concerned. And that’s why I got married, and because I love Rebecca, of course! I never did counselling or therapy or anything like that. I just worked it out myself, really. But now I’m a Dad. I’ve got a lovely family and I’m totally committed to sticking with that and making that work. I’m sure that comes from my own experience as well. Mum looked after other people’s kids and looked after us, and moved heaven and earth to make sure we got to places on time. We went to school. We went to youth clubs. My auntie ran a youth club in New Cross not far from where we lived and Mum made sure I got there. Mum cooked and cleaned, and made sure I didn’t miss out on anything. She was just a massively good, hard-working, devoted mum.

No one really got married in my family so it was never really on my agenda. But then I had kids and what bigger commitment is there than that? I don’t know what it was but it just seemed like a natural progression to get married. I think when you’re in love with your kids and your family life and your girlfriend – as Rebecca was for me at the time – it is just a seamless transition.

I always feel like I’m still pretending to be an adult. It’s like the old saying that you never grow up. You never feel that you’re completely grown up is where I’m at. I think that keeps me young! You don’t get a book that tells you how to be a parent. No one tells you how each kid should be fathered. It’s all work in progress. But when I look at my three kids and I sit there and think, ‘wow! How have I created these?’ It still feels like it was only a couple of years ago that I was back at school. Time flies when you’re having fun. I love being a human climbing frame for my kids to clamber all over me. I love how, no matter what’s happened at work, no matter what’s happened in a game, you come home and the kids just look at you as their dad. There’s nothing else. I love looking after them. The responsibility of having to take care of someone else is a nice thing to have. But Rebecca is the one who makes it all function. She is a great Mum. She’s the one who makes sure everything is in the right place and at the right time. She’s the one who makes sure the kids are up and doing what they are meant to be doing and eating and bathing and going to sleep. She’s the one who makes it all work.

I still look at the young boys now and listen to their stories and think, yeah, I wouldn’t mind once every few months going out and partying. But I had my time. I had a good time doing that but that was a different phase in my life and this is a different time now. It corresponds a bit to the change in my football life as well. The more professional I’ve got over the years coincided with having kids. I’m not stupid enough to think that everything’s perfect
now or that I’m perfect. I’m going to make mistakes and wrong decisions in future. I know that. But I try and learn.

One of the great things about Rebecca is that she’s not one to talk about football. She doesn’t care about it. If you’ve won she’s happy, but she doesn’t want to know the details and that suits me. It’s easier for me because I can switch off when I come home. She’s never been interested in fame or anything like that or the WAG lifestyle. She doesn’t want to be in the papers or do photo shoots. And that’s good, too. It avoids putting any more pressure on the kids. We’ve been together a long time now. We met when she was 18 and I was nearly 21. We’ve had our ups and downs like every relationship. But we’ve had a great time and grown up together. She’s matured, I’ve matured and we’ve grown into being parents now. We look at each other sometimes and think, wow, we’re actually great at this! I thought we were just still playing at this, that it’s a game … but it’s not.

Who is the best player in the world? New pretenders will stake their claims. But for the last few years only two names have been worth serious consideration. One of them is a friend of mine. The other is a genius I faced in the two most painful games of my career and I’ll never forget how good he was.

Before I give my verdict on Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, the most important thing to say is that they are both extraordinary professionals. They didn’t get where they are without years of dedication. Some kids envy their trappings of success – money, cars, beautiful girlfriends and all that. But you have no chance of becoming a star if that’s the stuff you’re thinking about. Leo and Ronnie are fantastic examples of guys who are motivated by something else: passion for the game, the desire to improve, and the determination and hunger to work hard and improve to make it happen. I think both of them have incredible determination, but show it in different ways.

Ronaldo is the best example of a
self-made
great player. Don’t get me wrong. He was born with fantastic natural talent. But it’s
his work ethic that took him to the top. He is one of the hardest workers I’ve ever seen. I remember watching him soon after he arrived in Manchester. After training he would pick up a bag of balls, and almost shyly walk over to the other pitch, as if he’d be embarrassed if people knew he was going to do extra work. Then he’d put little weights on his ankles and practise free kicks, step-overs and other skills. After a while you started seeing the results. He was getting more powerful, growing into his physique. He was a workaholic, but it didn’t stop there. He lived a couple of doors up from me so I’d see him at his house. He had a special chef to cook the right type of foods. He invested in that himself. And he had a swimming pool so he could do special stretching exercises. Everything about his lifestyle was geared to becoming the best footballer in the world, which he wanted to be and which he achieved.

He learned. When Ronaldo first arrived Ruud van Nistelrooy was the main man at United. Everyone loved him because he scored so many goals. Then this little young, skinny Portuguese boy with funny hair comes along with his step-overs and dancing and the crowd loved him. One day in training Ronnie was taking the mick out of the left back, beating his man then going back and beating him again. Ruud was furious and started shouting: ‘Cross the fucking ball! How can I make runs when I don’t know when you’re going to cross the ball?’ Ronaldo was like, ‘But I’m doing skills, what’s wrong with you?’ But Ruud said, ‘I can’t play with this guy,’ and walked off. There were a couple of incidents like this before Ronaldo understood: he realised you’re always going to be respected more for being effective than being a show pony. It takes intelligence to understand that the game is not all about skill. I used to tell him to concentrate on end product. I loved the stuff he did. But I liked it better when it produced a cross or a shot.
He went on to become more than effective. He became lethal. He developed every aspect of his game. He had all the attributes. If he could put it together he was going to be devastating. And he’s never stopped developing. He still keeps adding new things to his game because he’s constantly thinking about it. He’s always analysing: ‘What is going to make me the best player in the world?’ And he worked out what that was: assists, goals, being
decisive
… and turning up in the big games. That’s why he breaks records and why he was voted World Player of the Year in 2014.

Some people think he’s arrogant. Rubbish! Listen a bit more closely to the criticisms and you’ll see what they’re really about. Of course there’s a debate to have about who’s the best. But some people say Messi purely because Ronaldo is good looking. Their wives and girlfriends are probably thinking ‘I’d love to go out with Ronaldo,’ but they don’t think that about Messi. So he’s not a threat! Ronnie’s got all the cars, all the money God can send. Good looking. Physique? Ridiculous! What more does he want? He can’t be the best player in the world as well! So I can’t say he’s the best as well! Jealousy is what it boils down to sometimes.

Everybody who slags Ronaldo off is actually doing him a favour. He almost needs to have people saying Messi is better. It drives him on. You see it in the defiant way he celebrates: ‘I
told you
!’ People mistake that for arrogance. It’s more like: ‘I told you! You better believe in what I’m doing.’ It’s not ‘I’m better than everyone else!’ He’s just not like that as a person at all.

People didn’t understand his celebration at the end of the 2014 Champions League Final when he scored the penalty to make it 4–1 for Real against Atlético, and then took his shirt off. People complained, ‘Oh, he shouldn’t have done that. He is taking attention away from the other players.’ No, he’s not! You don’t know. That celebration was pure emotion. He would’ve been
thinking, ‘If this final finishes and I’ve not scored a goal, I will look at that as an embarrassment.’ He wanted to make an impact on that game. That’s what I saw in his reaction. It was: ‘I’ve scored! Now I can celebrate properly!’ That’s the sign of a
great
player not an egotistical one. In my experience he’s not self-centred or arrogant at all. At United he was always involved in the jokes. Whatever was going on in the changing room, he’d be involved. Quinny – Quinton Fortune – used to batter him about his hair, clothes. But he’d always fight back. ‘Oh you English have no style.’

Between Messi and Ronaldo, Messi is the more naturally talented. He’s a genius, a magician in a way that Cristiano isn’t. You can tell the difference from the way they score goals: power or precision. Messi’s goals are like fine art. He curls the ball in. He’s measured, precise, delicate. He’s all about guiding the ball into the corners. Ronaldo sometimes hits the ball and he wouldn’t even be able to tell you where it was going, except that it would be somewhere on target. He’s
forcing
that ball into the back of the net. They’re both great to watch, just different.

If you wanted to build the prototype of the perfect footballer, Ronaldo would be it. He has physical power, incredible pace and uses both feet whereas Messi is mainly left footed. He scored a header against us in the Champions League but that is very rare for him. Ronaldo scores every type of goal: long-range, poaching, free kicks, penalties, headers like Duncan Ferguson or Bob Latchford. His flying header against Roma in Rome was just crazy. He jumps from the edge of the box, and heads it on the penalty spot. It took your breath away. And it was fearless too: he got hurt scoring that one. And his goal against Porto was even more amazing. I remember realising he was about to hit it and thinking: ‘No, no, that’s impossible’ because he was 40 yards out. And it went into the top corner!

With Messi, you get the feeling that this guy was always destined to be one of the best in the world. He’s obviously had to work hard but everyone knew about Messi before he even played in the first team. I remember Ronaldinho – who was the best in the world at the time – saying in an interview that this kid was going to be the best. That was unprecedented: the world’s top player passing the baton like that. On Messi’s debut, Ronaldinho was just trying to put the kid in on goal to score a goal every time he got the ball!

But Messi has had to fight too. He is small. He had a lot of injury problems at a young age. But he’s so good technically he can get past you in many different ways. He can unbalance you with just a drop of the shoulder. His acceleration is phenomenal. And he’s still taking the game to another level, statistics-wise and by dominating games and scoring ridiculous goals. They said 2014 was a bad year for him: he scored more than 40 goals and led Argentina to the World Cup final! He’s more reserved whereas Ronaldo has the showmanship to be the main man, to be the guy that everyone sees and looks at, and who shows all of his emotions on the pitch.

Neither of the two dominated the World Cup in Brazil as they would have hoped. Messi got to the final but he didn’t really set things alight. He won the award for best player of the tournament although he obviously wasn’t the best player. Maybe it was something to do with the sponsors. He looked almost embarrassed when he had to go up and collect his award after the final. On the other hand, he definitely had a better World Cup than Ronnie who would have had targets he wanted to achieve, and he never got anywhere near them. I spoke to him after the tournament and I could sense he was gutted, though we didn’t talk about it directly.

So who’s the best? It’s still hard to say. If I was the manager and was going to buy a player for Man United I’d go for Ronaldo
because he’s accustomed to the Premier League, and he scores all types of goals. He can score a goal that Duncan Ferguson can score. He can score a goal that John Barnes would score. He’d score a goal that Gazza would score. He does it all.

But then I’m biased because I played with Ronaldo for years. Thierry Henry, who played with Messi at Barcelona, had a different take on it. When interviewing him during the World Cup for my #5 magazine I asked him who was better. He said he respected and admired Ronaldo but then told me why he thinks Messi is the best … There was an incident during a practice match when Messi got fouled and the coach, instead of giving a free kick, said to play on. Messi was livid, so when the ball went back to his goalkeeper, he ran back and demanded it. The goalkeeper rolled him the ball, and Messi then proceeded to run through the entire team and score in anger. Thierry said that was what he used to do in the playground at school. I did stuff like that too against little kids. But Messi did it against some of the best in the world: Yaya Toure, Puyol, Iniesta, Xavi, Busquets. And it wasn’t just that one time. He did it a couple of times. Thierry said: ‘Can Ronaldo do that?’ I said, ‘Well, I’ve never seen him do that.’ Thierry played with Zidane and Ronaldinho but they never did anything like that. He said, ‘That’s when I knew Messi was different to anyone we’ve ever seen.’ I have to admit I was too stunned even to say ‘Wow.’