#2Sides: My Autobiography (18 page)

If I hadn’t been a footballer I would probably have been a community youth worker. My Mum and Dad were always very giving people, always helping people on the estate and the estate was community-based, with loads of youth workers. So I thought: if I don’t make it as a footballer that’s what I’ll do. I’ll work for the local council with all the kids. That’s what a lot of my friends do today, so I’m sure I probably would have fallen into that kind of work myself.

As kids, we’d sit on the stairs and everyone was always saying: ‘you know what? If I ever make it, there’s no way I am going to be a sellout and disappear. I’ll come back here and help.’ We all said that and it stuck with me. All my mates from that time help in the community one way or another. A lot of them moved away from Peckham, and have different jobs, but they’ve all kept strong ties to the area we grew up in.

When I was a young player at West Ham there was loads of community work to be done and I got involved with the Prince’s Trust, visiting projects, giving out awards and stuff, encouraging kids to get qualifications and get their lives together. The Trust is
something I really believe in. It gives kids an opportunity to start a new life if they put the effort in. A few years ago I was talking about this with an old mate and he said: ‘why don’t you start a foundation yourself. You could raise a lot of money and change a few people’s lives.’ And he was right. So that’s what I’ve tried to do. It’s developed over the years and is now called the Rio Ferdinand Foundation, and we’ve helped a few thousand children who’ve gone through our projects.

We take a similar approach to the Prince’s Trust: giving kids the self-esteem, confidence and qualifications to start a new life. One aspect is to show them there are lots of different ways to make a living in fields they love. Lots of kids, for example, love sport and music and entertainment. They can’t all be the next Rio Ferdinand, or Wayne Rooney, or Olly Murs, or One Direction. But there are loads of other jobs in and around those industries. So we try to show them the possibilities, encourage them to explore and fulfill their talent, and open their eyes to what they are capable of. The way the foundation works is to help kids get their qualifications, and make it possible for them to start climbing the ladder and hopefully they’ll end up working in those fields. We have had a few kids working in film now. I produced a film called ‘Dead Man Running,’ and a few of the foundation kids worked as runners and now about six of them have jobs in the film industry.

From my point of view, being involved in work like this gives you a sense of perspective. As football players we can be moaning about silly little things: ‘Hey! Where’s the shower gel! … The pasta is overcooked!’ Like everyone else, we get absorbed in our own little worlds a lot of the time. But when I go to one of our courses and hear some of the kids telling their stories, well, that really puts things in context. I remember one boy from Hull who was at rock
bottom. He’d fallen into a great big hole and he didn’t see any way out. He’d been kicked out of his family home, he was homeless, he was drinking and taking drugs and he was suicidal. One of the few positive things in his life was that he loved football. He joined a community programme coaching and mentoring young kids and the transformation in him is just amazing! He got his qualifications and now he’s coaching football in the community and has become a mentor himself, helping younger kids get qualifications of their own and get on the ladder like he has. Now he’s doing well by himself and he’s just about to go to South Africa to do a coaching course. A few years ago this guy couldn’t even imagine travelling to a different city in England. Now he’s flying halfway across the world!

Even more harrowing, I remember a young girl from Salford talking about how she had to run away from home because she was abused sexually by her Mum’s various boyfriends and had nowhere to live. Eventually, she was taken in by foster carers and came to the Foundation. She had a lot of stuff to work through but now all the other kids look up to her and she’s an inspiration to others. She works for the Foundation as a mentor and goes around the country doing courses.

I hear those kind of stories and think ‘flipping hell. The Foundation is doing some really good work. I didn’t realise it was going to get this deep.’ I’m very happy that it does but it reminds me of what I knew as a kid on the estate. A girl got stabbed to death once on the stairwells. Someone else got shot. I knew girls that got raped by older men on the estate. This is what I grew up around. It wasn’t ever far from my front door. I know all this. But then I got detached from all that by being a footballer, and having tunnel vision, not letting anything get in the way of me becoming a professional player. You don’t think about this stuff – then all of a sudden your memories come back and you think: that shit still
goes on. And you have the urge to try and make something better for at least a few people.

I don’t often talk about it, actually. People say ‘oh, he’s only doing it for himself, for PR, blah, blah, blah.’ On the other hand, charities do need a certain amount of celebrity to focus attention on a problem and help raise money, so when you become a footballer you’ve got to use that leverage to actually get issues noticed and make people aware that there is still some shit going on that does need help. I’d love to talk about this stuff in every interview I do but I don’t want people thinking it’s about me rather than the charity, so I don’t bring it up. You have to find a balance but that’s difficult because we live in such a cynical world.

I was lucky to find a guy called Gary Stannett who’s now our chief executive. He’s been in this industry for years. The way it works is that he gives me an update probably every two to four weeks. He tells me what’s going on and we discuss new ideas. Should we run a new course on such and such? Should we work with this or that organization? I’m always in touch with what is going on and these days my Mum is involved quite a lot as well. She’s organised fundraising auctions and gala dinners in the last couple of years.

It’s a good feeling. Part of it is getting auction prizes and stuff to go to my friends in the entertainment world and getting the kind of things that money can’t buy. I might ask Jimmy Nesbitt or someone to come in and do an appearance or presentation or a speech for the charity. And these guys are like me: just normal people who’ve done well in their industry but still have got their feet close to the ground.

We run courses and projects in Salford, South London, South Africa and Uganda. We are just starting a partnership now in Northern Ireland, in Belfast. Unfortunately, I can’t get to all of them because football is my bread and butter, but when I do
get the time and opportunity I do love to get more involved and have a look at what’s going on on the ground.

It’s all part of being proud of where I’ve come from and connecting with that. I never try to hide the fact of where I have come from. I like it. I enjoy it. I love it. Growing up in Peckham made me who I am today, so I love to go to familiar places to get some Caribbean food, say, or a haircut. Certain people say, ‘What are you doing there man? You shouldn’t be around here. It’s dangerous.’ They don’t understand that I feel good in places like Lewisham in London, or Moss Side in Manchester, or Lozells in Birmingham. Why should I be scared? These places are mirror images of where I am from in London, so I always feel comfortable. There’s a big Jamaican presence, and a real mixture of people: white, black, Somalians, Africans, lots of different cultures, which is exactly how I grew up.

There was a great place I used to go to get my hair done in Moss Side called Ritchie Barbers, which is still there. For five or six years I went to a dread guy called Raheem on Tipp Street. He’s a good guy, too, a typical Manchester lad. And then I went to Chris Rock, a Jamaican guy who’s also in Moss Side. One time in Lozells me and Emile Heskey walked into a place together and people were like ‘whoa, what are you doing here?’ So I said: ‘I’ve come to get a haircut, man. What are you doing here?’

It comes to us all in the end – but it still takes you by surprise. A couple of days after Ed Woodward had sat down next to me in the changing room at Southampton and surprised me by telling me United wouldn’t be renewing my contract, I went shopping at Waitrose in Alderley Edge. As I walked to my car I heard chatter behind me. A Dad and son had spotted me and were having a conversation:

‘Do you know who that is?’

‘Yeah, that’s Rio Ferdinand.’

‘That’s right. He used to play for Manchester United.’

Used to play?
It was like hearing my own obituary. It hadn’t actually hit me until that moment that my Manchester United career was dead. But I was determined to carry on somewhere else. I love football too much to call time on being a player. Manchester United no longer wanted me but I had offers from clubs all over the world.

I opted to connect again with my first manager Harry Redknapp and signed to play under him at QPR, where I’d trained as a
teenager before joining West Ham. I told Harry: ‘I started with you and I’d like to finish with you.’ The key word of course – there’s no dodging it – is ‘finish’. Every athlete has that moment of truth where age catches up with him or her and they have to stop doing the thing they love. I’m not quite there yet, but I know the moment is not far off.

The problem is that footballers, like other athletes, are not usually prepared or educated to deal with normal life after they retire. That’s why you see the stories of great athletes like Mike Tyson and so many others who’ve worked their whole careers and when they retire, fall into financial trouble and depression. Retirement is an important subject but it’s hardly ever talked about. It is almost taboo. But I’d like to talk about it because it can hit players hard and I wish there were more opportunities for players to think about life after football and how they can prepare for what is a massive change.

Many footballers have a kind of ‘Peter Pan’ lifestyle and the end of their career comes as a shock. They think they are useless to society; they don’t know anything outside football and they don’t have the life skills to cope with new problems. But while their life as a professional footballer may be over, they’ve still got their whole life ahead of them. You usually finish football in your mid- or late 30s. But you’ll actually live to you’re mid- or late 80s – that’s another 50 years. So players need to think ahead, make investments and new careers for themselves.

I’m lucky; I am well prepared. I’ve had help and been able to think about and work towards this moment for years. I’ve got my charitable foundation, my media work, my restaurant and other businesses, my social media … if I hadn’t had all these things going on in my life when I had my injury problems and was upset over losing the captaincy of England and United, God knows
what would’ve happened to me. Maybe I would have turned to drink or gambling or depression might have set in or who knows what else. But that didn’t happen and for that I have to thank a number of people, most especially my friend and agent Jamie Moralee.

Jamie and me go back a long way. He’s a great fella who’s been through hard times but has managed to turn negatives into positives for himself and others. We first met in the late 1990s when I was a teenage defender on loan at Bournemouth and he was a striker in his mid-20s with Crewe Alexandra. We played against each other a few times after that and we ran into each other on holidays. It was always a pleasure to run into Jamie: he and I would go to clubs and pubs and have long conversations as well. Then our paths diverged for a number of years and I didn’t see him again until our mutual friend Jody Morris’ wedding about eight years ago. By then, I was in my prime at Manchester United and Jamie had become an agent. Meeting up with him again was one of the turning points in my life; it’s worked out to be a blessing for both of us.

My financial and managerial situation off the pitch at that time had become a mess, and I’d given no thought at all to the future. My football agent was Pini Zahavi, who I’d been with years and had been fantastic for me since I was a young player. Another agency handled my commercial deals, someone else booked my holidays, another guy looked after my finances, and there were other people for insurance and my property. It didn’t really make a lot of sense.

Meanwhile, since we’d last met, Jamie had gone through bad times but had become a person who used his bad experiences in football to help others. At the age of 21 he’d been considered one of the best strikers in England outside the top division. He’d had
a half-million pound transfer to Watford but hadn’t known how to handle the pressure. He lived too fast and succumbed to the temptations of overspending and over-indulgence in nightclubs and his playing career nosedived. I’ve always been lucky to have people outside football to turn to for wisdom, such as my best friend Gavin or my wife or my parents or Anton. But Jamie never had anyone to give essential advice on football and life. He wasn’t the only one to suffer from lack of guidance: a lot of my contemporaries were talented footballers who’d not had quite the career they should’ve done for one reason or another.

By the time we met again, Jamie had built an agency that aimed to help players by taking a wider and more long-term view of a player’s life and career. As we renewed our friendship, Jamie talked about player management and explained the principles of things like helping players to make intelligent investments. I saw how he was around the England boys at our hotel: all the lads liked and trusted him but what drew me to him was the clear vision he saw for me in terms of building me as a ‘brand’ and, more importantly, for helping me prepare for life after football.

Jamie persuaded me to join him in his company where all my interests and needs would be under one roof. He’d look after all that but at the same time he’d make me more business-minded and help me educate myself so I would never again leave my financial affairs in the hands of other people. A lot of footballers simply take advice from their financial advisers and sign on the dotted line when someone says ‘Don’t worry, it’s a great investment.’ I’ve made a couple of bad calls on deals here and there, but that’s life. I am now involved from start to finish in everything I do because that’s the way I wanted. And I’m grateful to Jamie for helping me to get to that point. He’s someone I liked and trusted. We’ve never looked back and I’m now an ambassador for his company, New Era.

Jamie has a unique take on some of the problems that footballers face. I’ll let him explain in his own words:

Football is such an unusual sport. There’s no other industry in the world where your earnings can fluctuate so wildly. Someone in a normal job might be earning £20,000 a year, then get an upturn and earn £26,000. That’s manageable. But as a footballer you can be playing in the Premier League earning £60,000 a week and you can’t see past the diamonds and the cars and the adulation. Suddenly, you get an injury, and even though you are still doing exactly the same job you can find yourself on £5,000 a week. But the lifestyle stays the same and you’ve suddenly got mortgages for more than you’re earning. How do you adapt? Your skills haven’t changed; you are still in the same industry and you can still be playing in front of tens of thousands of fans. So how do you mange that downturn in wages? Then at the age of 35 you have to retire and you’re unemployed. Nothing in your experience prepares you for that.

It’s no wonder so many footballers have gone bankrupt. There’ll be many more in future, too. Players think they will stay young and that football is going to be there forever. On the 28th of every month money goes in, and then comes the day when no money goes in. Suddenly all those people who’ve wanted to be your friend, who’ve been begging you for tickets for the last ten years, don’t even pick the phone up. They’ve moved onto some new star. Down the pub it goes from ‘What are you having?’ to having to buy your own drink. Around the age of 37 can be the most difficult. You look at yourself in the mirror and think: ‘Fuck! What has happened to me? Five years ago I was on TV and in the papers every week and being loved by 40,000 people in the stadium and now no one even knows who I am.’

Worst of all, you have no support network. I’ve known players who earned £30,000 to £40,000 a week for ten years and at the age of 40
they’re struggling to put a pair of trainers on their kids’ feet. An awful lot of ex-players suffer from depression or get divorced; they can’t come to terms with the fact that the adulation isn’t there anymore. So a lot of times they turn to substitutes to fill the gap in their lives where football used to be. It could be through gambling or drugs, or drinking – it happens to a lot of players and it’s not their fault. They try these fixes because that’s the only way they can get that slightly replicates the feeling of the 2.45pm adrenaline buzz in the dressing room before a game.

Ex-players need help and it should be coming from different sources. It should be the PFA, agents and ex-players who’ve been through difficult times who need to be coming back into football not just as pundits or managers but running seminars, and talking about life skills and how to deal with life after football. Agents also need to take on a slightly different role: at the end of the day, the job of every agent is to get their player from ‘A’ to ‘B’ and get the maximum amount of money they can in every particular deal. OK, but agents should also be looking out for their players in a more holistic way. Too many agents basically lose interest when the earning potential goes down in a player’s 30s then tails off completely. I would say that about 90 per cent of footballers don’t even have a relationship with their agent by the time they hit 40 because the agents are busy with the new kids on the block. And often by then there’s some bitterness or lack of communication. But that’s exactly the age when ex-players need help the most. Money is short and they really need a lot of support and guidance.

To be fair, when you’re a young player and everything is going your way, and somebody like me comes along and tries to warn you about the future, you don’t want to hear it. But sometimes the players I tried to sit down with at the age of 29 or 30 come on the phone asking for help when they are 35. And at that point it’s sometimes too late. Footballers need to understand that the game is a business. It’s just a period of their life and around the age of 30 they need to start to prepare, and get people
around them to help them develop new interests, make good investments, create business opportunities and new challenges so the minute they call it a day and retire they can thrust themselves into that. Being focused on your new life stops depression kicking in. Rio is a brilliant example of how to do this.

When I bumped into him again he was in his pomp, winning titles, playing in World Cups. Everyone knew about his footballing ability but I saw another side to him and felt he was misunderstood. He was seen as unapproachable, a stereotypical footballer from the streets who’d made a lot of money and wasn’t prepared to give anything back. I knew that wasn’t true. He wanted to do a lot of things in the community; he wanted to be understood.

You can see now how he’s developed in the seven or eight years since then! I’ve seen him become a Dad with three little children; he’s got married; I also saw him get a lot more serious in his approach to football.

In terms of preparation for life after football I think Rio is as happy as he could be when a lot of other footballers in his position are struggling. But he doesn’t just want to make sure that he’s happy in himself; he wants to work with me to raise this awareness among young players and help others. The way he sees it, if you stay strong and you believe in the people around you, collectively, you can achieve anything you want.