Rio Ferdinand has come down heavily on heavily on former Manchester United manager David Moyes saying ‘his innovative training sessions led to negativity and confusions’.
The veteran Manchester United defender, who now plays for Queens Park Rangers, also revealed that Moyes made the team train in public parks and banned eating chips.
The Scotsman, who was relieved of his duties after just before the end of last season at Old Trafford, endured a torrid time during his brief United tenure, and former defender Ferdinand has given an insight into how Moyes lost the dressing room in his new autobiography #2sides.
Speaking about the club's preparations before United’s huge Champions League clash against Bayern Munich last season, Ferdinand said: "On the morning of the game everything seemed wrong. To practise our set pieces and stuff we went to a public park. It was bizarre! Local people started coming from all over to watch us and take photos and videos.
"It was amateurish. I mean, why not just send Bayern an email or a DVD?"
The now-QPR centre back also revealed how Moyes’s sweeping changes to United traditions left the player destabilised and unhappy.
'We complained, but nothing changed'
"Footballers are creatures of habit and for as long as I can remember at United, it was a ritual that we had low-fat chips the night before a game. We loved our chips," Ferdinand wrote in his book, which is being serialised in The Sun.
"But Moyes comes in and, after his first week, he says we can’t have chips any more. We weren’t eating badly. In fact, you’d struggle to find a more professional bunch of players than the ones at Manchester United in the summer of 2013. Moyes’s innovations mostly led to negativity and confusion," he added.
He also stressed about how routines in traditional practice games were changed.
"Under Fergie, for example, before a game on a Saturday we always played a small-sided match on a small pitch on the Friday. We loved it. We’d get into the mood for the following day by expressing ourselves, having fun, trying stuff out. You got your touch right, experimented, got the feeling flowing.
We’d done that for years and suddenly -- again for no good reason -- Moyes changed it by making us play two-touch. It was especially bad for the forwards who liked to practise their skills and shots and movements. They felt restricted. You’d come off the pitch feeling blocked, frustrated, like you hadn’t had a chance to express yourself. We complained but nothing changed," he added.
Ferdinand brands Terry's racial row against brother Anton 'idiotic'
Ferdinand also said that Chelsea captain John Terry acted like an idiot over the incident three years ago in which the skipper was accused of racially abusing the former Manchester United defender's brother Anton.
Ferdinand expressed a deep sense of betrayal at the actions of his former England teammate, claiming that his international career was wrecked in the aftermath of the incident.
Following a five-day trial at Westminster magistrates' court in July 2012, Terry was absolved of racially abusing Anton Ferdinand in a heated exchange during a west London derby at Loftus Road the previous October, The Guardian reported.
Terry had been accused of calling his opponent a 'f***ing black c***', a claim the skipper denied, telling the court that he was simply repeating words he believed Anton Ferdinand had said to him as they argued.
An FA hearing subsequently found Terry guilty of racial abuse, imposing a four-game ban and a 2,20,000 pounds fine on the Chelsea defender.
Rio Ferdinand was omitted from Roy Hodgson's England squad for Euro 2012 amid fears that the inclusion of both players might have a divisive effect, although the manager claimed it was for football reasons. That effectively signalled the end of Ferdinand's international career, the player announcing his retirement the following May.
Ferdinand said that for him the biggest idiot will always be Terry, adding that as England captain and his centre-back partner he could have saved everyone a lot of pain by admitting immediately he used the word in the heat of the moment, but was no racist.
The veteran defender said that he thinks think that's probably what happened and what the truth is, adding that he and Anton would have accepted that. Instead, Ferdinand said that Terry never gave them a chance and that was the betrayal.
© 2024 Rediff.com -