“YEAH, no problem.”
With those words, delivered with a characteristic insouciance, a half-dressed Rio Ferdinand sought to assure Manchester United’s medical staff that he would not forget to climb a flight of stairs at the club’s training ground and enter a small room where he would provide a urine sample in front of the UK Sport doping testers.
It took about 30 minutes, as they nervously tried to entertain the surprise visitors, for the club’s medical staff to realise that there might, after all, be a problem. They sent another message down to the dressing-room to remind Ferdinand to come upstairs and fulfil the same duties that three other randomly selected players had already carried out. To their horror, word came back that Ferdinand had gone.
This was Tuesday, September 23, 2003, the day that Ferdinand, the most expensive player in British football, made the most expensive mistake in the game’s recent history. Forgetting his duties, he left the training complex, strolled across the car park and was driven by his chauffeur into Manchester, where he met Eyal Berkovic for a coffee and a spot of shopping. The medical staff were reduced to leaving increasingly anxious messages on his mobile phone.
Tonight, 363 days on, Ferdinand will stroll on to the Old Trafford pitch for the first time in eight months after serving the suspension imposed on him for that act of stupidity or, as he puts it, forgetfulness. With Liverpool the opposition, he will be welcomed back like the prodigal son by the diehards in the Stretford End, who have always known when to throw a protective arm around their own, particularly those — Eric Cantona, David Beckham, Roy Keane — whom they perceive to have been victimised because they play for United.
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Without question, the FA made an example of Ferdinand as part of its crackdown on drugs. (Christian Negouai, of Manchester City, escaped suspension for a similar act earlier in the year.) Without question, he has suffered, losing eight months of a career that is all too brief. But the notion of Ferdinand as victim or martyr, the notion that is perpetuated by his team-mates with United and England, is absurd. They are the true victims of the affair, along with the club’s supporters whom, it seems, are not so easily fooled.
Where does one begin to measure the cost to United of Ferdinand’s forgetfulness? A starting point is the estimated £2.2 million in wages he has received during his suspension but, if Sir Alex Ferguson is correct in saying that United would have won last season’s Premiership title had Ferdinand been available, the cost soars: £1 million in extra prize-money from the Premier League, not to mention that Arsenal, as Premiership champions, will take almost £10 million more than United in guaranteed revenue from this season’s Champions League.
This is before we consider the damage to United’s image and, indeed, to the manager’s reputation, which has suffered as never before as his team have laboured during Ferdinand’s absence. And yet nobody at Old Trafford, least of all Ferguson, has dared to suggest that the player’s “innocent mistake”, was worthy of condemnation. “I’ve never had more admiration for a lad than I have for Rio for the way he has handled his suspension,” Ferguson said on Friday. “He has been absolutely terrific.”
Others at the club share Ferguson’s opinion on how Ferdinand has dealt with the past eight months, the player training wholeheartedly all week, then sitting in frustrated silence as he watches his team-mates struggle without him on the Saturday. An alternative view is that, by training hard, fulfilling certain charity obligations, staying out of trouble and popping up at regular intervals to remind us of his sense of injustice in a series of highly lucrative newspaper interviews, he has done no more than was expected of him.
Indeed, while his importance to United has assumed almost legendary proportions in his absence (when it was only in the period leading up to the start of his ban last January that he began to justify Ferguson’s £30 million outlay), the club’s hardcore support remains sceptical about Ferdinand. Last week, he talked of a “debt of honour” to Ferguson, to the club and to the supporters but, to the latter group at least, it will take more than 90 minutes against Liverpool to repay that debt.
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Apart from the perception that he is overhyped, and the dissatisfaction after a television advert for The Sun in which he ill-advisedly agreed to make a joke of his ban, there remains a sense among many supporters that Ferdinand is not a true United player, let alone a worthy successor to Keane as captain. The scepticism stems not from his Leeds United past, but from his off-the-field persona, which seems even more image-conscious than that of Beckham.
Richard Kurt, of the Red Issue fanzine, puts it neatly. “Mancunian Reds find the whole wannabe-gangsta, faux-rapper, Peckham wideboy, lothario shtick that Rio’s so good at to be a total turn-off,” he said. Taken to an extreme, it could be said to have been that shtick, that “head-in-the-clouds, so-cool-it-hurts” air, that led him to swagger out of the training ground on September 23 last year without giving the UK Sport drugs testers a second thought. Certainly it is hard to imagine Gary Neville, Keane or Paul Scholes making the same mistake.
Ferdinand, though, does have a more humble side, which he has shown with his enthusiasm for charity and community work not only in the past eight months, but as a teenager at West Ham United. It is humility that is needed now, a recognition of the debt he owes a great many people. It will not be repaid by a match-winning performance against Liverpool tonight but, in the eyes of United’s sceptical supporters, it would at least be a fine place to start.
Hair today...
September 23: A UK Sport drug-testing team arrives at Manchester United’s Carrington training ground to carry out random tests. Ferdinand misses his and is seen shopping.
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Sept 24: Ferdinand takes the test and passes but UK Sport tell the FA of his failure to attend the original test.
October 4: United brief their lawyers.
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Oct 7: The FA tell Sven-Göran Eriksson that Ferdinand must not be selected for the Euro 2004 qualifier against Turkey. England players threaten to strike.
Oct 8: Players rescind their strike threat after talks.
Oct 13: Ferdinand attends a “secret” meeting with the FA.
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Oct 29: FA charge him with misconduct.
November 13: He denies the charge.
December 19: An independent tribunal impose an eight-month suspension and £50,000 fine. United announce they will appeal.
January 17: Ferdinand plays his last game for United in defeat to Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Jan 20: His suspension begins.
March 18: His appeal fails and he is left to continue training as normal, perform charity work, enjoy a long summer holiday and grow his hair.