Rio Ferdinand shared an event that took place in one Manchester United training session and led Ronaldo to the top of the football world.
Cristiano Ronaldo’s days at Manchester United were a symbol of change and evolution. The player arrived in the Premier League when he was a rebellious teenager who liked to play around in the field. However, Ronaldo left the Red Devils as a goal-scoring machine with a borderline obsession to become the world’s best.
According to Rio Ferdinand, his development as a player was partly caused by an incident that happened back when Cristiano was 18 years of age. Having just arrived at Manchester United, the youngster was eager to show off his skills. However, his constant dribbling would often upset some of the older players.
One of United’s biggest stars back then, Ruud Van Nistelrooy, was growing more and more tired of Ronaldo’s displays on the pitch. Talking on BT Sports, Rio Ferdinand spoke about the Portuguese’s first steps at Manchester United.
“He [Ronaldo] was obviously unbelievably skillful. His mindset in the beginning when he came was ‘I’m here to entertain people’, that’s what it seemed from looking in, ‘I’m here to entertain the crowd’ and he loved it.”
Cristiano Ronaldo’s focus on football shifted over time.
Moreover, Ferdinand described the training session where it all went sour between the two attackers. In fact, Rio believes the incident was fundamental for Cristiano’s success.
“I think a really good moment for him, but he didn’t take it too well, as Ruud Van Nistelrooy was the man at Man Utd at this time, when he just came. He was the man who scored all the goals and Ronaldo had the ball wide and was doing tricks. Ruud was obviously making runs in the box and the ball wouldn’t come in. As a striker, if the ball doesn’t come when you make the run and you got to make four runs before you get it, it’s frustrating.
Ruud went crazy, screaming: ‘He should be in the circus, he shouldn’t be on the pitch!’ He walked in and Cristiano got upset and angry. He was going ‘why is he talking about me like that?’. So yeah, he had something in there. Some kids at that age would’ve gone under. The intelligence is a key factor in that.”
Ronaldo decided he was going to prove everyone wrong.
The Manchester United legend went on to explain that Ronaldo took his teammate’s words as advice and decided to improve his performance on the pitch.
“It wasn’t the media, it was overtime. All of a sudden it was about numbers, it was about statistics, goals. What’s going to make me the best player in the world? We used to say to him, take the mic out of him and say ‘you are not the real No 7 at the club, you’ve got George Best and Beckham’, and you could see him thinking, ‘how can I derail them?'”
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