Micah Richards has credited Manchester United legend Andy Cole with giving him “life changing” advice early in his playing career.
The two were teammates at Manchester City at the start of Richards’s senior career as the defender – who went on to make 245 first-team appearances for the club – was promoted to the senior squad for the 2005-06 campaign, when Cole joined the Citizens from Fulham.
Richards has now detailed how legendary striker Cole, one of the Premier League ’s deadliest marksmen of the 1990s who spent seven years at Old Trafford, gave him an invaluable lesson. The revelation comes in the former defender’s new book ‘The Game: Player. Pundit. Fan.', which is published later this month.
Having just turned 17 at the time, Richards was elevated to stardom early in his career and he swiftly established himself as a regular in City’s first-team squad. Yet he has suggested by the tale that he may now have been ready for all the responsibility and pressures that such status brought.
“One day, when I was still spending money like it was about to run out, I came into training with an all-diamond watch. It had cost me a fortune and I was keen to show it off,” explained Richards, in a section of his new book that publicised by the Mail.
Richards continues: “Andrew Cole was unimpressed. He asked: ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ I was offended. I started to argue with him, to tell him not to criticise, but he didn’t rise to it. He just asked me where my parents were living.
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“They were still in their old house in Chapeltown, I said. ‘And how much would that house cost?’ he asked. I didn’t know, but I was pretty sure a watch made entirely from diamonds would make a decent deposit. ‘And yet you’re buying this,’ he said, pointing at the watch.”
It was at this juncture that Richards, who is now one of the most popular pundits in the UK, goes on to explain that rather than criticising him – Cole was offering him advice that would entirely change his mindset.
Richards continued by recalling Cole’s guidance to him: “‘If you’ve done what you need to do, buy whatever you want,’ he said. ‘But don’t buy all this stuff first when you don’t have all the other stuff lined up. Don’t fall into that trap.’”
The Sky Sports pundit and Man City ambassador adds, when thinking back on the talk: “I don’t think I ever told him, but that speech changed my life. It was a kick up the a***. I don’t know why he singled me out for help.
"Maybe he saw me as a younger version of himself: a young black kid who was going to have to work out what to do with all of the money coming his way. It was a little bit of harsh reality that I needed. I made sure, from that point on, that my future and my family’s future was secure — and I bought my parents a house.”
