Wayne Rooney has dished the dirt on his former Manchester United team-mates, jokingly labelling Cristiano Ronaldo as “f***ing annoying” and aiming hilarious swipes at “arrogant” Rio Ferdinand and Marcus Rashford.
No one knows Ronaldo or Ferdinand as footballers better than Rooney after they experienced a trophy-laden spell together at Old Trafford under Sir Alex Ferguson. The trio played a key role for five years from 2004 to 2009, before the Portuguese star left in a world-record £80million move for Real Madrid.
The 37-year-old, back in Manchester for a second spell, has endured a difficult return to the Red Devils despite scoring 18 goals, amid reports of disagreements with team-mates and interim boss Ralf Rangnick. But hearing Rooney’s comments may have prompted a chuckle from the veteran forward.
Rooney, now manager of Championship outfit Derby County, spoke at length about his close friends in what could only be described as a series of tongue-in-cheek remarks. The club’s all-time leading goalscorer had plenty of material prepared as he roasted his former United colleagues at a black-tie dinner event in Manchester on Saturday night, according to The Sun.
Speaking of Ronaldo, Rooney joked: “Cristiano was so good and so f***ing annoying at the same time. He is probably not as good now but he is probably just as annoying.”
He also sought to clarify his relationship with Ronaldo had not changed after the controversial sending off at the World Cup in 2006, despite Ronaldo’s infamous wink towards the Portugal bench: “He likes diving. I had no issue with Cristiano whatsoever.
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“I spoke to him in the tunnel. I said, ‘I have no issue with you getting me sent off’, because I’d spent the first half trying to get him booked for diving. I am English, he is Portuguese. When we are playing I do not give a f*** about him. He is not my mate. But when we have finished, we are mates again.”
But Ronaldo was not the only player to be targeted by Rooney’s light-hearted quips. He aimed a thinly-veiled jibe at Rio Ferdinand, widely recognised as one of the best central defenders the Premier League history, for “forgetting” his role and being “arrogant”.
“Rio is a top player, but he is just arrogant,” Rooney went on, with his tongue still firmly in cheek. “You get paid a lot of money at Man United to kick the ball into the net, so just do it. I said: ‘Do your job, and give me the ball, give Ronaldo the ball. Stop standing there messing about.’ Rio is a top lad but he sometimes did forget he was a defender.”
After relentlessly mocking his former team-mates at the £300-a-head event, ex-England striker Rooney was just as keen to highlight his own apparent faults — and labelled himself “an arrogant p***k” after bursting onto the scene as a 16-year-old starlet.
He added: “Sir Alex Ferguson tried to sign me when I was 14. He was on the phone to my mum and dad. They said, ‘Alex is on the phone, Manchester United want to sign you’. I said, ‘Tell him to f**** off. I want to play for Everton ’. Then, as time went on, I knew I had to play for Alex Ferguson. The reason I signed for United was Alex Ferguson.”
Having made his move to Old Trafford in 2004 for £27m, Rooney later went on to become Man United’s leading all-time goalscorer with 253 goals during his 13-year stint with the club. However, the Derby boss added that he is willing on Marcus Rashford — currently on 88 goals — to smash his record.
“To get the record and be Manchester United’s highest goal scorer, it is f***ing massive,” he added. “But I hope the record is broken. What I hope is that Marcus Rashford f***ing gets his head out of his a**e and goes and breaks that record. He’s a Manchester lad.”
