Ask any Manchester United fan, Rio Ferdinand is a club legend.
The centre-back was undoubtedly one of the most talented defenders of his generation and his transfer remains one the club's best pieces of business in decades. But the controversial switch from Leeds United was not an easy one to push through.
With the two clubs sharing a bitter rivalry across the years, the Elland Road outfit were initially uneasy about negotiating with United for the former West Ham defender. Then-Leeds chairman Peter Ridsdale dug his heels in and played hardball and at times it looked as though United would miss out on the talented centre-back.
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The Yorkshire side had been fighting among the upper echelons of the Premier League with a talented side featuring the likes of Mark Viduka, Harry Kewell and Alan Smith, and had become one of the division's strongest sides off the back of increased spending by Ridsdale. The club harboured ambitions to challenge United, and so there was a real wish to keep hold of their best players rather than lose them to rivals.
But after the club failed to qualify for the Champions League for a second successive season in the 2001/02 campaign, manager David O'Leary was sacked, with former England boss Terry Venables replacing him. Leeds needed to balance the books following their financial gamble and their star players started being linked with moves away - among them were reports linking United with a move for Ferdinand.
But the move proved tricky, not least because of the Roses derby rivalry between the clubs but because Ridsdale genuinely did not want to part with the England defender. And it fell to Rio to march into the chairman's office and demand the move himself.
"I, fortunately enough, was never put in a position where I had to go in all guns blazing, but trust me, if I'd needed to I would have," he told BT Sport.
"At Leeds I went and sat in Mr Ridsdale's office and just sat there and waited for about five, six hours and said 'I'm not going until you sort out the deal for me to go to Man United'.
"I didn't go public, I didn't need to go. We got to a compromise, we got to a situation where he felt he was getting the right part of the deal and I got my opportunity to go to Man United.
"But I was adamant I wanted to go because that was the right time and the right move for me.
"If he had said no and put a firm wall up I reckon I probably would've gone public with that because I feel, as a player, it's a short window in terms of being able to be successful.
"10 - 15 years if that. You've got to make decisions that are a little bit selfish. As a fan and as a football club I get that you might not understand that, but it works both ways."
The then-23-year-old signed a five-year contract and cost United £30million, an offer which the cash-strapped Whites could not turn down. But the move upset Ridsdale, who said at the time: "I'm not happy as a Leeds fan because I didn't want him to leave.
"But when your captain says he wants to leave you have to listen - and I think we've got the best price available."
The Leeds chairman was not the only fan who wasn't happy about Rio's transfer, and the former defender has even claimed that he had police phone him telling him not to return to the city for a while in the wake of the controversial move.
Explaining last season why he didn't see then-Leeds midfielder Kalvin Phillips joining Manchester United in the summer transfer window, Ferdinand explained: "This is the difference between me and him - he’s a Leeds boy. He can’t set foot back in Leeds, his family have to move out if he goes from Leeds to join Man United.
"Trust me, I had the head of Yorkshire Police ring me when I left for Man United saying 'don’t come back for a year'. And I had only been [at Leeds] for 18 months."
Fans were so incensed that Ferdinand had to shut down a bar he had only recently opened in Leeds.
He explained: "I had a bar that was only just opened in Leeds and when I signed for Man United, the head of the police rang me. I don’t know how he got my number, but he rang me and said ‘just to let you know, I’d advise you don’t open your bar. If you open your bar there will be people coming down to mash it up, we’ve got intel that they’re looking to destroy your place’. So that place got put to sleep, never opened again, dormant, gone. And then I started understanding the rivalry.
"When we went back to Leeds with Man United for the first time, we actually got beat 1-0, I think. I had to have a police escort to get into the ground because where the bus used to park to get into the ground you have to walk a little bit and, yeah, it was madness, crazy."
While Leeds fans could never wrap their heads around Rio's decision to leave Elland Road, the move was vindicated by the silverware he won while wearing the red of United. Ferdinand won six Premier League titles along with the Champions League and three League Cups, making 455 appearances for the Reds.
He may have had trouble returning to Leeds following his switch to Old Trafford, but Rio will always be welcomed back with open arms by United fans.
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