It’s some Manchester United on Manchester United verbal smack down. (Well, some walking back of the original smack) Red Devils club legend Rio Ferdinand is known for his candid, and sometimes scathing takes on his former club.
Paul Pogba, the world’s most expensive player, is a lightning rod for criticism (the emojis have given his critics plenty of material), but you must admit that he’s one hell of a dancer.
Rio Ferdinand isn’t the first person to call out Pogba for thinking about dancing too much, and he certainly won’t be the last, but Ferdinand has now softened the hard take he had on it just ten days ago.
Jesse Lingard, scorer of both the last goal of the Louis van Gaal and first of the Jose Mourinho era, is also a dancing machine. After all, he’s an instructor at the Dab Academy. On February 2nd, Ferdinand ripped into both of them, for excessive celebration despite not having actually won anything yet.
Ferdinand, a pundit for BT Sport said:
“I’ve just seen a video of the lads dancing in the changing room. I’m all for having a bit of fun on social media and stuff. But not when you’re fifth [sic: sixth] in the league and you’re not in the Champions League positions and you’re fighting.
“You haven’t won anything yet. Until you’ve won something, you can’t go out and do stuff like that.”
“I’m all for having fun and I think part of Pogba’s appeal especially is that he is a happy, free spirit and I wouldn’t want to take that away from him. But I think there’s a time and getting the balance right.
“If that video comes out when you’ve won a cup final, I’d be the first on to be pushing it out all over the place.
“The way I see it, we’re fifth [sic] in the league, we’re fighting for a Champions League position, we haven’t got any silverware yet. I’d want to keep myself out of the radar a little bit until I get to that point.”
That was almost two weeks ago though, Ferdinand has since attended Super Bowl LI and spoken with Pogba at length.
“Since those comments, and I have spoken to Paul about them, I’ve had time to think and we are in a different era now,” Ferdinand is quoted by BT Sport.
“I was doing stuff that Alan Mullery [former Tottenham and England player] was probably going: ‘Oh my God, what’s he doing?’
“But times change. In a lot of ways, I like old school stuff in terms of my professionalism with football, but with the social media element I was over here [gestures] to everyone else at the beginning, so I understand it and what it means to the players to have a social media following and to be active on social media.
“My only issue was timing. Timing is key to everything about when you put stuff out and I’ve said that about Arsenal players and been vocal on Man Utd players — it’s about timing.”
“But we have to accept we are in a different era. I was in America last week for the Super Bowl and everything over there is geared to social media.
“The cameras are in the changing room and, me being a pundit on the other side of the fence I’d love to be able to go in there after a game, so there is going to be a shift and it takes a bit of getting used to. But the key word is just the timing which can set things and people off the wrong way.”
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times and Bold, contributes regularly to the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye publication, CGTN America, WGN CLTV News and KOZN.
Follow him on Twitter, Instagram, Sound Cloud and YouTube