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Rio Ferdinand has revealed he once rang Wayne Rooney to complain about the attitude of Paul Pogba and Jesse Lingard.
Ferdinand and Rooney were part of the extremely successful Manchester United side led by legendary boss Sir Alex Ferguson. Together, they won five Premier League titles and the Champions League.
Ferdinand would leave in 2014, though Rooney remained at Old Trafford for another three years. But those three years would prove to be increasingly difficult for the Red Devils, who have never returned to the heights they enjoyed under Ferguson.
One moment in particular left Ferdinand furious after his departure. While Rooney was still at the club, Ferdinand rang his former team-mate after seeing Pogba and Lingard dancing in the dressing room.
He questioned the United legend over a drop in standards at the club, for which Rooney had no answer. Ferdinand revealed the incident during a conversation with another former United team-mate Phil Jones.
Ferdinand was asked when United's dressing room lost its way. He replied: "I’ll tell you when it changed, from the outside at least. I rang Wazza when I saw Paul Pogba and Jesse Lingard dancing on Instagram when we were sixth in the league.
"I rang Wazza and said, 'What’s going on here? How are you allowing this?'. And he said 'You can’t say nothing man, it’s not the same anymore'. He said, 'It’s not just those two, there would be a big group looking at me like I’m mad if I said anything'."
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Ferdinand was left furious with Jesse Lingard and Paul Pogba
Jones spent a considerable amount of time both in the dressing room led by Ferguson and during their fall from grace. He retired in 2023 after suffering a succession of major injuries.
Given his experience of the downturn in fortunes, Jones delivered a withering verdict of the make-up of recent United squads. He urged the current crop of players to step up and improve their standards.
"Back then , when you look at the dressing room we had… we had so many incredible, powerful leaders that wouldn’t let anything get in the way of the team’s performance and the team winning," Jones added.
"That winning mentality was so strong and powerful that no one that came in could disrupt that. I think now players maybe don’t have the ability to call people out anymore and the power to tell them, 'That’s not what we do at this football club… don’t come in here and start acting like that, that doesn’t work here'.
"I’m not saying that happens every single day at the club but if we lost a game, we’d have a meeting the next day, not even with the coaches. The leaders would be saying, 'This is not good enough' after one loss."
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