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Rio — My Story
by Rio Ferdinand with Shaun Custis
Headline Rio reached the pinnacle of success through sheer force of his football skills and commitment to emerge as one of the costliest and brilliant footballers from the England stable. Before he begins his fascinating first person account of the making of a football star, Rio states in the prologue why he had to write the book. “It gave ammunition to all those who believed I was one of the game’s bad boys. To them, I was the flashy rich kid, the champagne-slugging, big-mouthed, trouble-making drug-taker. A footballer without values, a thickie who just got lucky. I don’t recognise myself from those descriptions”. He says the slander campaign against him was so convincing that even he would have believed it if it were not about him. He therefore wanted to set the record straight to redeem his reputation and lead a respectable life beyond football. In recent years, David Beckam has been synonymous with the glory of England football. But before Beckam, Rio had the honour of twice breaking the British transfer record when he was first contracted for £18 million by Leeds and they then sold him to Manchester United for £ 30 million, which was an unheard as a transfer fee for a defender anywhere in the world. Rio’s story gives a close peek into the stratospheric world of professional soccer where talent and star appeal make a player soar beyond the comprehensible. And when the player hits the pay dirt, knives are out to tear him apart. Rio agrees that football made him rich beyond his imagination but not as rich or spoilt as he had been made out to be. “I am not unique. Yet, when you have made money, you are apparently no longer a human being. You are there to be ripped to pieces. I don’t know what it is — jealousy may be,” he ponders. Rio knows the value of money as he was born and brought up in a “concrete council block” on the tough Friary Estate in Peckam, South-East London, in hard conditions. This area is considered one of the “roughest estates in Europe” and he had a very modest childhood though his mum and dad “scrimped and saved” to give the family the best they could. “When I was able to buy my mum a four-bedroom house in nearby Mottingham, when I was 19, all our possessions fitted into the front room”, Rio recalls. He asserts that anyone who rises from the ranks has to battle heavy odds as the world sees his success with a “suspicious, jealous eye”. Rio admits that he has had many alcoholic binges and rollicking times with “birds” in hotel rooms, beaches, bars etc. but his confidence is rooted in the sober certitude of self-knowledge that he was not a “dude”, that he could debate on anything, from Sadam Hussain, Bush, Bin Laden, Che Guevara, Big Brother, Nelson Mandela to Martin Luther King. Rio’s eclectic sensibility is reflected in the book, never mind the excessive use of the f..k word. The strapping Rio was a “regular” guy who avoided publicity “like plague” by shunning celebrity haunts as he never wanted to be the centre of attraction, though he always ended up hogging the spotlight, for all the right and wrong reasons. But he reasons that “a man who’s never made mistakes has never made anything” and his “wonderful grounding in life” helped him weather the rough times with panache. He did enjoy the pop star kind of lifestyle, but soon realised that such a way of life had a detrimental effect on football. He emphasises that only total dedication, hard work and skill styles a footballer, and nothing else. He has some sound advise for the new kids, without sounding like a “fossil”. “When 14-year-olds turn up at Premiership clubs they come chauffeur-driven by their agents and are wearing their Ralph Lauren tops or Armani suits. They already have the best gear from Nike or Adidas and are signing for pound 500. You shouldn’t even be thinking about a wage when you’re so young,” he avers. As a boy, Rio played the game till the “cows came home”, and such hard work has stood him in good stead. Rio was a dreamer as “dreams don’t cost anything” and it was his dream to become the best soccer player that took this son of immigrants from St Lucia (in the Caribbean islands) to formidable success. The Friary Estate, where he grew up, was the “most integrated” locality in Britain with whites, blacks, Turkish, Irish, African and Caribbean living alongside. Rio says he always wanted to be like “Maradona or John Barnes” as he was mesmerised by Digo Maradona’s performance for Argentina in the 1986 World Cup, though he had always adored Brazil as The Team. He played with and against older players when he started out and used his skills to get past them, and into the England team. No surprise, it knocked the wind out of Rio’s sails when at 18, he was told he’d never play for England again after an alcohol binge in Italy. Most famously, he was dropped by England for missing a dope test — a decision that led to a players’ strike and almost cost England their place at Euro 2004 and the 2006 World Cup. And all this happened to a player who liked to “talk, eat and sleep football”, who was England’s outstanding player in the 2002 World Cup, won the Premiership and Carling Cup with Manchester United and played a pivotal role in England’s 2006 World Cup campaign. Rio My Story treats the reader to a gripping tale of the making-unmaking of a football star, which should be a must read for any football player — any sportsperson for that matter—wanting to make it big, very big.
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The book evocatively encapsulates the roller-coaster ride of a football megastar who battled heavy odds to hit the big league. Rio Ferdinand enjoyed unprecedented fame and fortune — and infamy too — before steadying himself to pen his life story to clear his name from a slew of charges, most of which he claims were concocted to scuttle a promising career. 
It was the “lowest point” in Rio’s football career when he was banned for failing a drug test, which he says, was some sort of a backroom manoeuvre by the “FA mafia” (Football Association) to deny him a chance to represent England. He admits that he got into certain situations which are hard to explain “and people won’t believe you even if you tell the truth”. The tone and tenor of the book thus set, the autobiography is a racy account of the highs and lows of Rio Gavin Ferdinand, who tell his tale “from the heart, no holds barred”, instead of ending up as an alcoholic wastrel, a la George Best. (The handsome George Best was one of the greatest football icons who played for Manchester United but never represented England in a World Cup as his career and life was consumed by alcoholism and waywardness. Best died last year due to liver failure). 