RIO FERDINAND once rang up Wayne Rooney to demand answers about the behaviour in the Manchester United dressing room.
Ferdinand and Rooney won five Premier League titles together and a Champions League trophy under Sir Alex Ferguson.
The England defender left in 2014 but Rooney remained at Old Trafford as captain.
Reminiscing on Ferdinand’s podcast, former team-mate Phil Jones said: “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.
“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.”
Ferdinand pointed to a time he furiously phoned Rooney after seeing Paul Pogba and Jesse Lingard dancing on social media as the club sat sixth.
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He said: “I’ll tell you when it changed, from the outside at least.
“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’.”
Lingard and Pogba are both no longer at United.
Pogba has had an initial four-year doping ban changed to 18-months, allowing him to continue his football career in March.
Meanwhile Lingard – who left United in 2022 – is now playing his football in South Korea with FC Seoul.
Jones ended 12 years at Old Trafford in 2023 and announced his retirement a year later – with his eyes now set on coaching.
