FOCUS ON EUROPE
everyone the same way across the board. You’ve got to read peoples’ personalities. When Moyes came to Manchester
United, we played in a tie against Bayern Munich. At the time, it would potentially be my last two games in the Champions League. I played in the fi rst leg in the quarter fi nals and played really well. Then, in Munich, we were doing a warm up in a park. We were there with lots of people watching us and he came over and tapped me on the shoulder the morning of the game and said: “I’m not going to play you.”
meant to be a footballer!” After a while, he was fi ne with it because he was booking tables at my restaurant. I was always interested in doing diff erent things and I never wanted to be pigeon holed, ever. When I was a kid I played football with my friends but I always wanted to do other things and experiment. I did ballet and gymnastics and a kid from my background doing ballet is frowned upon a little, but I was interested in seeing what was out there and doing new things. I’ve always been like that. So, when it came to retiring from football, I was lucky to have lots of great options and now I’m busier than ever.
Speed and Agility Are Crucial
To be told that in a park with loads of strangers around, it disabled me. Moyes lost me that day.
Develop New Skills
I remember I told Sir Alex Ferguson that I wanted to open a restaurant/bar in Manchester. He went bananas. Then I founded a digital magazine and he said: “What’s going on here?! You’re
I’m working on a project at the moment, which we’re trying to roll out nationwide. It’s called Legacy and it’s all about social and aff ordable housing but the meetings after meetings I’ve had to have to get through the bureaucracy is just so alien to me as a footballer. I would sit down with Sir Alex Ferguson for half an hour, shake hands and the next day your contract’s there and you sign it, off you go. To come from that and go into this, not even getting a ‘yes’ but just trying to get someone on side, the amount of meetings, talking, emails is just phenomenal. It’s a diff erent world. In terms of speed and effi ciency I’m trying to introduce that into the business world. All the start-up and digital stuff we do, speed is a big part of it – getting it pushed out to people as quickly as possible. YouTube is a great tool for the younger generation. It’s such a quick platform to be able to get things out to people, to get a message out to people, get a message or product out to people around the world.
Make the Most of Your Connections
Luckily, I have good access to a lot of 31 issue 28 Summer 2016
football players and good relationships with them. Through them I’ve met various people, so our fi rst interviews in ‘5’, our digital magazine, were with Roger Federer, Usain Bolt etc. Great people in sport, and I was in their world. Having access to them was beautiful and made things a lot quicker for us. Our growth was quick and we were ‘app of the year’ on iTunes in our second year, which was great.
Teamwork
The England team was rubbish, we weren’t good enough, because when you’re at Manchester United, Liverpool or Chelsea and you win the league you think ‘that’s my trophy. There’s no way you’re going to get it off of me’. That’s how you think of it. When I was with the England team and we were sitting at the dinner table, none of us engaged with each other properly. It was all fake. At the time, you don’t understand.
You don’t realise that it’s aff ecting the team but since retiring and coming away from it I see it now. We were all too competitive and
too involved, and loved our own clubs so much that it aff ected the England team, which is a shame really. That really needed the manager to come and sort it out but we didn’t have good enough England managers with big enough balls to deal with it.
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