Rio feels the heat
Ferdinand faces uphill battle to prove worth to club and country
Remember when Rio Ferdinand seemed beyond the everyday stresses of big-time football?
Yes, he could clatter down from the mountain-top from time to time, miss a cross or a tackle with painful consequences and briefly wear a hang-dog expression that deserved to be patented. But it was though he was merely offering a hint of encouragement to outplayed forwards, saying 'okay, we all make mistakes', before returning to performance that more often than not could only be described as imperious.
It is different now. Being imperious isn't something you can put down and pick up indefinitely. It is, after all, a superior form of bullying and the problem is that when too many people see a weakness, the whole act is in danger.
This is the hazardous ground Ferdinand occupies as he edges into his 30s. Mistakes are coming not like the occasional shaft from the sky, but in clusters, and both his club and international managers, Alex Ferguson and Fabio Capello respectively, are finding it increasingly difficult to stifle their concern.
Growing
Indeed, there is a growing sense that Ferdinand is fighting for his place both with Manchester United and England.
We will know better in the next week or so. Tomorrow, he plays against the scarcely intimidating Blackburn Rovers, which might just provide a little respite from the heavier fire in the Premier League, but in another eight days he will be at Stamford Bridge.
For Ferdinand, it is hard to imagine a less reassuring collision than the one he faces against Didier Drogba and Nicolas Anelka.
It is less a challenge than an investigation. It is hard, but not impossible, to imagine two front players more likely to test the resolve of a defender in crisis. Two who leap to mind for the most compelling reasons are Fernando Torres and Craig Bellamy.
In recent weeks, both have posed huge questions of Ferdinand's ability to exert his old aura. Bellamy consumed a sloppy pass by the United defender at Old Trafford, swept past him and scored a stunning goal.
Torres strode easily beyond Ferdinand's challenge to score the vital goal at Anfield last weekend. It seemed as though Ferdinand was unravelling before our eyes.
Ferguson agrees that there is a worry that persistent injury (Ferdinand has played in only half of the last 44 club and international fixtures) has brought concerns for both the immediate and long-term future, and Capello has said publicly that the man who for so long was seen as the classic fulcrum of England's defence has to "sharpen up".
On Capello's lips this isn't a gentle suggestion but an imperative that could shape the rest of Ferdinand's football life.
After being pulled out of last week's Champions League tie in Moscow after just an hour, the player was brushing aside the growing criticism, saying: "I don't want to talk about criticism. In football, you get criticism and you get praise, I just don't comment either way. I feel I need 10 games under my belt of continuous playing and go from there ..."
"There" is, unfortunately, far from guaranteed and the suspicion has to be that Ferdinand must feel a nag of concern, both for his recent lapses and the fast growing confidence of his most threatening challenger at Old Trafford, young Jonny Evans.
With England, the sense that he may no longer be considered an automatic selection by a manager who has made plain his refusal to entertain the star system that has bedevilled the team -- at least, this is, if your name doesn't happen to be David Beckham -- must be especially dismaying.
No one embraced the new order of Capello with more public enthusiasm than Ferdinand.
Yes, he agreed, the new man had brought fierce discipline but it was something that everyone should embrace.
"Deep down," he said, "I think everyone realised that something had to change and what the manager is doing just cannot be argued with. It has been a very disappointing time and no one can argue with what the manager is trying to do."
Capello, no doubt, appreciated the sentiment but, like Ferguson, he didn't get to be one of the great
football men by collecting good intentions.
Ferdinand simply has to be convincing where it will always ultimately matter, out on the field and in the heat of the most serious action.
At the moment, he simply isn't doing it. Part of Ferguson's alarm at the potential loss of one of his greatest assets -- a defender who, since the 2002 World Cup in Japan, has been generally agreed to be one of the world's top five defenders -- is that current difficulties may not be entirely physical.
Ferdinand's infant lunges into film production, his liking for the celebrity life, may well have stirred some of the fears that provoked Ferguson's decision to sell Beckham to Real Madrid. The United boss has never tolerated demarcation lines in the commitment of his players. Unquestionably, a certain edge had gone from Beckham's game when Ferguson decided it was time to send him on his way.
However, the manager had also concluded that the focus of his celebrity player had slipped quite critically.
For a little time at least, Ferdinand has the opportunity to restate his value and confound those theories that his head may not quite be where it should be in the face of Chelsea's fierce title challenge and on the run-in to next summer's World Cup finals in South Africa.
He can dispel the fear that he might just be slipping into the casual mindset that once took eight months out of his career when he 'forget' to undergo a drug test. Ferguson was ferocious in his support back then, in 2003. There was, though, a most compelling reason for that. Ferdinand was producing football of the highest quality. Occasional lapses were swallowed in a stream of stunning virtuosity.
Now, Ferguson and Capello look keenly for that kind of reassurance.
They want to see a great defender regain at least some of the best of his game.
And, of course, they want to believe it might just still be there.
- Lames Lawton
Irish Independent
