Rio Ferdinand has revealed there was a player who Paul Pogba idolised during his time in Manchester United’s academy and Sir Alex Ferguson believed would become the club’s greatest ever player.
United spent a staggering £25.6m on Rooney in 2004 when the forward was just 18 and he went on to become the club’s record scorer with 253 goals.
However, Ferguson believed an attacking midfielder, Ravel Morrison, would have been the Red Devils greatest ever player – as he kept a supremely talented Paul Pogba in his shadow in the club’s youth academy.
Now 25, the controversial midfielder saw his career in Manchester come to an abrupt end in 2012 when Fergie had had enough of his wayward ways, which landed him in trouble on too many occasions.
Since then he has played for West Ham and spent time on loan at Birmingham, Cardiff and QPR before Lazio took him to Italy in 2015.
It hasn’t worked out there either and he was even loaned to Mexican side Atlas, with the Italian side now understood to be the latest side to wield the axe.
Morrison has been unable to settle at one club since leaving Man United in 2012 and now Lazio look set to cancel his contract.
“I was at [United] when he was there,” Ferdinand told talkSPORT. “Probably the most gifted, the most naturally gifted young kid I’ve ever seen.
“Sir Alex Ferguson, I remember, he called me and Wazza [Wayne Rooney] over one day and said: ‘look at this kid, he’s better than you, Rooney when you were a kid, he’s better than you, Rio, better than Ryan Giggs when you were kids. This is the best kid you will ever see.”
Giggs and Ferdinand were two of the best young players in their age groups when they broke through in the 1990s, with Giggs starting at United and Ferdinand beginning at West Ham
“In training, he used to just take liberties even with the first-team players,” he continued. “He’d come over at 16 and he could play one touch, could play two touch, he could weave his way through teams with ease.”
Asked why he never fulfilled the potential he showed in his formative years, Ferdinand said: “The concentration levels to be a top top player that you need, to be on it every day, he could never get that married together.
“You look at the [youth] team he played in; Jesse Lingard, Paul Pogba, Adnan Januzaj, they looked at this guy like he was a superman like he was a superhero because he was that good with what he could do with a football.
“But if you haven’t got it all, if you haven’t got the mental capacity to deal with being a professional footballer then it won’t work.
“I tried to help him, but what they get up to outside of the football club can affect what they do on the pitch because if you have got bad habits off the pitch as a young kid or as an adult it will affect your performances on the pitch.”