Stefan Henry

🚨 Rio Ferdinand on why Ruud van Nistelrooy was one of the most ruthless finishers United ever had: “Watching those old clips of Ruud van Nistelrooy, and I think younger fans need to understand something. That man was a serious problem. When you watch the highlights, you see the ball going into the net. What you don’t see is what happened to the defender 5 seconds before the ball arrived. That’s where Ruud did most of his work. I remember training against him at United. You’d be watching the ball, keeping your position, thinking you had everything under control. Then somebody would put a cross into the box. You’d turn around and Ruud was standing in front of you. I’d be thinking, how have you got there? : )) And the worst part was that he didn’t need a second chance. If the ball reached him in the right position, you were usually in trouble. There was one session when he scored against us and I told him, ‘Ruud, you can’t keep disappearing behind defenders like that.’ He looked at me and said, ‘Rio, you’re supposed to know where I am.’ I said, ‘I did know where you were. That’s the problem.’ He laughed. But that’s exactly what made him different. Some strikers want to fight you for 90 minutes. They want to run channels, take you on, get involved in everything. Ruud could spend a few minutes barely touching the ball, and you’d start thinking he wasn’t causing you any problems. Then you made one mistake. One. And he’d score. I played against some fantastic forwards in my career, and I can tell you that defending somebody like Ruud requires a different kind of concentration. You couldn’t relax because he wasn’t dribbling at you. You couldn’t assume he was out of the game because he hadn’t touched the ball for a while. Sometimes the less you noticed him, the more worried you should have been. And people say, ‘Well, he was playing for Manchester United. Of course he got chances.’ Yes, he got chances. But there is a difference between receiving chances and making defenders feel that every chance is going to become a goal. Ruud gave you that feeling. I remember Cristiano when he first came to United. He wanted to beat people, wanted to show his skills, wanted to do things that made everybody stand up, and he did that excellently. Ruud was almost the opposite. That’s the balance. He wanted the ball in the penalty area, and he wanted to score. You could see two completely different approaches to attacking football in the same training session. And I think that was good for Cristiano. Because Cristiano already had the ability to do extraordinary things. What he developed over time was that ruthless instinct to finish an attack. I’m not saying Ruud taught him everything. Cristiano worked incredibly hard to become the player he became. But when you’re 18 and you’re watching somebody score goals like Ruud every day, you learn things without even realising you’re learning them. People compare Ruud with Rooney, Van Persie, Cristiano and all the great forwards United have had. For me, they’re different conversations. Wayne could run a football match. Cristiano could destroy you in so many ways. Van Persie could produce finishes that made no sense when you watched them back. Ruud? Ruud was the man you didn’t want receiving the ball twelve yards from your goal. I don’t care how well you’d defended for the previous 80 minutes. If he got one clean opportunity, you could be walking back to the halfway line. And that’s why I always laugh when somebody says he was just a goalscorer. Just a goalscorer? For a defender, that’s quite a big problem to have.”