Rooney wanted Ozil – Ferguson

Sir Alex Ferguson
 

Sir Alex Ferguson has revealed that Wayne Rooney questioned his decision not to sign Mesut Ozil during the summer of 2010.

The England international announced his intention to leave Manchester United that year, citing the club’s lack of ambition, only to sign a contract extension days later.

And Ferguson has now claimed that the former Everton man brought up the club’s failure to sign the Germany star, who moved to Real Madrid from Werder Bremen that summer, as an example.

“At that meeting, he (Rooney) was hugely sheepish. I felt he’d been programmed in what he was trying to say. The basis of his complaint was that we were not sufficiently ambitious,” he wrote in his autobiography.

“My response was to ask Wayne, ‘When have we not challenged for the league in the last 20 years? How many European finals have we been to in the last three or four years?

“I told him to say we weren’t ambitious was a nonsense. Wayne said that we should have pursued Mesut Ozil, who had joined Real Madrid from Werder Bremen.

“My reply was that it was none of his business who we should have gone for. I told him it was his job to play and perform. My job was to pick the correct teams. And so far I had been getting it right.”

Ferguson also  lifted the lid on how he promised Cristiano Ronaldo his dream move to Real Madrid.

He said the then Real  president Ramon Calderon’s public overtures riled him to the extent that he refused to sanction a sale despite Ronaldo’s desire to move to Spain.

Ronaldo would eventually join Madrid for £80m  in 2009, which Ferguson believes was a statement of intent from re-instated president Florentino Perez.

The Scot writes, “Madrid paid £80m in cash for him, and do you know why? It was a way for Florentino Perez, their president, to say to the world, ‘We are Real Madrid, we are the biggest of the lot’.

“When the possibility of him leaving edged towards being a probability, I reached a gentleman’s agreement with him.”