That is crazy. I had completely forgotten that injury ruled him out of the 2010 World Cup as well. I think he was our best player bar none at the 2002 World Cup, and was at worst one of our top 2 players along with Hargreaves at the 2006 World Cup. However Sol Campbell made the 2002 all-star team and he didn't, while Terry made the 2006 all-star team and he didn't. Don't get me wrong I think that Campbell had a very good tournament in 2002 and that Terry had a very good tournament in 2006, but that Ferdinand had even better respective tournaments than them both.
Yeah surely he could have put a 16 or 17 year old kid from the youth team on the bench if he was down to the bare bones, instead of a guy that he supposedly knew wasn't good enough immediately. He was definitely conned even though he tries to deny it.
Also didn't several other Premier League bosses, Harry Redknapp at West Ham being one of them, receive the exact same call from the same agent, but immediately realised that it was a wind up or trick and said that they weren't interested.
You would be surprised how easy it seemed to be back then and how basic negotiations were. Even more recently, I was shocked at a few stories I heard.
My brothers friend was a real chancer. He would constantly be doing stupid stuff like getting everyone’s milk on the whole street and putting it at one persons house and the like.
Anyway, he somehow lucked into getting Big Sam’s mobile number and phoned him pretending to be Brendan Rodgers. He had several ridiculous conversations with him, some of which were recorded, in which he made stupid offers for players.
He was offering two for one deals and finally went too far and Sam caught on. I wouldn’t have believed it, but I heard some of it myself.
Back when all of that happened, I would say it would have been pretty easy to get hold of managers and am sure there were more stories we never heard about.
I remember a few years back Joe Kinnear was sent out to watch a championship game and inquired about buying Shane Ferguson after the game, a player who already played for Newcastle.