When Anton Ferdinand needed to put the fun back into his football, he found the answer lurking in the seaside resort with the world’s longest pleasure pier.
Options were limited — that was made clear —but the only way was Essex once Phil Brown had made his pitch on behalf of Southend United.
‘I’d be lying if I sat here saying I wanted to play at this level,’ said 32-year-old Ferdinand, preparing to face Doncaster, in League One, on Saturday. ‘But I didn’t look and think, “That’s not for me”.
Anton Ferdinand talks exclusively to Sportsmail about a renewed love for football at Southend
The central defender admits he would prefer to be playing at a higher level, but is happy
Ferdinand, 32, says he has an idea why no prominent club in England would offer him a deal
‘I might be perceived that way but it’s not the way we were brought up. I’d never turn my nose up at Southend. My Mum and Dad brought me up in the right way.
‘All I wanted was to play with a smile on my face again because there was a phase when I wasn’t enjoying it.
‘No one in England wanted to touch me and I don’t know why to this day. I have an idea but until I hear it as fact I won’t speak about it. Or until I decide to do a book.’
Ferdinand is toying with the idea of telling all about his career.
He has a classic rise-and-fall plot to work with and has spent plenty of time with his thoughts, wondering where all the unravelling began.
His theory rests on the famous family name and inevitable comparisons to elder brother Rio.
Ferdinand admits it was a struggle to step out of his brother Rio’s shadow at first
The pair have always had a tight bond and Rio (right) helped his brother cut his own path
Only not in the way you might imagine.
‘Coming out of Rio’s shadow was a big thing for me,’ said Ferdinand. ‘It was such a big escape and I think that’s when I relaxed.
‘He wasn’t just the best in the Premier League, he was the best in the world at the time, one of the best to come through the West Ham academy since Bobby Moore.
‘I remember being 11 or 12 at West Ham, going to collect a ball that had gone off the pitch to take a throw-in, and I could hear some parents saying, ‘He’ll never be as good as Rio, he’s rubbish’.
‘But I got through that with the help of my family and reached a stage in my career where people were saying, ‘That’s Anton Ferdinand’ and not, ‘That’s Rio’s brother’.
‘The West Ham fans came to accept me for who I was. It’s one of the reasons I love the club so much. When I first came through it was, ‘This is Rio’s brother, what’s he going be like?’ There was expectation. I could feel it.
‘I made mistakes but they gave me another chance because they could see something in me. They knew I came from a working class background and I was a fan, like them.
‘I was a Ferdinand in my own right and it was such a big sense of achievement. It was finally like — wow… and that’s when I relaxed and I shouldn’t have done.’
Anton won caps at youth level and played 17 times for England Under 21s.
Glenn Roeder gave him a West Ham debut at 18 and he was only 20 when he helped the Hammers secure promotion in the 2005 play-off final in Cardiff, under Alan Pardew.
Ferdinand will always be thankful to West Ham fans for dragging him out of Rio’s shadow
His penalty miss in the FA Cup final against Liverpool still lingers as a painful memory
He was back in the Millennium Stadium with the Hammers in the following year’s FA Cup final, where he missed a penalty in a shootout against Liverpool, and he moved to Sunderland for £8million in 2008.
‘I should’ve kicked on and if I had kicked on I might have had a chance to play for England,’ said Ferdinand. ‘I wish I would have played for England. I wish me and Rio had worn the shirt together.
‘That’s the biggest thing that gets me. It could have happened and should have happened but it didn’t because I wasn’t consistent enough.
‘I played my best football at West Ham. I had good times at Sunderland but they were disrupted. I’d play well and then get dropped and I couldn’t get into a rhythm.
‘It might be a different ball game if I was coming through now but when I was in the U21s, England had a crop of centre backs the senior team today would die for: Rio, Sol Campbell, John Terry, Ledley King, Jonathan Woodgate, Jamie Carragher. That’s six of the best.’
A move abroad was supposed to reboot a career which had started to unravel, first at Sunderland and then at Queens Park Rangers, where everything was overshadowed by allegations that John Terry had racially abused Ferdinand during a game at Loftus Road in 2011.
Ferdinand found his career in the Premier League overshadowed by the John Terry row
Ferdinand admits everyone, not just QPR and Chelsea fans, wants to hear his side of the story
Turkey seemed like the right move as Scott Carson, former England goalkeeper and Ferdinand’s team-mate at Bursaspor, talked him through the pre-match rituals ahead of a game against Galatasaray.
‘Scott said, ‘When they start singing your name you’ve got to go over and give them three first-pumps’. I didn’t know what he was talking about. I thought he was trying to scare me.
‘I watched a few other players doing it. Luckily they didn’t sing my name first. Then they started singing my name, so I went over and gave them three first pumps.
‘The stadium was full, the Galatasaray fans with flares and the Bursaspor fans going absolutely crazy. The fire and the feeling in my belly was unbelievable. The adrenaline pumping through me was exceptional.’
Ferdinand’s first start came in another grudge match, against Besiktas, when he was selected to replace cult-hero Serdar Aziz.
This time former Middlesbrough and Stoke striker Tuncay Sanli offered words of wisdom.
Anton Ferdinand appeared to thrive in the hostile surroundings of Turkish football
But his loan spell with Bursaspor was followed by an unsuccesful period at Antalyaspor
‘Tuncay was saying, ‘Anton, I don’t think you understand.
‘I know you’ve played in the Tyne-Wear derby but that’s nowhere near it. This game is massive. This is proper hatred’.
‘I was like, ‘OK OK’. Serdar was like their golden child, like Mark Noble at West Ham. Everybody loved him and I was taking his place in the biggest game of the season.
‘On the way to the stadium, I had my headphones in when I became aware the coach had stopped. We were surrounded by our fans, close up, right next to the windows. They were chanting aggressively and raising their arms.
‘When I asked the interpreter what they were saying, he said, ‘Anton, they’re saying, if you don’t win this game you won’t be leaving here tonight’.’
Bursaspor won 3-0 — scoring three before half-time — and the next day, Ferdinand was out in the Old Town market shopping for a blanket for his unborn son.
‘When I tried paying for it, the woman wasn’t having it,’ he said. ‘I’m trying to push the money on her when her husband came out and said, ‘Bursa 3 Besiktas 0 please take it’. I don’t know what would have happened if we’d lost. But after that game the fans quite liked me.’
Ferdinand was made captain of Southend United by Phil Brown this summer
The positive experience on loan at Bursa tempted him into a Turkish return when his QPR contract expired and Antalyaspor came in with an offer.
‘By the second half of the season I wasn’t even training with the first team,’ said Ferdinand. ‘There was me and one of the big Turkish players called Deniz Baris, who used to play for Fenerbahce, running with a coach by ourselves.
‘We were isolated, not even at the training ground and there was no explanation. It was a tough time. It was my son’s first year in the world and I’m isolated and things get on top of you.’
A proposed move to Police United in Thailand was transformed by the Thai takeover at Reading into two injury-hit years at the Madejski Stadium and another summer of uncertainty, training with Preston.
‘I thought I’d done enough that season and within my career for someone to take a punt on me,’ said Ferdinand. ‘For some reason they didn’t, which was disheartening for me.
‘I did pre-season with Preston but that didn’t happen for some reason and I found myself with no club until I got the chance to come here. Within five minutes of talking to the gaffer I knew it was a place where I wanted to sign.’
Ferdinand was made captain by manager Brown, he signed a new two-year contract at the start of this season and, after a sketchy start to the campaign, Southend have won three in a row and sit three points off the play-off places.
Outside of the glaring lights of the Premier League, Ferdinand considers penning his life story
From his West Ham exit to the Terry episode, Ferdinand has plenty of stories to tell
At 32, Ferdinand has no plans to quit and is keen to open up on a life story with enough ups- and-downs to command a plot at Southend’s Adventure Island funfair.
‘Lots of people ask me about the book,’ said Ferdinand. ‘West Ham fans want to know what happened with me and Alan Curbishley and why I left. Sunderland fans want to know what happened with me and Steve Bruce.
‘QPR fans want to know what happened with John Terry. Not just QPR fans. Everybody wants to know what happened with John Terry because I haven’t spoken about it.’
No longer playing in the glare of the Premier League, he feels the time might soon be right to open up. ‘I’ve already got the title,’ said Ferdinand. ‘It’s a secret but it’s very fitting and it might be controversial.’
Perhaps ‘Surviving Without the Shadows’, if Hank Marvin hasn’t got there first.