‘Lose to Chelsea in Moscow? That’s folklore – the pressure was like a crazy beast’: Manchester United legend Rio Ferdinand recalls their Champions League final win over Blues in 2008
- Rio Ferdinand took part in a revealing Q&A on BT Sport on Tuesday evening
- Ferdinand said how the stakes were high when playing English sides in Europe
- He also said the pressure before the 2008 Champions League final was sky high
- He would have dreaded reporting for England duty had he been on losing team
Rio Ferdinand has revealed how all-English Champions League ties were always the most pressurised matches he played in club football.
Ferdinand won the Champions League once with Manchester United in 2008 when they beat Chelsea in Moscow.
During a Q&A on BT Sport with presenter Jake Humphrey on Tuesday night, the former England defender said there was always more at stake between English sides than there was when playing teams such as Barcelona or Juventus.
Rio Ferdinand said he always felt more pressure facing English sides in the Champions League
Ferdinand was part of the Manchester United that beat Chelsea in the 2008 final in Moscow
Asked whether it was more difficult to face teams that United would play in the Premier League in Europe, Ferdinand said: ‘That added pressure to me definitely because I was playing against friends, international friends, friends I’d grown up with. It made it a much higher pressurised situation because so much more was at stake if it could have been.
‘It was tough, it was really tough because at the end of the day again there was so many bragging rights to be had between us.
‘And listen, if we beat someone from Italy, Spain or Germany, you don’t see them really until you play them in a year or two down the line whereas if you lose to Chelsea in Moscow that’s folklore, that’s history, that’s there every time you go to their stadium, twice a year if not more, and from the fans that you see.’
United beat Chelsea 6-5 on penalties in the 2008 final at the Luzhniki Stadium in Russia
Ferdinand said the prospect of returning to London ahead of the European Championship the summer after the Champions League final, which United won 6-5 on penalties after the match finished 1-1 in extra-time, added an extra dimension.
He said: ‘I was coming back to live in London after that so they would have been on me all the time. That pressure mounts up so it becomes a crazy, crazy beast before the first whistle has even blown.’
Ferdinand also admitted that it would have been ‘torturous’ and ‘horrendous’ had he turned up for England duty having been on the losing side.
He added: ‘You’d have contemplated it saying “listen, I’m sorry gaffer, I can’t turn up”, because it meant that much to us, and we all spoke like that before and after the game and we were just fortunate we were the team on the winning side.
‘To be fair to the Chelsea players they all turned up and it wasn’t as though we were going to come in there screaming and shouting with medals around our neck because we weren’t those types of people.
‘It was more knowing that the other team had beat us and they were sitting across the table, “what are they thinking? What are they saying?”.
‘You just think the worst and they probably wouldn’t necessarily have been like that but you have a lot of mind games that start going on in your head and you create a monster that probably isn’t as big as you think.’
Ferdinand said he was never going to laugh or gloat in the face of Chelsea’s England players
