Former Manchester United goalscorer Ruud van Nistelrooy has revealed how his relationship with his former manager Sir Alex Ferguson has developed in recent years, and claims that it is now ‘OK’ following their famous falling out in 2006.
The Dutch marksman was left on the bench for United’s League Cup final against Wigan that year and became irate. The Scot, in one of his many biographies, recounted his version of what had happened.
Van Nistelrooy, he recounts, turned to some of his fellow bench-warmers and called his manager a certain, fairly jazzy, four lettered word. It was, Ferguson wrote, “the end” for him at the club.
Now 42, speaking to Eleven Sports, he’s given his account of what went on at the Millennium Stadium that day.
“It was very harsh, both ways,” he told of the way things ended between the pair.
“It was me who took the first step .. to make it OK again.”
“I called him … I felt bad about what I had done to him ... the names I called him on the bench the entire match.”
“In a blind rage I shouted at him.”
Van Nistelrooy, though, wouldn’t divulge the details of what he had said.
He was then pressed on the matter and his interview suggested that he had called Ferguson a “Scottish pig”.
“I called him a number of things in a blind rage.”
In hindsight, the player, who subsequently went on to play in Spain with Real Madrid and Malaga as well as Germany with Hamburg, considers his behaviour as “cocky and stubborn” and “out of order.”
"You called him a Scottish pig." Former Manchester United man, Ruud Van Nistelrooy speaks about his exchange with Sir Alex Ferguson 👀 #MUFC
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