A certified Premier League legend by virtue of lifting six titles under Sir Alex Ferguson’s serial-winning dynasty at Manchester United, Rio Ferdinand played against some of the division’s fiercest forwards – but who was the toughest?
Emerging through the West Ham United academy before enjoying a brief loan spell at Bournemouth, it was his time at Leeds United that caught the eye of the Red Devils – and he completed his £30 million move in the summer of 2002.
The London-born defender became the British transfer record in the process and went on to achieve lofty amounts of success under Ferguson across his 455-game stint between 2002 and 2014, the year he left for pastures new at Queens Park Rangers.
In that time, he totted up 81 caps for England, added a Champions League crown to his CV and, as mentioned, won a sextet of Premier League titles. But there were still some centre forwards who he did not relish facing.
Talking on the BROADTALKS podcast, the former central defender singled out ex- target man Kevin Davies, who enjoyed the most prolific spell of his career at Bolton Wanderers. Labelling him as ‘horrible to play against', Ferdinand said:
“He was hard to play against. Before the ball was even coming, he’s grabbing and scratching. Horrible to play against, nasty, he’d give you a difficult afternoon.”
Raul of Real Madrid and former Arsenal magician Dennis Bergkamp were also named by the defender-turned-pundit as players who would pick up positions in between the lines, making them ever so difficult to track.
Custom image of Arsenal legends Patrick Vieira, Dennis Bergkamp and Thierry Henry Related
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“Raul, the movement, he would go into area, the positions he’d go into, [Dennis] Bergkamp the same," he continued before adding, "They’d go deep, and I used to run out and then there would be a big space behind me.”
From a Champions League perspective, it was Ronaldo Nazario – commonly recognised as one of the greatest strikers of the 21st century – who gave the defender the most nightmares, despite the Brazilian having undergone a number of knee operations.
“Ronaldo, he let me know there’s another level. The maddest thing is he’d had about four operations on his knee by then [the time Ferdinand faced him]. I was thinking ‘I dread to think what he’d done to me if he was proper fit.’ He was different.”
Ferdinand was victorious in just one of his battles against the centre forward – a 4-3 win over Real Madrid in the 2002/03 season. He won just four times (out of 16) against Bergkamp, while he had a 40% (2/5) win rate against Raul.
Watch Ferdinand's full response below: