Ferdinand reveals he ‘rang’ Rooney to call out two Man Utd players: ‘How are you allowing this?’

Man Utd legend Rio Ferdinand has revealed that he once phoned Wayne Rooney to complain about Jesse Lingard and Paul Pogba after he’d left the club.

Ferdinand left the Red Devils in 2024 after winning six Premier League titles, two League Cups and a Champions League with Sir Alex Ferguson’s side.

Rooney stayed on at Old Trafford three years longer than former Man Utd team-mate Ferdinand with the Red Devils standards decreasing after Ferguson’s departure in 2013.

One example of the perceived drop in standards around the changing room was a video released showing Pogba and Lingard dancing in the dressing room despite the club’s struggles on the pitch.

And Ferdinand revealed in an interview with former Man Utd centre-back Phil Jones that he “rang” Rooney to complain about Pogba and Lingard.

Speaking about the dressing room when he first joined the club in 2011, Jones told Ferdinand’s YouTube channel: “Back then, when you look at the dressing room we had… we had so many incredible, powerful leaders that wouldn’t let anything get in the way of the team’s performance and the team winning.

“That winning mentality was so strong and powerful that no one that came in could disrupt that.

“I think now players maybe don’t have the ability to call people out anymore and the power to tell them,’that’s not what we do at this football club… don’t come in here and start acting like that, that doesn’t work here’.

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“I’m not saying that happens every single day at the club but if we lost a game, we’d have a meeting the next day, not even with the coaches. The leaders would be saying, ‘this is not good enough’ after one loss.”

Ferdinand interjected: “I’ll tell you when it changed, from the outside at least.

“I rang Wazza [Wayne Rooney] when I saw Paul Pogba and Jesse Lingard dancing on Instagram when we were sixth in the league.

“I rang Wazza and said, ‘What’s going on here? How are you allowing this?’ And he said you can’t say nothing man, it’s not the same anymore.

“He said it’s not just those two, there would be a big group looking at me like I’m mad if I said anything.”

Jones continued: “Can you imagine that happening in our dressing room?! You would get torched.”