Rio Ferdinand claims David Beckham and Dwight Yorke were the only two players who completed the dreaded bleep test during his first pre-season at Manchester United.
Ferdinand joined United in a £33.3 million deal from Leeds in July 2002 and spent just one season with Beckham at Old Trafford, while Yorke left for Blackburn Rovers just days after his arrival.
However, Ferdinand has revealed that he was left stunned during one of his first training sessions at United when he saw both Beckham and York finish the bleep test – a continuous running exercise back and forth over 20 metres which pushes a player’s stamina to the limit.
Speaking to Beckham during an interview on his YouTube channel this week, Ferdinand said: ‘Something again, and a lot of people, most people, won’t know about you, and you’re talking about work rate, I remember that was the lasting big memories I have of you outside of the pitch… my first ever pre-season we done the bleep test.’
Beckham laughed and interjected: ‘You weren’t great at it.’
Ferdinand replied: ‘I was poor – I’d just flew in from Ayia Napa! So I weren’t going to be ready for that.
‘But it looked like you had trained all summer, you finished, you and Yorkie completed the bleep test.
‘I was standing there, I rang my mates after and said, ‘you wouldn’t believe this, these two guys, I don’t know what they’ve done all summer but they ain’t done what I’ve done and they’ve completed the bleep test’.’
Beckham then said: ‘Do you know what? It’s stubbornness in that bleep test.
‘It’s all about, well, you have to have a little bit of stamina, obviously, but more importantly for me, it was stubbornness, I wanted to be the last one to finish.
I was watching players drop out, I was watching players come in year after year and they’d be more athletes and I’d be thinking, ‘okay, I’m going to have to step it up again’.’
Asked if he was training before pre-season began, Beckham replied: ‘No. I just weren’t doing what you were doing.’
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