As regular readers to this column will know the Captain has never been Rio Ferdinand’s biggest fan.  A talented footballer no doubt, but he has always struck me as a wannabe teenager.


A 15-year-old kid trapped in a grown man’s body. Someone who lacks social awareness and the introspective nature to see how cringeworthy his actions and words are.

Rio Ferdinand is 33-years-old now and despite holding the captain’s armband for England and being a spokesperson for the Kick Racism Out of football campaign, it is apparent that, however much responsibility he is given, he is never going to grow up.
 

The Manchester United defender sunk to a new low when following the well-publicised John Terry racism trial he laughed a Tweet describing Ashley Cole as a choc-ice.
 

The background to the incident is that Cole, a black footballer and friend of Rio's, had defended Terry in court helping him, rightly or wrongly, to be found not guilty of racially abusing Rio’s brother Anton Ferdinand in a game earlier that year.
 

Why Rio is allowed anywhere near Twitter is beyond me? This is a player who in a Radio 1 interview called the DJ Chris Moyles a ‘faggot’. Yes, it sounds like a playground word that a 15-year-old might use in an attempt to sound cool doesn’t it? However, Ferdinand at the time was 27-years-old.


This is the same Rio Ferdinand who in 2006 hosted Rio’s World Cup Wind Ups, a hidden camera Show. The TV programme strongly resembled the American show Punk’d, hosted by an equally annoying Ashton Kutcher.
Many Rio fans will argue that this isn’t out of the ordinary, football down the years has been filled with pranksters such as Dennis Wise, Vinnie Jones and Jimmy Bullard.


However, when you consider that Rio was performing his pranks on national television repeating the Catchphrase ‘You Got Merk’d’ when he managed to trick his victims, it is slightly more cringeworthy. And when I say slightly, I mean enough to make you want to screw your face up so badly that your eyes become permanently shut.

Thankfully ITV decided to drop Rio’s All-Star Wind Up Show in 2008, presumably to prevent right-minded members of the public hurling their TVs into the nearest skip.


 

But back to the Twitter row. Rio has come out and defended his Tweet laughing at the term choc-ice. He told fans “What I said yesterday is not a racist term. It’s a type of slang/term used by many for someone who is being fake. So there.”


It defies belief, how stupid does he think we are? Choc-ice is clearly a term used to describe someone who is black on the outside and white on the inside. It comes from the idea that a black person is black only in skin colour, but inside they are really white. It is a highly offensive term.


It is surprising Alex Ferguson hasn't banned this idiot from Twitter already. You wonder what former captains of Manchester United like Bobby Charlton, Roy Keane and Eric Cantona must be thinking.
Despite the latter twos’ disciplinary records, they were all good leaders away from the football field.


Putting an outburst on MUTV about the standard of his team’s play aside, Keane, and the other players’ off-the-field actions never brought the club into disrepute. They all must be thinking how did this guy manage to wear the same captain’s armband as me?


However, it wasn’t at Manchester United where Rio was first given the honour of captaining his club.  That came at Leeds United where he took over from South Africa’s Lucas Radebe as skipper.


He is also a spokesperson for the Kick Racism Out of Football campaign and probably another  ambassador for the sport, who is thinking, did this guy learn nothing from me?

What do you think? Is it time for Rio Ferdinand to grow up? Was the term choc-ice offensive? Or are the media being to harsh on the Manchester United defender? Leave your comments below.