Rio Ferdinand reveals what nickname Cristiano Ronaldo calls him and why CR7 is wary of him in  Man Utd WhatsApp chat

RIO FERDINAND has revealed why former Manchester United team-mate Cristiano Ronaldo is wary of messaging him on WhatsApp.

Ferdinand and Ronaldo shared the hallowed turf at Old Trafford for six seasons between 2003 and 2009, when the now Al-Nassr ace had his first stint at United.

The pair share a group chat with other Red Devils icons.

However, while Ronaldo has continued to set records at the age of 40 for both club and country, Ferdinand has moved into the media after hanging up his boots.

Ferdinand, 46, spent time working on TNT Sports but also started up his own podcast, Rio Meets, where he interviews former footballers.

Guests on there have included ex-pros such as Michael Owen and Steven Gerrard among others, but he has also spoken with the likes of Harry Maguire.

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Speaking to The Times, Ferdinand admits his chat with the United defender was one of the most difficult due to previous criticism he had levelled at him while working on TV.

He said: “I’m a centre back, went for big money, captained United. Our paths are very similar, so I reached out to him when he joined the club and said if you ever want a coffee I’m here.

“But we’d never had that conversation [about Ferdinand’s criticism] and it was really good to. What effect does it have on a player to be criticised by a pundit with big influence? I wanted to unpick that for fans.”

Ferdinand explained how he wants his podcast to be “safe space” for guests to “control the narrative around themselves”.

One player who has been obsessed with such narrative around them for much of their glittering career is Ronaldo.

Countless honours and records have tumbled and been claimed in the path of the evergreen Portuguese, and Ronaldo also has the brand and commercial success to back it up – in no small part thanks to his success at the global juggernaut that is Man United.

With that comes a carefully crafted public image, cultivated through years of sponsorships, brand deals, modelling contracts and various and innumerable other PR entities.

To that end, Ronaldo and Ferdinand’s current occupations come at odds to one another.

And that is why Ronaldo has affectionately branded his former team-mate as a “journalist”, while confessing to the ex-England defender he “can’t say too much in the United group chat”.

Ferdinand explained: “It’s funny because Cristiano [Ronaldo] calls me a journalist now.

“He messaged me saying, ‘Now I can’t say too much in the United WhatsApp group, Rio’s in there. Rio the journalist!’”

Only one player in the modern age of football can make the claim to be better than Ronaldo – that being eight-time Ballon d’Or and World Cup winner Lionel Messi.

And Ferdinand says Messi, who clinched the 2025 Major League Soccer Golden Boot for the second season running with Inter Miami with a hat-trick on Saturday, is his dream interviewee.

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He says: “[Lionel] Messi. I’m going through all the channels, talking to Becks [David Beckham].

“He’s such a phenomenal footballer but we don’t know who he is.”