Man United

There is about half an hour to kill before Manchester United board a flight to Istanbul for their opening Champions League group B match against Besiktas.

In a tiny private terminal at Stansted airport, players and staff sit around, chatting, many still on a high after the impressive 3-1 win away to Tottenham Hotspur the previous evening.

Sir Alex Ferguson, the manager, David Gill, the chief executive, and Albert Morgan, the kit man, are huddled in one corner; adjacent, Wayne Rooney and Darren Fletcher laugh and joke. Across the room, Rio Ferdinand and Wes Brown lead the discussions by their table. The rest of the squad is dotted around in groups.

Seemingly oblivious to all of this is Dimitar Berbatov. The Bulgaria striker stands alone by a door, preoccupied by his thoughts, a man apart.
To those United fans who have got on his back since his club-record £30.75 million move to Old Trafford from Tottenham 13 months ago, who have accused him of being too detached from the play, of not being on the same wavelength as his team-mates, the image of Berbatov in isolation might seem fitting.
But talking to Berbatov, it quickly becomes clear that this is an intensely private man whose shyness is mistakenly construed as arrogance. Mystery and intrigue surround him, but he seems to like it that way, which in part explains his discomfort when the little-known but shocking story of his kidnapping as a young player is raised unexpectedly.

According to a book published last year — and now confirmed by the player — Berbatov was 18 and the jewel in CSKA Sofia’s crown. “Where did you find out about that?” Berbatov asks, quizzically, after a brief, dramatic pause. “That’s true. It was a horrific ordeal but a long time ago now. That was a time back then, you know.”

In a scene straight out of a movie, Berbatov was grabbed after training by three henchmen of Georgi Iliev, a Bulgarian gangster, who was said to be determined to force this emerging star to sign for his club, Levski Kjustendil.

Dragged to meet Iliev, Berbatov managed to make a frantic call to his father, Ivan, a former footballer, who intervened. In August 2005, Iliev was gunned down as part of a suspected turf war between rival criminal gangs.

Ten years may have passed since the incident, but Berbatov’s reluctance to discuss it is understandable.

The closest he had got to the mob before then had been in the cinema through his love of the Godfather films. He has admitted that he learnt English by watching Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpieces and it obviously served him well.

Candid and eloquent, Berbatov speaks from the heart. He accepts that he struggled to scale the heights expected of him during his debut season at United, when he managed 14 goals but found himself on the substitutes’ bench for the biggest games, including the Champions League final against Barcelona.
He is man enough to admit that the pressure of being the most expensive player in the club’s history got to him on occasions. The nadir came after his poor penalty miss in the FA Cup semi-final shoot-out defeat by Everton at Wembley in April, at which point some fans began to turn on him. The criticism stung, but he speaks in glowing terms of the United supporters and is eager for them to stand by him, to demonstrate the love he believes that he needs to play his best.

“Sometimes the pressure is too big,” he said. “I don’t dispute when somebody has paid so much money for you they are expecting great things, but sometimes you are under so much pressure you don’t feel calm.

“For me to play very good [as was the case against Wolfsburg in the Champions League on Wednesday], I need to feel calm, I need to feel the support of the players and the fans. Against Wolfsburg it was like a release.The demands of playing for United were not a surprise. I joined the best team in the world, so of course there were going to be high demands on my performances. It can be a really hard time, but you need to deal with this.

“If you don’t have someone to talk to about it, it’s really hard. You talk with the manager [Ferguson] because he is the boss. But when I go home I talk with my father, an explayer, and my friends just to release the pressure. In my opinion, when a player feels calm, then you can perform to the best of your ability.

“I don’t think there is any player who likes to be left on the bench. It’s not like you hear you’re on the bench and go ‘great’. It’s very disappointing.

“Of course the fee brings extra pressure with it. I always said it was a ridiculous amount of money, but it’s the life we are living now.”
Berbatov’s team-mates talk of a player who, having kept himself to himself for much of the previous campaign, has seemed noticeably more at ease around the club this season.

He is well liked, even if there is a belief that there always seems to be a bit more to come, that there is a truly great player waiting to reveal himself.

Against Wolfsburg, United fans saw Berbatov close to his best, all audacious tricks and mesmerising flicks that drew gasps and applause in equal measure. If that was Berbatov operating, as he claimed, at “75, maybe 80 per cent of my abilities”, United will be in for a treat should he consistently hit top gear.

Berbatov, 29 in January, knows that this is a big season for him, especially now that Cristiano Ronaldo and Carlos Tévez have departed, but just as he believes that he and Rooney will hit it off, so he refuses to compromise his style, even if it would make life easier for him. Lazy is the most common accusation levelled at him, but while Berbatov strongly disputes this, he has no interest in becoming a one-dimensional workhorse.

“This is my style. I can understand if somebody doesn’t like it, but that’s their problem,” he said. “I’ve played all my life like this. I won’t change just because it might make my life easier. I try to be the most intelligent player on the pitch.

“You get some players who just think one way, not outside the box. You need to be making decisions before the ball comes to your feet, not when it’s at your feet, when it’s too late. You may think I do things easily, but trust me, it’s not easy. Maybe I might make it seem easy but it takes a lot of effort and work. If it looks effortless, great, that’s my game, but it’s not.

“The Wolfsburg game, I really enjoyed. I played with a smile on my face. When you play good, you don’t want the game to end, you just want to go and go and you don’t feel tiredness.

“Some days everything clicks, when you know whatever you try will happen. Then you have days when nothing works. But Wolfsburg was the real me.
Rooney and Berbatov combined for only three goals last season, but the Bulgarian believes that such statistics are misleading.

“I don’t see the significance of that — what is the problem here?” he said. “You have a partnership like Dwight Yorke and Andy Cole that comes along once in a lifetime, but it’s not about me and Wayne playing only between ourselves and us scoring the goals. I’d prefer to win rather than lose a game and I score three.” United’s lone star is really a team player.
James Ducker Times