London, May 21 (IANS) Dimitar Berbatov’s former teammate at Fulham and Tottenham Hotspur Darren Bent spoke about the eccentric Bulgarian’s lack of communication with his teammates off the pitch.
Berbatov spent two years at Spurs before joining Manchester United where he won two Premier League titles and reached the final of the Champions League. He then played for Fulham before leaving the Premier League.
“Well, it wasn’t difficult, because he never spoke to me!” former striker Bent told talkSPORT.
“We could be in the club canteen, completely empty, and I could be sitting at one table and he would go and sit at another table. There’s no one in the planet he would come and sit next to, to have a conversation with.
“I don’t know if it was shyness, or what, and it wasn’t just me. There could be me and another teammate sitting there talking, there could be five extra seats on our table, and he’d sit at the table further away from us.
“I was used to it, because I played with him at Spurs first, and this was when I was at Fulham with him as well. I just told the other lads: ‘Yeah, that’s just Berba’.”
However Bent said that Berbatov could not do so at Manchester United as he wasn’t allowed to get away with it. Berbatov played with the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, Rio Ferdinand, Nemanja Vidic, Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs at United that dominated the Premier League under Alex Ferguson.
“But when I asked a few of the Manchester United players who played with him: ‘Was he like that when he was with you? They were like: ‘No!’,” said Bent.
“But it’s because they didn’t allow him to get away with that at Manchester United, he was forced to, they kind of made him do it. But with us, because he was obviously the best player, he was like: ‘Nah thanks’.”
–IANS
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