I had scored for the third game in a row and was playing well for Manchester United against Portsmouth when I saw on the sidelines the board with my number held up.
I was pumped full of adrenalin, so I was angry when I saw my number. I felt I deserved to stay on the pitch, deserved more time to score more goals. I had spent enough time on the bench earlier in my United career, why wasn’t I allowed more time on the field now?
I left the pitch and did not take my place on the bench like you are supposed to. Instead, I went straight to the Old Trafford dressing room where I kicked anything that was in the way. It was out of character, I regretted it and I was not proud of my actions, but I have never liked being substituted.
When you are playing well and scoring you want to play for 90 minutes. When you are not scoring, you still want to play for 90 minutes, to score a goal. Strikers always think they can score another goal.
I have laughed about that incident with Alex Ferguson since, and I realise that coaches see things very differently from players. A player has himself to think about, a coach has 25 players. If I am to be a coach myself one day then I will have to take players off to give others some minutes, to keep them match sharp and reward them for their efforts. I will try to explain my reasons, but in the heat of the moment I would not expect the players to agree. Yet football is a team game and no team wins trophies over a season with only 11 players.
Karim Benzema was angry when he was substituted in the Madrid derby last week after scoring. He has been substituted in five of the six games he has played this season, and his manager at Real Madrid, Rafa Benitez, said he did not blame him for being angry. Nor did I. It showed that he was passionate about playing and did not want to leave the field, but there is a fine line.
You should always respect the player who is coming on to replace you. It is not his decision that he is replacing you, even if he is in competition with you. I always tried to give advice to anyone who was coming on for me, tell them that the man who will be marking them is using his elbows or trying to wind you up and not to react. Or that maybe he has a weakness worth exploiting. And I always made the point the following day of speaking to the substitute and the coach about he decision just so that no issues were left to fester.
Strikers want to stay on the field for many reasons, though. A player in another position doing badly might want to come off because he just knows it is not his day, he is not 100 per cent right or has taken a knock. That happens in football. It is different for strikers. Even if they are playing badly, it only takes a second to score and that goal can change everything. Even if you are playing well, you are always greedy to score more.
I was going for the Pichichi in Spain with Villarreal when Manuel Pellegrini took me off in a game at Malaga. I was trying to score with every touch of the ball. We were winning 2-0 and I had not scored. I was really unhappy and asked ‘Why are you changing me?’ He told me that I was not going to score playing like I was. He was right. I was a little too desperate to score and it was changing my game. My focus was not right.
There are other reasons why a player might be substituted. My old striker partner, Sergio Aguero, could have been unhappy being brought off after scoring five against Newcastle United last weekend. He could have become the first player in the Premier League to score six in a game, but he had a small injury.
It was the right decision to bring him off. Pellegrini again.
A good substitute can change a game, too, as my old United teammate, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, regularly did. We would sit together on the bench and he would study the opponents he knew he was likely to come up against later in the game. It served him well. He famously came off the bench and scored the winning goal in the last minute of the Uefa Champions League final, but I was sad for him later in his career when I felt he should be starting games; he was either not picked or injured.
While I was happy coming off the bench at the start of my United career, as time went on I wanted to start games. That was why I left the club and went to Villarreal, where I played every week and scored in most of them. You cannot beat getting into a rhythm of playing all the time and it is hard to do that coming off the bench.
If a striker says that he does not mind when he sees his number flash up to make way for someone else, he is telling a small lie. Those minutes on the pitch are minutes when he could have been scoring goals. And that is what every striker is paid to do.
FOLLOW US ON TWITTER @NatSportUAE
