Michael Carrick: The BMW, the Merc - and the supercar that nearly killed me

Michael Carrick started with a Fiesta, nearly came a cropper in an 8.0-litre Dodge Viper, then moved on to Bond's Aston Martin. But you'll never guess what the 80K-a-week England star's now got parked in his garage

By Mike Pattenden

'I am privileged, I know, but no more so than many people. Where I live now, in Cheshire, I see nice cars all the time - Mercedes, BMWs, Bentleys... They're not all being driven by footballers,' says Michael Carrick

They say you can tell a lot about a man by the car he drives. Cristiano Ronaldo piloting a Ferrari makes perfect sense, but can you imagine the stately, composed England and Manchester United midfielder Michael Carrick behind the wheel of an 8.0-litre V10 Dodge Viper?

Yet the Geordie happily cruised around in one of Chrysler's steroidal monsters for years.

'It's not me at all,' he admits, leaning on the one Live has borrowed for today's photo-shoot.

'I'm not the type, but when I first saw it I knew I had to have it.'

Carrick was just 20 at the time and had only recently established himself in West Ham United's first team.

'I wanted something different from all the other players, and my agent knew someone at Chrysler,' he recalls.

'I don't know what I was expecting, but this guy drove it over to my house in Romford, Essex. I heard a roar and looked out the window at this beast, and I was absolutely gobsmacked. All my mates wanted rides. I thought to myself, "This is the one!"

'I remember arriving at training in it and the staff being a bit shocked. They thought my head had gone.'

But Carrick, 27, whose first car was a more mild-mannered Fiesta, says he wasn't prepared for the brute power a little prod of the Viper's accelerator could unleash.

Like many of his Premier League colleagues, Carrick loves cars, but his life on the road seems out of sync with his career on the pitch

'On the first day I had it I was with Richard Garcia (now at Hull City) on a quiet stretch of road and I decided to put my foot down. I didn't have the wheels straight and suddenly the car was zigzagging all over the place.

'Finally I got it under control and stopped. We both sat there in silence for a while, then looked at each other. I took a deep breath and said, "We'll give that a miss then, eh?"

'For the next few weeks I don't think I made it out of third. It was left-hand drive, too, which made overtaking a bit of a challenge. I'd say "Give us a shout when it's all right to go" to whoever was with me. I scared the living daylights out of a few of them.

'The thing is, with a car like that, you think you're in control, but you're not.'

Like many of his Premier League colleagues, Carrick loves cars, but his life on the road seems out of sync with his career on the pitch. He earns £80,000 a week and is close to his peak - the winner of two Premier Leagues and a Champions League - yet he drives a relatively modest Audi A6. In car terms, he probably peaked five years ago with the Mercedes SL 55 AMG that replaced the Dodge, and an Aston Martin he owned while at Spurs.

It's probably just as well that he's gone for the more sensible Audi now, as Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson frowns on players swanning around in exotic supercars.

'Sir Alex keeps the young lads in close check,' says Carrick.

'He lets them know what he thinks if they get out of hand, but to be honest, if you go into the car park at Carrington (the team training ground) it's not all sports cars anyway.

'That's a bit of a myth. Ronaldo's aside, they're mostly Range Rovers and BMWs, family cars for the most part. They're nice, but not showy.'

He takes me to the car park to see his grey Audi estate - 'the company car', as he calls it. The reason for its size is revealed by a Tigger suckered to the rear window bearing the legend 'Baby On Board'. Carrick married his long-term girlfriend Lisa in June 2007 and they have a one-year-old daughter, Louise.

'As soon as you have a baby you need something with four doors,' he says.

'You can't be leaning in all the time. My back would be all over the place.'

He knows that he's lucky to be paid handsomely for doing something he loves.

'I am privileged, I know, but no more so than many people. Where I live now, in Cheshire, I see nice cars all the time - Mercedes, BMWs, Bentleys... They're not all being driven by footballers.

'As long as there's no arrogance about it I think it's OK. Some people don't have anything like my sort of money and dream about having a nice car. As a footballer you have to be aware of that and how you go about things. It's a difficult one.

'We're just normal people who happen to play football. It doesn't make you superior. When I go back to Newcastle my mates don't care what I'm driving.'

Carrick grew up in Wallsend, Tyne and Wear. By the age of five he was training with Wallsend Boys Club. Ten years later he left to join West Ham's renowned youth academy.

'The first few months I was homesick, but the banter was fantastic. I loved being around the training ground with the lads. I'd listen to all the Essex boys and Cockneys joking away, yet we all had jobs to do: cleaning the changing rooms, picking up the kit, washing the balls, moving the gear. If someone didn't do their job properly you were all held accountable and you'd be kept behind. It helped us bond together, improve the spirit. It's a shame they don't do that with juniors any more. They were some of my best times.'

Carrick has a genuine love for his first club. At 17 he signed professionally with the Hammers and moved to a rented house in Romford.

'My wages jumped from £42.50 to £350 a week. I felt like a king, especially because I was the youngest in the year and all the others had signed their pro forms before me. That killed me, because they were getting good money and I wasn't.'

This being Essex, he had to have a set of wheels. First he needed a driving licence, but that turned out to be little more than a formality.

'The examiner who passed me was a hardcore West Ham fan who was also a steward at the ground. I passed just by turning up,' he laughs.

He bought a second-hand silver Fiesta Ghia.

'It didn't even have a CD player. I had one of those tapes with the wires that go in and I'd have my little personal stereo sitting on the passenger seat.

'The first week I had it I drove back up to Newcastle and picked up a few of my mates. That was chaotic as I'd hardly done any driving at that point, so I kept kangarooing up the road. I took a lot of stick from them.'

The Fiesta lasted nearly two years and was replaced by a second-hand BMW 328.

'I gave the Fiesta to my dad, thinking I'd done him a favour,' he says.

'He took it into the garage and got stung with a big bill because I hadn't ever had it serviced. It needed new brakes, tyres, the lot.

'After that I got into BMWs. I had the 328, then one of the first X5s. I was absolutely buzzing when I got that. It was my first really nice new car.'

Carrick took delivery of the Dodge next, but though he could indulge his passion for cars, his career was stuck in second gear. West Ham were relegated and he suffered a string of injuries. Having broken into the England squad at 19, he now found himself playing down a division while team-mates such as Joe Cole and Jermain Defoe moved back to Premier League clubs.

'It was the hardest year in football I've ever had, but I wouldn't change it,' he says.

'It was character-forming. Getting back into the England squad the second time meant so much more.'

In 2004 Carrick moved to Spurs for £2.75 million and took delivery of a Mercedes SL 55 AMG.

'I had the Dodge serviced, but it was never the same afterwards. I don't go under the bonnet. Haven't a clue. But it still took me ages to let it go. I couldn't bring myself to part with it. But I bought the Merc and drove the Dodge less and less. My missus said, "Look, it's just sitting there", so I sold it.

'The Merc was beautiful, really powerful but in a different way to the Dodge. It was classier. You couldn't wear anything nice in the Dodge; it just felt wrong. Also, the Merc was a convertible, and because I was down south you could actually put the top back occasionally. You don't get much chance to do that in Manchester.'

Carrick was at Spurs for just two seasons. He was a key figure as the team charged towards a Champions League spot, only to miss out on the final day of the season to his old club after an outbreak of food poisoning.

'I was in a terrible state for that last game. The hotel we were staying in was a disaster area. People were being sick all over; food specialists were called in, police; directors were running around panicking. It was like a scene from Dream Team.'

But his passing skills had attracted the admiration of Sir Alex Ferguson, and on July 31, 2006, he moved to Old Trafford for £18.6 million.

'It was all agreed late on a Friday night. I packed a couple of suitcases and drove north in my Aston Martin DB9 on the Sunday with my girlfriend and I never went back. She sorted out everything and I never saw the house in Essex again.'

Carrick has thrived in red since, but the Aston didn't survive the upheaval.

'It looked nice, but I just couldn't warm to it. Eventually I changed it for a CL 63 AMG. I had one of the M-Class 4x4s as well, which came in handy when I did a spot of road-crewing for my brother-in-law. He's in a band called The SoundEx up in Newcastle. They're really good, but it's such a tough industry to make your way in.

'I try to help out when I can. Lug around the gear for them, that sort of thing.'

Given his need for speed, Carrick has inevitably indulged in some track days at race circuits, during which you can try out a succession of supercars.

'I did one recently with my dad and brother (Graeme, a former young professional whose career was ended by injury) up in Croft, North Yorkshire.

'We had the place pretty much to ourselves, but I managed to put one car into the barrier. I was so embarrassed. I'd already been in a Formula Ford, a Caterham and a Ferrari, then I slid off in a two-seater Ginetta G20. It wasn't bad, but I just lost it a bit and hit the front wing. Fortunately the people there were great about it. It's about the only knock I've ever had driving - although I scraped the Dodge once in an NCP because it was so low.'

With Man United chasing an unprecedented quintuple this season (FA Cup, Premier League, Champions League, Carling Cup, Fifa Club World Cup), will he treat himself to something special if they succeed?

'Perhaps. Maybe I'll get a Ferrari like the one Ronaldo had. That's probably going cheap somewhere,' he laughs, alluding to the accident in which the Portuguese player wrote off his 599 GTB.

And with that, Carrick climbs into the Audi and pulls away with a touch of wheelspin - all that's left of his boy-racer roots.

Michael Carrick is a supporter of the NSPCC and its service ChildLine.

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