Former Manchester United player Daniel Nardiello has recalled a “terrible” experience during his time at the club where he had to pretend to have sex with a woman in front of team-mates including David Beckham, Roy Keane and Ryan Giggs.
Nardiello joined United’s academy when he moved from Wolves shortly after the club’s famous treble win in 1999. He made just four appearances for the Red Devils during his six years at the club, before being released on a free transfer to Barnsley.
But despite not being a team player, today, the 40-year-old former footballer has a few stories to tell from his time at United. In an interview on the Under The Cosh podcast, Nardiello recalled some anecdotes from his days at the academy and the various Zobor ceremonies he was forced to go through by the senior players.
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He told, for example, how one player had to play the “spoon game” with United defender David May, and during the game each player put a spoon in his mouth and tried to hit the other on the head as much as he could. However, every time the player opposite May bent forward and waited for May’s turn, Ryan Giggs would trick him and hit him very hard with another spoon.
But Nardiello went through a much more humiliating ceremony. “My task was that I had to pretend to make love to a woman on the table, in front of everyone. A few of us had to do it. You had to describe the girl… it was horrible… is she blonde, brunette, does she have big breasts, right? No? How do you do that? What do you say to her? I was red with embarrassment, it was terrible.” When asked if he went for the missionary pose, the embarrassed Nardiello replied: “100 percent.”
He said: “Everyone was involved, including the superstars, it was Giggs and David May the main guys there, but you could see Keane and Beckham there, deep in the game, and you say to yourself, ‘Oh my God, I have to make love to a girl in front of all the guys.’ The goddess'”.
Nardiello also revealed that Dwight York was the one who organized the Christmas parties and claimed that one year involved “four or five strippers”, but “all the members of the first group were not there, they stayed away from it”.