Ex-Real Madrid flop Royston Drenthe has revealed that he had frequent arguments with his former coaches David Moyes and Jose Mourinho, but insists his bad boy image has often been blown out of proportion.
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The former Netherlands starlet retired at the relatively early age of 29 after his contract at Baniyas expired last summer, in stark contrast to expectations that he would become a world beater in the early years of his career.
Drenthe moved to Madrid after breaking out at Feyenoord but failed to make an impact at the Bernabeu, being loaned out to Hercules and Everton before ineffectual moves to Reading and Sheffield Wednesday along with stints in Turkey and the UAE as he hung up his boots to focus on his music career.
But while he revealed he never saw eye to eye with Mourinho and Moyes, Drenthe defended that he always acted in a professional manner, and that his bad reputation was a product of fans, the media and unfortunate events.
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"I had a lot of arguments with Moyes at Everton and I didn't have a good relationship with Mourinho during our short time together at Real Madrid," he told RTV Rijnmond.
"I was branded as a 'bad boy', but there were also a lot of coaches who asked me how that was possible, because they didn't have problems with me. But you never see these kind of stories in the media.
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"At Hercules [on loan from Madrid] the squad agreed that we wouldn't be attending the training session, because our salary wasn't paid [during the incident when the club failed to pay salaries in 2010]. But when I turned on the TV in the Netherlands I saw that everybody was training except me.
"Back in Spain my windows were broken by fans and they sprayed graffiti. They saw me as a money-grabber."
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Drenthe added that the tumultuous circumstances he often found himself surrounded by in football sapped his motivation to play and hastened his decision to retire and pursue an alternate career.
"I still love playing football, but I don't have the motivation for everything around it anymore," he continued. " At my last club in UAE I had to ask for my salary every time myelf, otherwise I wouldn't get paid. They still owe me four months of salary and if I don't follow-up on that, I get nothing.
"These kinds of things demotivated me, because I worked hard for it. Now I just want to do things that I like."
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