Table Of ContentThe author would like to thank his colleagues on the Guardian, in particular Ben
Clissitt, and everyone at Aurum Press for their support and advice, especially
Natasha Martin.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
Introduction
2005–06 Annus horribilis
2006–07 Annus mirabilis
About the Author
Index
Copyright
INTRODUCTION
TAKING ON THE WORLD (PART I)
He’s an amazing man. Let’s establish that straight away. Sir Alex Ferguson is a
manager of uncommon ability. He has brought football of butterfly beauty to
Manchester United. He bought Eric Cantona, the rebel with a cause. He nurtured
the Golden Generation. He discovered Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, the baby-faced
assassin. He signed Wayne Rooney, the assassin-faced baby. He has brought
trophies, glory, prestige and the kind of happiness, over twenty-five years, that
United supporters once only dreamed of. No one has managed at the highest
level for so long. Or with such competitive courage. Nobody has beaten the
system like he has and accumulated so many trophies.
When Ferguson swept into Old Trafford in 1986 Boris Becker was the teenage
Wimbledon champion, Nick Berry was at number one with Every Loser Wins
and Steaua Bucharest were in possession of the European Cup. It was the year of
Chernobyl and Top Gun, Charlene marrying Scott, Andrew marrying Sarah,
Diego Maradona’s ‘Hand of God’ and Wayne Rooney’s first birthday. Ferguson
posed in the centre-circle for his first photo-shoot and, behind him, the Stretford
End was a concrete terrace with steel fences topped with spikes.
A quarter of a century on, Old Trafford is a gleaming all-seater stadium, the
capacity has risen from 55,000 to 76,000 and the ‘Keep Off The Grass’ signs are
in five different languages. It has been an epic journey of 6 a.m. starts, nerve-
shredding football and relentless drama. He has outlasted thirteen different
Manchester City managers. He has seen off Thatcher, Major, Blair and Brown,
and could easily add Cameron to that list as well. He has been knighted and
immortalised and he has turned United into one of the most prolific trophy-
grabbing machines in the modern game. In his own words, he has ‘knocked
Liverpool off their fucking perch’. Twelve league titles, two European Cups,
five FA Cups, one European Cup Winners’ Cup, four League Cups. Plus enough
individual awards to fill a museum. Those of us who are football writers in
Manchester should never forget how lucky we are to have witnessed it. Even in
those moments when it feels like the hardest club in the world to cover.
We journalists regale our friends with anecdotes and enjoy the certain social
cachet that comes from dealing with him. We have boxed away stories for our
grandchildren and our office walls are lined with signed books and photographs.
But we know, deep down, that he doesn’t like what we do.
Trying to establish a relationship with him is a continuous, Forth Road Bridge
process. We’d love to swap numbers, to high-five after important victories, to
bear-hug and clink wine glasses. But, deep down, we have all had to accept there
is never going to be a day when he invites us back to his for scones and tea and
some Scottish hospitality. Or a press conference when he finishes with the words
‘Drink, anyone?’ Ferguson, you quickly learn, has erected a brick wall around
himself to keep out the national newspaper journalists who work on his patch.
Even in the good times he likes to keep his distance. We see him once, twice,
sometimes three times a week, and we travel around the world hanging on his
coat-tails, season after season. Yet we are still not sure if we know him properly.
He is always that little bit out of reach – which, on reflection, is probably just
how he likes it.
The caricature is of a flint-faced authority figure, steam shooting out of his
ears as he stands in the dugout, menacingly chewing gum, ranting at the fourth
official and pointing to his stopwatch. Yet that’s exactly what it is: a caricature.
The real Ferguson is far more complex than the tabloid portrayal. He isn’t
always ‘fuming’ or ‘exploding’. He doesn’t always ‘slam’ and ‘blast’. We have
lost count of the number of times we have arrived for press conferences to find
him waltzing with an imaginary partner through the reception area at Carrington,
the club’s training ground. Or breaking into song as Kath, the receptionist, hoots
with laughter and tells him to shush. On his worst days, he can be dictatorial,
hostile and standoffish. But he can also be warm, charming and convivial, with
kind edges and an infectious laugh. He would be on any guest-list for a fantasy-
football dinner-party XI. Ferguson is a natural storyteller. He has an outstanding
memory for the tiniest snippets of information and varied interests beyond the
four white lines that have contained much of his life. He has taught himself
French using audiocassettes. He has learned how to play the piano. He ‘gets’
jazz. He has a global knowledge when it comes to food and is a connoisseur of
fine wines.
He is past retirement age, yet he seems to have an immunity to exhaustion.
Complete strangers are often astonished about how friendly and charismatic he
is. They are struck by how different he seems in real life from how he appears on
television or in the press. They talk about a sexagenarian of fierce intellect and a
student of human nature with an impressively high IQ and an astute appreciation
of what makes other men tick.
But then there are times when it is difficult to square his more appealing
characteristics with his darker sides – the Ferguson who can be cold and ruthless
and, in the vernacular of football, a bit of a bastard. His family probably
wouldn’t recognise the grumpy journophobe who could argue a point without
even the shadow of a leg to stand on. Or resort to the infamous ‘Hairdryer’
treatment, leaning into your face and shouting with such force it feels like you
are in a wind tunnel.
His press conferences can be tense, joyless affairs, crackling with friction. He
can be impregnable, leaning back, hands behind his head, bored and fidgety,
abrasive to the point of being monosyllabic and so downright exasperating you
could drop a flowerpot on his head.
His one-liners are legendary. One World Cup year we – ‘we’ meaning the
Manchester press corps throughout this book – annoyed him, by having the
temerity to ask if he planned to go to the tournament. ‘None of your business,’
came the answer. ‘Do I ask if you’re still going to those fucking gay clubs?’
Then there was the time, at the end of a trophy-less season, when a Daily
Telegraph reporter innocently asked what had gone wrong. ‘That’s a good
question,’ Ferguson replied, with a vast grin. ‘But it would take a whole
interview to get it and that’s an interview you’re never going to fucking get.’
Alternatively, his press conferences can be entertaining and revealing, full of
laughter and off-the-record anecdotes and bristling comments about what is
wrong with the game and what should be done about it. He does not open up
easily, but when the mood takes him he can disarm his audience with long,
impassioned homilies about football, politics and the world in general. And in
those moments you absorb every word and remind yourself that time in his
company, with the shackles off, is both rewarding and fascinating.
When Ferguson is on good form put aside the caricature of the empurpled
curmudgeon with little red puffs of smoke coming out of his ears and think
instead of a gregarious raconteur with an unstoppable enthusiasm for life. A
man’s man, good for a drink and a game of golf and determined to grab life by
the balls. A man so intensely competitive he would stop to watch two children
playing a game of Pooh sticks.
He is also a man of great humour. ‘What has happened to diving headers these
days?’ he will ask, eyes twinkling. ‘You know, the kind of goals Denis Law,
Tommy Lawton, Nat Lofthouse, Dixie Dean and Alex Ferguson used to score.’
He will pick out a reporter who hasn’t shaved, or whose hair is a little
unkempt, and ask whether he has walked into an Oasis concert. He will
complain about someone’s match report and gently chide the journalist for
thinking he writes for ‘the Dandy comic strip’. Ferguson takes pride in his
repartee and in his ability to make people laugh, and he will often send himself
up too. He knows how others see him. We tried to guess his team on one
occasion and he interrupted with a smile: ‘Never try to read the mind of a
madman!’
Beneath that brusque exterior and ferocious partisanship there is a different
Ferguson, one that is not seen often enough. The soft-focus Ferguson has been
known to ring newspaper offices, demanding to be put straight through to the
editor after hearing that a reporter who works on his patch might be in danger of
being made redundant.
When John Bean, the former Daily Express man, had a heart attack, the first
contact he had from the outside world was a nurse bringing him a bouquet of
flowers, with Ferguson’s spidery handwriting asking: ‘What have you been
doing to yourself, you silly old tap dancer?’
He has grown to dislike the newspaper industry but he does not regard the
whole of the species with disdain. Some of his oldest friends are football writers
and he has never forgotten the journalists who backed him when it looked like he
could be sacked early in his United career. When Steve Curry lost his job at the
Express Ferguson was one of the first people on the phone to commiserate.
When Bean was forced to retire on medical advice Ferguson called him to say:
‘Any time you want to come to Old Trafford give me a ring and there will be a
seat for you in the directors’ box.’
In 2003, David Meek, the former Manchester Evening News correspondent,
was diagnosed with cancer. ‘I had to break the news to Alex that I would be
unable to ghostwrite his programme notes for the first time in sixteen years,’
Meek recalls. ‘He wanted to know why and when I told him I was going into
hospital for an operation he looked me in the eye and said exactly what I wanted
to hear: “You can handle it.” There was a huge bouquet waiting for me at the
hospital. Then I was convalescing at home a week later and, out of the blue, the
phone rang. There was no introduction. He didn’t even say who it was. A voice
just growled down the line: “The Scottish beast is on its way!” He was at my
front door twenty minutes later and the point is he didn’t have to do that. He’s an
extremely busy man and it was the middle of the season and David Beckham’s
will-he-go, will-he-stay saga with Real Madrid. “You’ll never guess what that
Beckham wore to training today,” Alex said to me. “He had this bloody spingly-
spangly tracksuit on – he looked like Gary Glitter!” We had a pleasant afternoon,
chatting about football and families. I’ll never forget how kind and supportive he
was.’
No doubt there are some who prefer to see a different side but those who
know Ferguson best say he has a heart the size of the Old Trafford trophy room.
He can be overwhelmingly generous, a devoted worker for charities. He goes out
of his way to attend the funeral of a loyal supporter, an unsung member of staff
or one of his many old acquaintances. Often when his mobile is clamped to his
ear he is offering advice and encouragement to a struggling manager. There are
invitations for a sacked manager or coach to help him out with training for a few
days. Cards are sent to injured players. Visits are made to schools or businesses
run by friends of friends. Letters are sent to Elizabeth Thomson, his first teacher
at Broomloan Road Primary in Govan, the district of Glasgow where he grew
up.
When George Best died nobody spoke more passionately than Ferguson. Or
with greater warmth. And of who? Yes, a brilliant footballer and Old Trafford
legend, but also someone who was never slow to criticise Ferguson. Best once
recommended that Terry Venables should be brought in and told the newspapers
he ‘wouldn’t walk round the corner to watch United play’. Yet Ferguson, usually
such a grudge-bearer, came into his own after Best’s death. Nobody could have
done more to represent United with greater dignity. Nobody could have been
more eloquent in his tributes. ‘George burst on to the scene at a liberated time,
with an explosion of music, the Beatles, style, fashion and a freer way of life,’ he
said. ‘He carried the dreams of everyone in the Sixties. As well as his talent as a
fantastic player, what remains in my mind is his courage. I can see him, even
now, flying down the wing, riding tackles. He has left us with a million
memories and all of them good. The best talent our football has ever produced.’
This is the side of Ferguson his friends and colleagues cite. A man who often
displays unusual consideration and warmth. There is the story of him visiting
Anfield after the Hillsborough disaster, arriving quietly, making it clear he didn’t
want any publicity, that it must be kept under wraps. He was the first public
figure from outside Liverpool to travel to the stadium to show his grief and
support and, without the media ever getting wind of it, he presented a substantial
cheque for the disaster fund.
Then there was the time, a couple of weeks before Paul Hunter’s death, when
Ferguson sent the former world snooker champion a video message telling him
he should be proud of everything he had achieved and praising him for his
bravery and dignity in fighting his cancer. ‘He had never met Paul before but his
message was so genuine and heartfelt,’ says Lindsey, Hunter’s widow. ‘He came
across as sincere and kind. He said Paul was very special, a proud
Yorkshireman, and that he could see similarities with Alan Smith. He said he
was praying for Paul to get better and that he knew what a lovely lad he was. All
we knew of Ferguson was this hothead football manager we saw on television.
Yet he went out of his way to be so caring and that really touched us.’
Geoff Thomas, the former Crystal Palace player who has successfully battled
leukaemia, was equally astonished when he organised a rematch of the 1990 FA
