When Ferguson flies into a temper we know he is just letting off steam. Whatever is eating him comes out in an unstoppable torrent. But within a few minutes he might be laughing and joking, poking fun at his victim but pointing out that it is nothing personal. Sometimes you get the feeling he is just doing it to test us, or as a reminder about who calls the shots. What he says is unpleasant, but he gets himself so worked up that it is generally harmless bluster. It seldom makes any sense. In a strange way, that is comforting when he has just tried to humiliate you in front of your peers.
Keane is different. He operates by the same hairtrigger reactions but when he is riled he is more calculated, perfectly in control of what he is saying. Not a syllable passes his lips without being vetted by the censor of his mind first. And what he says is designed to cut deep. Every grievance or perceived slight gets an airing. By the time he has finished he has dealt with everything, in chronological order. Every insult is impeccably delivered, from A to Z.
His biggest feud was with Mick McCarthy, manager of the Republic of Ireland, before Keane walked out of the World Cup in 2002 – a story so sensational that it made the front of the Delhi Times at a time when India and Pakistan seemed on the brink of nuclear war. Yet the list of those who have been publicly savaged by Keane goes way beyond that. Keane has had road rage, air rage, even hair rage.
There is a great story about him laying into Ruud van Nistelrooy after catching him combing his hair before an MUTV interview. What the fuck, Keane wanted to know, was one of his team-mates doing poncing about in front of a mirror? Who wanted to look good for MUTV?
Keane, you quickly learn, is not a man who suppresses his inner thoughts. He has described the team that won the European Cup in 1999 as average. He has complained that a Rolex and fast-car culture exists in the dressing room. In his autobiography he brands Peter Schmeichel, the greatest goalkeeper in United’s history, as a ‘fannying around poseur’.
He once talked of a team-mate trembling with nerves as the team lined up before a big European tie and he was so disgusted it sounded as if he wanted to vomit. But this is Keane, a man who would rather die on his feet than live on his knees. An aggressive exboxer who acts impulsively and without regret. Not many footballers feel they are in a position where they can get away with describing former team-mates as ‘bluffers, whingers and conmen’, as he has. Not many would want to say it, even if they believed it. And you just know he has said worse to their faces. Keane says he has had so many arguments with other players that he never knows from one day to the next who he’s talking to.
Gary Neville once sent him a text saying: ‘This is Gary’s new mobile number.’ A few minutes later his phone bleeped with a reply: ‘So what?’
After today’s MUTV broadcast, it is what happens next that matters. Ferguson will have to be swift and decisive because it is unthinkable that he can let this happen. Keane might not be the gladiator he once was, he might have a bad hip and aching knees, sore joints and a stiff back, but his level of commitment is still awesome. Superbly timed tackles, immaculate interceptions, swiftly delivered passes, a calming presence.
Keane understands precisely what it takes to be a midfielder, coupling this with the ability to bring it into action. He has the capacity to read a dangerous situation before it happens and then go in and prevent it. When things are going badly he will never be the one whose head drops on to his chest, who looks around to blame someone else. He always takes responsibility, always goes for the entire ninety minutes. ‘If I was putting Roy Keane out there to represent Manchester United on a one-on-one,’ Ferguson once said, ‘we’d win the National, the Boat Race and anything else. It’s an incredible thing he’s got.’
Of all the quotes about Keane, that one probably encapsulates best why today is such a bombshell. Keane has never been one for killer passes, for nutmegging an opponent or sending in raking fifty-yard balls. He doesn’t bring a crowd to its feet by trapping the ball with the outside of his boot, dribbling past the full-back with a couple of showy stepovers and crossing from an impossibly tight angle. What he possesses is less spectacular, yet all the more inspiring: presence, control, aura, attitude, desire.
There will be times when a game has gone flat and Keane will lift the crowd single-handedly. He inspires awe, from supporters and opponents alike, and no one else in football can affect a crowd’s senses in the way he does. A tackle from Keane is one of the great events of sport.
Journalists and television crews are outside Old Trafford to ask supporters for their reaction. Without exception, everyone describes him as irreplaceable. They talk in the tone that people use when someone has died. They use words such as ‘shocked’ and ‘devastated’ and they make it clear United must offer Keane a new deal. This is a big moment in United’s season. It is very important that Ferguson does the right thing.
ALL BETS ARE OFF
1.10.05
Fulham 2
Manchester United 3
A press release arrives today from Paddy Power bookmakers: ‘Chelsea declared Premiership champs!’ It is to announce that they are paying out on the title in record time.
Chelsea are clear of the pack and not looking like they will be caught. Accordingly, we have declared the title race over and decided to pay out seven months before the season is finished. We know, and the punters know, that the Premiership race is already over.
It’s a cheap publicity stunt, but a stunning one too. The season is only seven games old – thirty-one to go – and none of the big teams have even faced each other yet. Bookmakers often pay out early in return for easy headlines, but normally in March or April … never October.
And yet it is difficult to see how Paddy Power can lose this particular gamble. Chelsea have won their opening seven games, scoring fourteen goals and conceding one. They are strong and athletic, rich and powerful and totally at ease with their vision of themselves at the top of the hierarchy. The Glazers are promising to back Ferguson in the January transfer window but nobody knows whether to believe them. Even if they keep their promise, the budget will be only a few droplets compared to Abramovich’s oil riches.
At least Ferguson shows an appreciation today that things have to change. United go back to basics and, finally, abandon the 4-5-1 system for the old-fashioned 4-4-2. Rooney is moved from the left wing to his favourite position, a roving centre-forward’s role, and responds by scoring one of the goals and setting up another. Van Nistelrooy scores twice and looks much happier with another striker beside him. Giggs and Park provide width and penetration on the wings. There is movement, anticipation, speed of thought – everything, in fact, that made Ferguson’s teams great in the first place.
It has been a long time coming, but it is a start and it should placate the fans. Things have been getting pretty heavy recently, with supporters calling radio phone-ins and writing to the newspapers. Scapegoats have been sought and Carlos Queiroz, in particular, has become a popular target, partly as a kind of surrogate for Ferguson himself – in the same way people criticise Cherie Blair to get at her husband.
The fans have come to the conclusion, rightly or wrongly, that it is Queiroz, not Ferguson, who decided the team should go with 4-5-1 and that, consequently, he should take the brunt of their anger. The press have started to question whether Ferguson has allowed himself to be guided too much by his assistant. Whether Queiroz is, in fact, responsible has never been confirmed, but it has been said so many times now that it has become generally accepted.
Sky send Martin Tyler to interview Ferguson after the game. When he asks United’s manager about the change to 4-4-2 it touches a nerve. Ferguson pulls away, shaking his head with a ‘dearie-me’ kind of laugh, as though he cannot believe someone in the television industry could have the audacity to question his tactics. Tyler, a respected commentator and interviewer, is so flustered that he completely forgets to ask Ferguson for his reaction to Keane’s announcement.
THE ODD ONE OUT
16.10.05
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It is the Football Writers’ Association’s northern dinner at the Portland Hotel in Manchester tonight, although Ferguson has turned down his invitation. Fair enough, he has his own take on what the ‘F’ and ‘W’ stand for in FWA right now, but it is still a shame that it has come to this. He used to be a regular guest at FWA functions. It is sad if the biggest name in the business is no longer willing to break bread with us.
Otherwise there is a good turnout of managers – even England’s head coach, Sven-Göran Eriksson – but it is never quite the same when Ferguson doesn’t turn up and they are just as disappointed as we are. Ferguson is a committee member of the League Managers’ Association and, with one or two exceptions, it is difficult to overstate the esteem with which he is held among his fellow managers. He will go out of his way to make himself available if an LMA member needs advice. He will often ring a struggling manager, someone he may hardly even know, if he senses they are going through a bad time. Letters of congratulation are sent to promotion-winning managers. Or a sympathetic note will go to someone who has just lost his job or been relegated. Ferguson may regard Liverpool as a mortal enemy but that did not stop him writing to Rafael Benitez at the end of last season to congratulate him for returning the European Cup to Anfield.
Ferguson, in return, is treated with a starry-eyed reverence not afforded to anyone else in the game. His fellow managers even refer to him as the Godfather. He is the doyen, and they often compete with each other for his affections. They attach themselves to him and hang on his every word. When he talks at dinners and other social functions they listen in complete silence. His success makes it inevitable that there is some professional envy but even his rivals pay him respect. Ferguson is the king of this particular jungle.
It is a good night anyway. An opportunity to spend some time with the managers away from a working environment, update our contacts books with some new numbers and, if there has been any friction with a particular manager, maybe sort it out over a couple of drinks. Ferguson is close to unique in his dealings with the media. There are managers here tonight who clearly want to cultivate a relationship with the newspapers and are as keen to get to know us as we are to get to know them.
Steve Bruce, manager of Birmingham City, is under pressure right now because of a run of bad results. He has been ringing the football writers in the Midlands, offering the odd story, trying to get a few people onside, playing the media game.
Benitez is in Spain but he has asked Ron Yeats, the club’s chief scout, to go on stage and apologise for his absence.
Eriksson gets the worst press of all and he would probably rather jump in a pool of alligators than go within thirty yards of anyone with an NUJ card. But he gives a friendly little speech and goes round each table, shaking everyone by the hand.
Allardyce is leaning against the bar, smoking a cigar and blowing smoke rings, like a darts player who has just thrown a 180. His team, Bolton Wanderers, have a UEFA Cup tie against Besiktas of Turkey coming up. He takes the microphone at one point, like some kind of Phoenix Nights crooner. ‘I hope we kick the shit out of them,’ he jokes in that booming gravel voice.
Ferguson is different. He is beyond the stage where he feels he needs to be ‘in’ with the press. He doesn’t want to ‘play the game’ and he scoffs at managers who flutter their eyelashes at the press.
A few years ago the FWA put on a lunch at Haydock Park for every Premiership manager from the north-west. Allardyce was in his element again. David Moyes, manager of Everton, was on great form too, regaling us with anecdotes about life at the club. But Ferguson achieved the extraordinary feat that afternoon of not saying a single word to any of the daily journalists. Not even a ‘hello’ or ‘goodbye’. In the morning something had appeared in the Sun that he didn’t like. When he took his place at the top table he could be overheard telling the other managers that we might have laid on his lunch, but there was no way he was talking to us and even less chance that we would get an interview. He had his beef stroganoff, shook the other managers’ hands, then got up to go, blanking us on the way out.
We are the losers here. Ferguson must go to thirty black-tie functions a year, and off duty he has a natural desire to entertain. His stories are as funny as those of any after-dinner speaker. His knowledge of the game is encyclopaedic and it is never long before he is rearranging the salt and pepper pots on his table to recreate some tactical move. He can talk about football and make you feel as if you are at the molten core of it. And he is blessed with a sense of humour that not enough people know about, particularly his ability to laugh at himself.
Bernard Manning, the guest turn at one charity dinner, caught him arriving late, trying to slip unobtrusively into his seat. Ferguson had just fallen out with Brian Kidd, his assistant at the time, and Manning could hardly believe his luck.
‘Alex, Alex … Brian Kidd’s been on the phone. Kiddo says he’s got a message for you … Alex, he says you can eff off.’
Ferguson was in trouble and Manning was merciless.
‘Alex, I saw a documentary about you on telly the other night,’ he continued. Ferguson smiled nervously, waiting for another excruciating punch line. ‘Your wife was on it. No wonder you’re out every night at these dinners.’
Ferguson had heard Manning use this joke on other unsuspecting guests, including Prince Philip on one occasion. Knowing it was nothing personal, he laughed along, quite happy to have been singled out.
This is the side of Ferguson that people should know more about: his love of laughter and his own quick wit. Outsiders tend to think of him as a man permanently riddled with fury. Yet the truth is that he has a great sense of fun and he can be wickedly funny.
More than once he has interrupted a press conference to question a journalist’s weight, shaking his head in sympathy for the reporter’s wife and guessing that ‘she must be a very understanding lady’. Ferguson, like a lot of men at the top of their professions, prides himself on being able to make other people laugh and he will often bring the house down with one of his barbed one-liners about an opponent or referee. ‘That bloody ref,’ he joked once. ‘He runs like the hairs in his arse are tied together!’
His colleagues at Carrington talk of a man who is never happier than when he is taking ‘abuse’ from the cleaners or one of the dinner ladies. They remember his training top mysteriously going missing from the changing rooms, taken by person or persons unknown, and then turning up with a picture of Pudsey Bear over the sewn-in A.F. initials. Ferguson never found out who it was but he admired their cheek, whoever it was, and wore the same top every day for a week.
Then there was the time the laundry women accidentally broke environmental regulations by using bleach in their washing machines. Ferguson rang them up, putting on a fake, nasal accent and pretending to be from the local council: ‘I wondered if you could explain to me why all the ducks in the nearby pond have disappeared.’
The pity for us is that we generally hear these stories second-hand nowadays rather than from Ferguson himself. The days when he had us in stitches at his anecdotes during a press conference have temporarily disappeared and, in the current climate, none of us can be sure when they will return. The resentment, on his part, seems deep-rooted. He has strong opinions about the game, but recently he seems to have taken a strategic decision to protect himself by saying as little as possible. He has always liked to answer carefully and without ambiguity, but he has started to treat questions with more suspicion than confidence.
When he came down the stairs at Carrington on Friday, bang on time as always, he looked tanned and healthy. He’d had a few days in Malta with his wife, Cathy, and he was singing an old Josef Locke song, playing up to Kath, the receptionist.
Hear my song Violetta
Hear my song beneath the moon
Come to me, in my gondola
Waiting on the old lagoon
But when the pressroom door closed his body language changed.
There were a numb
er of issues we needed to ask him about – the Blackburn defeat, his return to 4-4-2 and, of course, Keane – but as soon as he took his seat it was apparent that it was going to be a difficult press conference. Almost every question was stonewalled with a wrinkle of his nose, a shake of the head or a growled warning to change the subject.
There was some humdrum stuff about the state of the pitch (one of his favourite subjects) and an injury bulletin. Finally, we brought up Keane’s MUTV interview. ‘Alex, we haven’t had the chance to see you since Roy said he would quit the club next summer.’
We had been waiting a fortnight. His reaction to such a huge story was long overdue. Yet we were totally unprepared for his response.
‘I don’t think he actually said that.’
It was such a strange thing to say it threw everyone. There was a long, awkward silence as we tried to take it in.
‘But he could hardly have been clearer, could he?’
‘Listen,’ he said, more firmly, ‘I’ve got nothing to say about it. Does that help you?’
‘Not really, Alex … it’s not an unreasonable question, he is your captain.’
‘Aye, it’s not an unreasonable question and it’s not an unreasonable answer. You’re trying to create an agenda that’s not there.’
ON THE ATTACK
17.10.05
We are back at Old Trafford today for a Champions League press conference to preview tomorrow’s game against Lille. The press are given a copy of the programme in advance of European matches and there is a clue in Ferguson’s programme notes as to why his invitation to the FWA dinner went in the nearest waste-paper basket. In his column he writes about the abuse he received during the Blackburn game and blames the newspapers for stirring up the fans.
This is the One: Sir Alex Ferguson: The Uncut Story of a Football Genius Page 6