This could be the end, this really could be the end.
The press conference takes place in a downstairs room full of chain-smoking Portuguese journalists and officious-looking women in Benfica blazers and short skirts. Ferguson comes in through a side door, looking like death warmed up. His eyes flash round the room, working out who’s there, which newspapers, which faces. But he avoids eye contact.
He says he is ‘waiting for players to mature’. He promises that the ‘rebuilding job’ will eventually pay dividends and he asks us to be patient with his team, which is a clever piece of bargaining. When managers request tolerance for players it is usually because they want to siphon off some of it for themselves.
One big question has to be asked. It’s not a question that anyone particularly wants to ask, but it has to be put to him, all the same.
‘Alex, you’ve spoken about a rebuilding job but given the financial implications of this defeat, and everything that it stands for, are you certain you will be allowed to oversee that rebuilding job?’
It is the second time in twenty-four hours he has been asked about getting the sack.
‘Listen,’ he replies, trying his best to sound in control, ‘there will always be a profile on me, whatever I do. But I am not going to answer those type of questions. I’m sure you will have plenty to say about it yourselves in the press. But I’ve got a job to do, a good job, and I’m confident in my players. OK?’
He probably expects worse. But nobody – and there are a lot of us packed into the room – takes a cheap shot. Our questions are constructed sympathetically and put to him in a solemn tone. There is no interrogation, no schadenfreude. We recognise greatness and we know that is what we are dealing with here. Without greatness, there is no fall, no tragedy. We are not going to trample over greatness when he is sitting before us, looking thoroughly miserable.
We are entitled, however, to ask whether he has taken his eye off the ball.
Managers in the Champions League are supposed to know every detail about the opposition. But when United played Maccabi Haifa in 2002 Ferguson spent his entire pre-match briefing, a day before the game, talking about the wrong team. ‘We’ve watched their videos and we know Israeli football has improved a lot over the years,’ he told a roomful of Israeli journalists. ‘They have beaten Lokomotiv Moscow, Parma and AC Milan so we know we can’t underestimate them.’
There was an awkward silence before Lilach Sonin, the presenter of Israel’s Sports Five Plus, tried to correct him. ‘I’m sorry, but I think you’re talking about a different club.’
‘They’ve made changes?’ Ferguson innocently replied.
‘No, you are talking about a different team. You are telling us about Hapoel Tel Aviv rather than Maccabi Haifa.’
Ferguson went bright red. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, looking genuinely appalled. ‘I must have got it wrong.’
‘I’m embarrassed for him,’ Sonin said afterwards. ‘He didn’t seem to know which team Manchester United were playing. Yet he’s the manager, isn’t he?’
This might have nothing to do with what has happened this season but, all together, it creates the impression of a man who has let things slip. Ferguson didn’t seem to have any answers tonight. He sat forlornly in the dugout, strangely inert, as Benfica recovered from Scholes’s early goal to equalise, move into the lead and take a grip of the match. At the final whistle he headed straight for the tunnel without a backward glance. He looked absolutely knackered and when we board the plane we can see the strain is getting to him. His fingernails give him away. They are bitten to the quick.
THE BLAME GAME
11.12.05
Manchester United 1
Everton 1
Carlos Queiroz began training yesterday by announcing: ‘Let me introduce a new player, a young man from Norway …’ before presenting Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, fit again after a knee injury that had threatened to end his career. The squad gave Solskjaer a round of applause before he began his first full session in nineteen months.
So there are still good times to be had at Manchester United. It is just that good-news stories tend to be ignored by the newspapers when there is a crisis howling like a gale. United have become ‘Crisis Club Manchester United’ since the defeat in Lisbon and some of us have been chasing a tip today that Ferguson has already been persuaded to leave at the end of the season. We haven’t been able to stand it up – it is probably just the usual mischief-making – but it is typical of the rumours that are doing the rounds. This is what happens when a club of United’s stature goes out of Europe before Christmas. Fingers are pointed and blame apportioned.
Today is another bleak day, a Groundhog Day. Everton are an average side and the match ends with more shouting and booing. Football is a fickle business. Earlier this week the supporters tried to carry Ferguson shoulder-high through Lisbon airport. Today, one of the fans’ websites describes United as football’s equivalent of the Conservative Party, their performance against Benfica being ‘the fading wheezing of a dying beast’. There is no harmony whatsoever between crowd and team and, yet again, the roads around the ground are clogged with early leavers. It has become as much a part of life at Old Trafford as the neon sign outside the stadium.
To Ferguson, the press cuttings have begun to read like hate mail. Alan Smith, the Daily Telegraph’s footballer-turned-journalist, has described the performance in Lisbon as ‘a shambles, a headless chicken charge relying on a crash-bang-wallop approach’. Scapegoats are being demanded and, almost without exception, the newspapers have come to the conclusion that Ferguson will be politely ushered towards the door at the end of the season. ‘His quitting will be sudden,’ according to the Sunday Times. ‘A small statement on the club website, a brief press release will appear, probably as media outlets are closing down late on a Friday, perhaps on the eve of England’s opening game at the World Cup.’
It is a big assumption to make and Ferguson has a bee in his bonnet about it. He was at a funeral on Friday, meaning Queiroz took over media duties and there were strict conditions attached. Queiroz would not take any questions relating to Ferguson and the club let us know beforehand that if the warning went unheeded the conference would be abandoned imme diately. We were not even to mention Ferguson by name and told that if we did, Queiroz would walk out without saying another word. The orders had been passed down by Ferguson, it was explained, and they were non-negotiable.
Ferguson’s belief is that we are taking a malicious sense of pleasure from what has happened and ‘seeking to make it personal’. A rumour has reached Old Trafford that we ordered champagne to toast Benfica’s victory on the flight home from Lisbon. Complete nonsense, but hugely damaging anyway. ‘There are people,’ he says, and we think he must mean us, ‘who are trying to drive me out … but they’ve been trying that for the last ten years.’
He is a proud man and it is probably only to be expected that he has such a downer on the press right now. It cannot be very pleasant for someone of his achievements to pick up the newspapers every morning and read that a large chunk of the Alex Ferguson magic has died. But it is a mistake for him to think it is vindictive on our part. The only fact that matters, from our perspective, is that it is a big story. Just about everyone has an opinion on Ferguson. He provokes a response, often a strong one, and even his closest journalistic allies are debating whether his departure could be forced upon him.
‘Restoring true greatness to Old Trafford threatens to be a dauntingly wearing, long-term project,’ Hugh McIlvanney, his old friend, observes in 1,500 words dedicated to Ferguson’s predicament in the Sunday Times:
His warrior spirit abhors the thought of ending his managerial career in any way but on a crest of triumph, but his achievements are already so monumental that recent events could not conceivably cast a shadow on them. A personally choreographed exit would be bathed in the dignity and honour that are his due. He must never run the risk of being dispatched by remote control from Florida. Eventuall
y there comes a moment when the best and bravest of fighters shouldn’t answer the bell.
Coming from a man once known among United supporters as the Voice of Fergie, that is an elegant piece of advice many of us thought we would never see. But these are strange times. If Ferguson had switched on his television tonight he would have seen Jose Mourinho win Coach of the Year in the BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards. Rafael Benitez was runner-up, having won the European Cup for Liverpool. On Radio Five Live’s phone-in, meanwhile, United fans were calling time on Ferguson’s professional life and questioning whether he still has what it takes to be a successful manager. An Arsenal supporter rang in to defend him, saying he could hardly believe what he was hearing, that United fans were either stupid or just didn’t appreciate how lucky they were. Strange times, indeed.
TRAGICOMEDY
13.12.05
The bee in Ferguson’s bonnet is beginning to buzz out of control. Today’s press conference is a classic.
‘Morning, Alex.’
‘Right, injuries. Silvestre has got a slight groin strain, should be OK. Other than that, everybody is fit. John O’Shea’s fit again. Then, looking at tomorrow’s game, Wigan have been fantastic this season. I’m really pleased for their chairman Dave Whelan and everyone else. He’s a straight talker. He’s had a few managers but he’s struck up a terrific bond with …’
He cannot find the right name so Bill Thornton, of the Daily Star, helps him out.
‘Jewell?’
‘Aye, Paul Jewell. That’s refreshing and that’s the reason why they are there. So that’s all I have got.’ He’s rising to his feet. ‘See you later boys. I’m busy.’
It lasts seventy-four seconds. Eighty-six words, and he is gone. Out of the door, up the stairs, along the corridor, into his office.
Some of us laugh. We laugh and we laugh. Others swear and get angry, really angry. One guy has driven ninety miles for a press conference that’s lasted less time than it takes to boil an egg. Or even to get the egg out of the fridge. At England press conferences, where the journalists often have more control than the manager, some of the questions last longer than seventy-four seconds.
There are television crews at Carrington and, very quickly, Sky Sports hear about it. Sky can be more sensationalistic than the worst tabloid. They announce on their rolling news channel a ‘newsflash’ claiming that Ferguson stormed out and refused to answer any questions. Press Association and Reuters pick up the story and suddenly it is buzzing through wire services all over the world.
Well, here’s the truth. He didn’t exactly storm out. There were no tape recorders scattered across the floor. No expletives. No slamming the door off its hinges. He didn’t even raise his voice. He simply got up and marched to the door before we had time to realise what was going on. His body language was tense but he was only seventy per cent angry, at most, and there was even the flicker of a smile as he closed the door behind him.
He went straight into an interview with MUTV, and his motives quickly became clear. The press, he said, were the real villains. Going out of the Champions League had hurt but the criticism had been disproportionate to the scale of disappointment. He was sick and tired of picking up the newspapers and reading personal attacks.
‘The press have a hatred of Manchester United. Any opportunity and they will have a go at us. Right now, they are trying to fragment the club, the players from the supporters and the supporters from the players. I suppose it goes with the territory, us being a high-profile club, but they go over the top. They make it personal.’
The supporters, he said, should disregard everything they read in the newspapers. ‘I think our fans are aware of it and I don’t think they will fall into the trap of believing what the press say. I make the point, and I make it strongly, that we are at our best when the fans are right behind us. That is the only thing that should matter right now. We have to stick together.’
AGGRO
14.12.05
Manchester United 4
Wigan Athletic 0 0
Sky Sports have been cranking up the story all day. James Cooper, their Manchester reporter, has been positioned outside Old Trafford to find out what the fans think about the press. Some of us have been on television to put across our side while various pundits have been wheeled out to analyse whether we have, as alleged, got it in for United.
Our message, in essence, is that we should be talking about the headline makers rather than the headline writers. The whole business is slightly embarrassing. Those aren’t notepads stuffed in the pockets of the people who have been barracking Ferguson, but season tickets. It wasn’t a reporter or a splash sub who suggested he signed misfits such as David Bellion or Eric Djemba-Djemba or Diego Forlan. We cannot refrain from publishing scores or Champions League tables because results are not going well. We cannot conveniently go on sabbatical because there are supporters calling for his head. Making a monster out of the media isn’t going to solve the club’s problems.
It’s funny though. The fans have been laying into Ferguson, getting right on his back, but they don’t like it when the press become involved. After twenty minutes, Scholes tries his luck from thirty yards out and the goalkeeper spills the shot. Fletcher follows in and puts away the rebound. The crowd are roaring but the linesman has his flag up for offside and a bald chap, probably in his fifties, turns round in front of the pressbox and starts pointing and chanting.
Blame the press! Blame the press! Blame the press!
Fuck the press! Fuck the press! Fuck the press!
Ten minutes later Ferdinand scores for real. This time another guy, a pillock in a tie, comes up really close, giving it the middle finger, screaming abuse. The woman he’s with, his girlfriend or wife (or carer?), is trying to pull him away, but he has really lost it, threatening all sorts of GBH.
This is unusual but not unprecedented. Journalists, rightly or wrongly, are disliked more than anyone bar estate agents and traffic wardens, and there have been many times when this has led to confrontation, even violence. One night out in La Coruña with Neville Neville (Gary’s dad) ended badly when someone in the same bar realised who he was drinking with and started shouting the odds about the ‘anti-United press’. Other reporters have been told to leave certain pubs and restaurants for their own safety. One guy, on England duty, was whacked over the head with an ashtray.
Sometimes it can be very sinister. A Daily Telegraph reporter once opened his mail at Canary Wharf to find a jiffy bag containing human faeces. The accompanying letter came from a Millwall fan and said: ‘You talk shit – you might as well have some.’ Opening an envelope on another occasion, the same journalist suddenly realised his hand was pouring with blood. A razor blade had been taped to the inside of the flap.
More recently, a Daily Mail journalist picked up the phone to hear some crank accusing him of being a ‘nigger-lover’ and making all sorts of threats, using the worst kind of racist language imaginable. It later came out that the man responsible was the father of a Premiership player (unrelated to United), upset because his son had been given a lower mark out of ten than a black team-mate.
It is unusual, though, for the hostility to surface inside a stadium. The only other time it’s occurred in Manchester was at Maine Road, in 1998. On that occasion a gang of big, hard-looking blokes invaded the pressbox looking for a Daily Mirror reporter called Steve Rogers, who had written something they didn’t like about City’s attendances. City, who were in the old Third Division at the time, had had a record low crowd of 3,007 for an Auto Windscreens Shield first-round tie against Mansfield Town, the day before United had a sell-out against Bayern Munich in the Champions League. The Mirror had some fun with it, comparing the fortunes of the two clubs. At the next City match there were people hunting for Rogers.
What they couldn’t grasp was that the story had been written by a freelance agency and that ‘Steve Rogers’ was a cod by-line. Threats were made, things got out of hand and the police were called.
It took six of them to get Lindsay Sutton, the Mirror’s local stringer, out of the stadium before he was lynched.
CHANGING THE RULES
16.12.05
It’s an odd place, Carrington. A huge, sprawling development secluded behind farmland and trees on a private country lane five miles west of Manchester, the type that only horse-riders or loving couples would normally frequent. We call it Fortress Carrington because it is so difficult to locate or get into, because it seems specifically designed, as Ferguson once allegedly put it, to ‘keep those fuckers from the media out’. It is like one of those rural hideaways in a James Bond movie where the villains hatch bomb-making experiments. There are no signs, while three sets of electronically operated barriers and a stubbled security man in the front cabin make sure nobody gets in without permission.
Stopwatches at the ready, we head there today not knowing what to expect and, quite frankly, more than a little worried. It is the first time we have been invited to see Ferguson since the seventy-four-second press conference and it is difficult to grasp what might happen. We have got wind something is brewing and we are mentally prepared for a sustained attack.
This is the One: Sir Alex Ferguson: The Uncut Story of a Football Genius Page 11