This is the One: Sir Alex Ferguson: The Uncut Story of a Football Genius

by Daniel Taylor

  Ferguson has a long memory and these are offences he is prepared neither to forgive nor to forget. He still remembers, having lost 6–3 to Southampton during a difficult period in the 1996–97 season, switching on Radio Five to hear the presenters say it had made their weekend because of their dislike of United. He tuned in on another occasion to find an entire programme dedicated to the ‘demise of Manchester United’ and he has fallen out spectacularly with the commentator Alan Green, who now freely admits to longing for the day when Ferguson retires. ‘Bluntly,’ Green says, ‘he is someone I would have preferred not to deal with. Football will undoubtedly miss him. But I won’t. I will toast his departure.’

  As feuds go, Ferguson versus Green would make one hell of a Celebrity Deathmatch. What many people don’t realise, however, is that they once regarded each other as friends. Green says he learned how to drink ‘copious amounts’ of vodka on long nights out with Ferguson while covering Aberdeen in Europe in the early 1980s. When Ferguson came down to work in England, Green would let him into New Broadcasting House on Oxford Road in Manchester so he could watch live feeds of Scottish teams in action. He remembers Ferguson being ‘great company, witty and charming’ as they sat together, drinking wine and eating sandwiches. But Ferguson’s success made him less tolerant of Green’s outspoken commentary style and the relationship gradually disintegrated. They haven’t spoken since 1992 and they probably never will again. Green describes Ferguson in his autobiography as ‘foul-mouthed’, ‘arrogant’, a ‘control freak’, whereas Ferguson chooses silence as his form of weapon. The feud with Green isn’t mentioned once in Ferguson’s autobiography, as if it doesn’t even register.

  The bad blood can be traced back to a typical Ferguson story. Jimmy Armfield, the Five Live match summariser, had sat in on a Friday press conference in which Ferguson said Mark Hughes was carrying an injury and wouldn’t be fit for the game the following afternoon. Armfield had previously arranged an interview with Hughes, and when he bumped into him in the car park he suggested they postpone it if he were unable to play. ‘What are you talking about?’ replied Hughes. ‘I’m fine.’

  Green then went on air to say he didn’t pay attention to the news emanating from Old Trafford and that he preferred to see for himself who actually ran out on the pitch rather than listening to spin.

  ‘I don’t mind if a manager says nothing,’ he later said. ‘That’s his prerogative. But giving out wrong information is something else. Too many managers try to use the press in this way and I object to it, whoever it is.’

  The fuse was lit. Green was despatched to the Dell to commentate on United’s next game at Southampton. And Ferguson was waiting for him.

  ‘YOU DON’T PICK MY TEAM, YOU BASTARD …’

  Relations deteriorated rapidly thereafter although, on reflection, Green believes there had been persistent signs before that of a terminal breakdown.

  To begin with, Ferguson had heard that Green was a closet Liverpool fan. In April 1988, United drew 3–3 at Anfield after being two goals down, despite playing most of the second half with ten men after Colin Gibson had been sent off. Green was chatting to Liverpool’s manager, Kenny Dalglish, outside the dressing rooms when they heard Ferguson complaining to a local radio reporter that he was ‘choking on his vomit’ because of the way referees never gave visiting sides anything at Anfield. Dalglish was so annoyed that he went into his office and came back out with his young daughter in his arms, telling the Merseyside reporters they would get more sense out of her. Green, taken aback by the way Ferguson had blanked him, followed him up a flight of stairs to the directors’ lounge to ask what was wrong. ‘I’m not talking to you,’ Ferguson shouted. ‘You’re a Liverpool fan. You are just like all the rest.’

  Green knows how to defend himself. He stood in front of Ferguson, looked into his eyes and told him he didn’t know what he was talking about, that there was absolutely no reason to refuse to speak to him.

  Others are not so courageous. In October 1995, Ferguson reduced the Match of the Day commentator John Motson to a gibbering wreck after he couched a question, in the mildest possible terms, about whether the club were worried about Roy Keane’s disciplinary record. Motson had been asked to get some reaction after Keane had been sent off for the third time in fourteen games, but Ferguson went bananas as soon as it was brought up.

  ‘John, you’ve no right to ask that question. You’re out of order. You know full well my ruling on that. Interview finished. I don’t want to fucking watch it. Cancel it! Fucking make sure that does not go out!’

  Motson, who is no Jeremy Paxman, spluttered something about being under orders to ask it. ‘You fucking know the rules here,’ Ferguson yelled back. Every word was picked up by Match of the Day’s microphones, and the presenter, Des Lynam, wanted to use it, with the swear words suitably bleeped out, but he was overruled by the programme’s editors.

  For the record, Green does support a club whose name begins with L, but it is the Irish club Linfield, not Liverpool. He did himself few favours by describing Keane once as a ‘lout’ but it is crazy to think he is waging a personal vendetta against United, as some United supporters now believe. He may have a soft spot for Liverpool, and he admits disliking Ferguson intensely, but he was also one of the first broadcasters to argue that winning the treble of European Cup, Premiership and FA Cup in 1999 warranted a knighthood. He has tried to bury the hatchet by making generous remarks on air and he snubbed an unofficial ‘Farewell to Fergie’ dinner that had been planned by some of Ferguson’s media enemies when he seemed about to retire in 2002. A table had been reserved at Belle Epoque, a restaurant in Knutsford, just a few miles from Ferguson’s house, but Green turned down his invitation, believing it to be disrespectful and unprofessional.

  He also wrote Ferguson a letter saying what a shame it was that two men who cared passionately for the game could not have a civil relationship. Ferguson simply replied: ‘I have said all I wish regarding Radio Five Live and all those associated.’ His letter was not even signed.

  Green is now a pantomime villain to some supporters at Old Trafford and he has been threatened and abused outside the ground. At times, Ferguson has seemed convinced that the BBC is not just biased against United but strongly pro-Liverpool, with a Scouse mafia in the sports department. He is said to question how Match of the Day can get away with filling the pundits’ couch with so many ex-Liverpool players. And he finds it strange that, when Brian Barwick was the BBC’s head of sport, the doublewinning United sides of 1994 and 1996 never won Team of the Year in the Sports Personality of the Year awards. Barwick, an ardent Liverpool fan, left the BBC in 1999 to take up a similar position with ITV. Later that year United’s treble-winning side won their first Team of the Year award.

  ‘There was never any doubt that the award had to go to United and the whole team plus Sir Alex turned up to collect it,’ Greg Dyke, director-general of the BBC at the time, later wrote in a column for the Independent. ‘So I was rather surprised a week or so later when I got a call from Alex, who thanked me for making sure United had won. I hadn’t done anything and was puzzled. Alex explained there was no way United would have won if “that bastard” Barwick had still been there.’

  Was it true? ‘I said I was sure Brian would never let his hostility to United stand in the way of the right decision,’ Dyke continued. ‘The next time I saw Brian I relayed what Alex had said. “Too bloody right,” he said. “They’d never have won if I was there.” I think he was joking … but it wouldn’t be going too far to say that he hates United and all they stand for.’

  Barwick subsequently became chief executive of the Football Association. When we asked Ferguson about the appointment his face dropped. He said, very bluntly, he would not talk about Barwick, and his expression told us not to push it any further.

  And so we have the situation where the BBC’s Match of the Day cameras are at Vicarage Road today and when it comes to the post-match interviews Ferguson marches straight past th
em to where Sky and MUTV are set up. It is a weekly ritual and the BBC reporters don’t even bother asking any more. There is too much history. Queiroz does all the BBC interviews.

  Gary Lineker, presenter of Match of the Day, used to complain about the situation during the show and apologise to the viewers, hoping to embarrass Ferguson into changing his mind. But he was wasting his time. Ferguson’s grudge with the BBC makes his quarrel with Fraser Dainton look like a playground squabble and there is nothing Lineker or anyone can do about it. It is so historic and deeprooted, in fact, that it is difficult sometimes to remember exactly where or how it started. All we can be certain of is that it is an argument that will never be resolved.

  CEASEFIRE

  13.9.06

  Manchester United 1

  Tottenham Hotspur 0

  It is amazing the difference it makes when the team are doing well. We have not witnessed one angry word so far this season. Ferguson’s briefings have been placid and humorous and, increasingly, good fun to attend. He has stopped treating every question as though it was a carefully laid trap. He no longer looks at us as if we are intruders. He smiles a lot more. He stays behind after press conferences, passes on horse racing tips, tells us he is going to make us rich, that we’ll never need to work again.

  The fear factor is still there – his press conferences are still far more guarded than those of any other Premiership manager and he still controls what happens with those glacial eyes, that piercing stare – but he is definitely treating us more like human beings. He has started to tease us again, poking fun at our questions and addressing us as ‘the plebs’. He is a natural mickey-taker and he is talking to us in a softer, friendlier tone, as if we are the bane of his life but, hey, he cannot help secretly liking us. In the way you might talk about an annoying younger brother. Or a loyal, yet incontinent, dog.

  The obvious conclusion is that he is a very different person when he is winning from when he is losing. Yet we are also starting to think someone close to him might have had a strategic word about how to deal with the press this season. Maybe someone high up at Old Trafford, David Gill or Sir Bobby Charlton. Or possibly someone from outside the club: his friend Alistair Campbell, Tony Blair’s former media minder, or one of the Ferguson boys, Jason or Darren or Mark. Cathy even. Someone who knows him well enough to say it is time he stopped picking so many fights, that life is too short.

  This time last year, media relations with Ferguson were at an all-time low. He was arguing with everyone, at war with the press, refusing to speak to MUTV. One crisis after another, one war after another. Every question was viewed with suspicion, every press conference an ordeal. His answers were clipped and resentful, his body language rigid and defensive. Arms folded, back pressed against his chair. There was something eating away at him. Something destructive. Us.

  This is a different Ferguson. The team have hit the ground running. Giggs scores the winner today, making it United’s best-ever start to a Premiership season. Ferguson, in turn, seems to have forgotten what happened in South Africa. We are daring to think the relationship might not be terminally poisoned after all, that last season’s ructions can be put behind us. We like this Ferguson. We respect him. Even if the line between respect and fear is as thin as Rizla.

  When we saw him at Carrington yesterday, we knew it was going to be a fun press conference from the moment he bounded into the room, cheerfully murdering ‘The Rose of Tralee’.

  He passed James Fletcher of the News of the World in the doorway and looked him up and down, eyeing his suit.

  ‘I thought I’d make an effort,’ Fletcher volunteered, anticipating what was coming.

  ‘Well, son,’ Ferguson shot back, ‘you could have started by getting yourself a decent suit.’ And he heaved with laughter.

  We’ll enjoy it while we can. Because, with Ferguson, nothing can be taken for granted. Something might be written that he doesn’t like. Or the team will have a bad result, someone will ask a question that’s slightly too daring and, bang, we’ll be back to square one. We are still the Back Row Kids in his eyes, too demanding, too egotistical, too damn young. But for now, everything is so much better – and this is the way it should be all the time.

  RIO FERDINAND

  27.9.06

  A grey chauffeur-driven Bentley pulls up outside Old Trafford and out steps Rio Ferdinand. He is bringing out an autobiography, so the publishers have asked him to devote an afternoon to press interviews. Ferguson has given his blessing and, one by one, we are ushered into a private room where Ferdinand is sitting on a leather couch, waiting to present us each with a copy. He has autographed them ‘Rio 5’ and we are genuinely grateful – not for the book, but because he seems happy to talk to us with none of the usual restrictions.

  Most footballers these days insist on copy approval for interviews. This is a hidden shame for many newspapers, one that has grown to epidemic proportions in recent years. We need player interviews but the clubs don’t really trust us, so they will grant us access only if we allow them to ‘approve’ the finished article, and sometimes the photographs and headlines too. It’s a showbiz thing the clubs have picked up. In the worst cases, they tape the interview and vet the questions. Quite often someone is in the same room to interrupt the conversation if it veers in a direction they don’t like. They want to know exactly what has been said, and they will insist that anything remotely controversial is removed. It is censorship, and it sticks in the throat.

  The exception is when the player has something to sell or advertise. Then the PR companies usually make sure everyone gets roughly what they want and most of the restrictions are lifted. But it comes at a price. We are duty-bound to write something along the lines of ‘Wayne Rooney was speaking at the launch of his new computer game’. Or carry a photograph of the player with his sponsor’s logo clearly visible. Product placement, they call it. A lot of us don’t feel comfortable about it but the alternative is simple: nothing.

  So today we are allowed half an hour with Ferdinand – a man who has had so much bad press during his career that he dedicates a page in his book to a montage of the worst tabloid cuttings.

  Rio Butted

  Rio Hotel Rampage

  Rio’s Binge

  Rio’s Drugs Test Shock

  Rio: I’m Gutted

  Video Sex Shame Of England Stars

  Here We Rio Again

  Rio Hit In Bar Brawl

  The public perception is that he is a bit of a birdbrain, with too much money for his own good and brains in his feet. He forgot a drugs test once, going shopping instead. He was banned for eight months as a result but still received £2.5 million in wages. Then he became involved in a very messy contract row, despite being offered a record-breaking salary of £120,000 a week, and was photographed dining out in London with Chelsea’s chief executive Peter Kenyon, a man with a reputation (whether or not deserved) for tapping up players. Ferdinand claimed the meeting was totally innocent but some supporters have never forgiven him. Thirty of them went round to his house one night, wearing hoods and balaclavas, and made it very clear what would happen to him if he carried on rubbing them up the wrong way.

  But when you meet him, you wonder whether he would have had so much negative publicity if we had been permitted to get closer to him. Ferguson’s restrictions prevent us from forming a proper bond with the players. There is no relationship, in the true sense of the word. Nobody we feel we should protect. So we demonise those who make mistakes when we don’t really know what they are like.

  The truth is that Ferdinand is probably smarter than many people imagine. He isn’t scared to speak his mind and when he is encouraged to drop all the vaporous clichés he is a good talker, passionate about the game and full of opinion. He is willing to admit he has made mistakes and he has a dry sense of humour that makes you warm to him.

  He tells a story about when he played for Leeds, on the way to the Champions League semi-finals in 2001. The players had a secret game which
involved passing a coin round during the match.

  ‘If a team-mate came up to you and offered you the coin you had to take it, and the one who was left with it at the end had to do a forfeit. We scored a goal in one game and, while we were celebrating, Gary Kelly slapped the coin in my hand. You could see me on the telly going, “Oh fuck!” That was one of the best passing games. It had gone round the whole team twice. We did it for five or six matches without the manager [David O’Leary] knowing. It didn’t affect our play at all, but he’d still have gone bananas if he’d found out. We’d finish a game and the first thing on my mind was: who’s got the coin?’

  Ferdinand is open and expansive, good company, generous with his time. Some footballers have a special face they show to journalists, as though they dare not show their true character. They are reluctant to open up in the way that a cricketer or rugby player would. But Ferdinand doesn’t just want to be interviewed. He wants to chat. He wants to know whether we like his book and why we give him such a hard time. Interestingly, he reckons the Mirror got the transcript of ‘Keanegate’ wrong and that his salary was never mentioned. ‘We watched the tape together. Roy highlighted the goals and said: “Rio should have done better there. I’ve seen him make that mistake before. He should have dealt with it and got the ball away.” It was just football analysis. I didn’t have a problem with it. He couldn’t have criticised me any more than I did myself anyway. After that match I couldn’t get to sleep until five in the morning.’