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

by Daniel Taylor

  You could make a comparison with Margaret Thatcher during her eleven years as Prime Minister – though not within Ferguson’s earshot. One interviewer used that line before and Ferguson, staunch Labour, very quickly put him right. ‘Please don’t associate me with that woman!’

  But there are similarities in terms of his ability to run his life with only four or five hours’ sleep and the way he rarely suffers fatigue. ‘It does become a little harder as you get older,’ he says. ‘Sometimes I will have a little catnap for ten or fifteen minutes at half four or five o’clock. But I don’t see the big deal. There are plenty of people who are older than sixty-five but who still get up earlier than me to go to work. There are farmers and butchers and milkmen and bakers. These are the people I have to admire. Farmers, in particular, when you look at the elements they have to work in. I look at what they do and I think to myself: could I do that?’

  We’d been apprehensive before we saw him. When he reached his twentieth anniversary his press conference was a tough and tetchy ten minutes. Today, though, we are reminded why there is so much more to admire about him than to dislike.

  He speaks about how Rooney and Ronaldo are on course to be recognised as the most exciting players on the planet. He talks about his wish to reinvent the most exciting days of his life and his willingness to believe that the prizes can still be won in a certain, thrilling fashion. Then he tells us about his belief that there is more than a little good wine left in the glass. And why not? Bob Dylan qualified for his AARP (American Association of Retired People) discount card earlier this year but is still putting out chart-topping albums. Richard Steadman, the knee surgeon credited with saving Michael Owen’s career, is sixty-nine. Others past the age of sixty-five are going strong: Bernie Ecclestone, Rupert Murdoch, David Attenborough, Ralph Lauren.

  Someone asks, God knows why, if at his age he ever finds himself ‘falling asleep on planes’. It is the kind of question that might have brought an explosion of righteous indignation in the past. But he laughs it off and politely replies that, no, he doesn’t fall asleep on planes – or not to the point where it concerns him anyway.

  His sense of mischief kicks in and he tells us it is time we started working as hard as the people we write about. He teases the Sunday journalists about their ‘five days off every week’. He talks about using his bus pass on ‘the 4A to Govan Cross’. Then he raises himself off his seat and heads for the door with a big smile on his face.

  ‘You haven’t got rid of me yet,’ he calls over his shoulder. ‘No matter how many times you have tried. I’m still here. You lot will all be gone before I am. I’ll see you all off.’

  HAPPY DAYS

  30.12.06

  Manchester United 3

  Reading 2

  A text arrived today from Diana Law: ‘The manager loved his wine. Thank you.’

  We hope he enjoyed it. Football is a tough, unforgiving business and there is something truly remarkable about the way Ferguson seems to have come through all the turmoil of last season. Rumours of his demise were clearly exaggerated. He is fit and healthy and he says today that he plans to carry on working until 2009 at the earliest.

  ‘I have a few more years left in me as manager. Yes, it is one of the most significant mileposts in life’s journey but I cannot say I feel on the verge of becoming an old man. Quite the reverse, in fact. Many people work well into their eighties these days and I shall take umbrage if my friends in the media try to typecast me as a pensioner.’

  His team, he says, are keeping him young. Winning games and scoring goals. They are six points clear of Chelsea after this victory and sixteen from Liverpool in third place. They have played twenty-one league games and won seventeen, scoring forty-seven goals and conceding only thirteen. It is championship form and Ferguson cannot resist pointing out that the journalists and supporters who ‘suggested not so long ago I was past my sell-by date and presiding over a crumbling empire’ have been noticeably quiet recently.

  He seems tickled by the memory – ‘I think we’ve put that one to bed’ – and he is entitled to be a little smug. When we saw Mourinho at Old Trafford three weeks ago he looked like a man who could not see how his team could possibly fail. But since then Chelsea have dropped points against one mid-table side, Reading, and one in the bottom six, Fulham, and there have been stories about several fallouts behind the scenes at Stamford Bridge. Key players have been injured or lost form. Words such as ‘flop’ and ‘misfit’ have been used to describe Michael Ballack and Andriy Shevchenko and, suddenly, Mourinho seems to have stopped taking the handsome pills. He has started to look tired and stressed and he gives the impression of being emotionally exhausted. ‘Maybe I am not such a good manager,’ he says today. ‘Maybe my players are not such good players.’

  It is an astonishing statement for a man of Mourinho’s vanity and self-adoration, and the glint in Ferguson’s eye is almost satanic. He has waited a long time for the opportunity to have some fun at Chelsea’s expense and he has become increasingly emboldened of late.

  At one press conference he forgot to switch off his mobile and it started ringing as he was taking the first question.

  His face was a picture. ‘It’s Jose,’ he said, scrabbling about in his coat pocket and grinning mischievously. ‘He’s panicking already.’

  CHELSEA’S BLIP

  20.1.07

  Something strange is going on at Chelsea. They lose 2-0 at Liverpool today and Abramovich’s seat in the directors’ box is empty. The pundits on Match of the Day reckon it is Chelsea’s worst performance since Mourinho took over and, when the cameras zoom in, his body language is startling, to say the least. He has an impassive face and there are dark rings beneath his eyes. His hands are jammed into his pockets and his hair looks wild and greasy for a man who is usually so impeccably groomed. Every time we see Mourinho these days he looks a little bit worse than the last time.

  A few months ago Mourinho was untouchable. Now, the rest of the country is peering into Stamford Bridge like rubberneckers at a motorway pile-up. The sports pages are full of stories about political infighting and backstabbing, and Mourinho looks like a man leaving a casino at four in the morning. The entire club has gone into temporary meltdown. And it has all happened so amazingly fast.

  Mourinho future hangs in balance

  Chelsea at war

  Abramovich won’t back down in Jose feud

  Roman’s cold war with Jose

  Chelsea is such a nest of vipers it is difficult to know how much is fact and how much is rumour spun into something it is not. Yet Stamford Bridge is a breeding ground for Fleet Street informants and there is clearly something seriously wrong. There have been strategic leaks from the boardroom and the dressing room, and the consensus is that Mourinho and Abramovich are barely on speaking terms. Abramovich is said to want more style and panache from his team, and when he has pumped so much money into the club – around £500 million at the last count – it cannot be easy for an employee, even one as arrogantly selfassured as Mourinho, to find out what the Russian is for ‘kindly butt out’.

  Never before has Mourinho had to deal with a sequence of five league results that has gone: draw, draw, draw, win, defeat. It is commonly known as ‘the blip’. Except, for Chelsea the blip never used to be anything more than a blink of the eye, a momentary lapse or, at the very worst, a bad forty-five minutes. Until recently they seemed immune to a sustained collapse and it was impossible to think of Mourinho and his players without taking it for granted they would invariably find a way to win. Now, they look virtually unrecognisable from the robotic, methodical team that has dominated the Premiership for the last two seasons. And this is Ferguson’s opportunity, maybe the only opportunity he will get.

  At every press conference now there are half-a-dozen questions about the soap opera at Stamford Bridge and the implications for the top of the league. Ferguson doesn’t usually like to discuss other clubs’ business but he takes a keen interest when it comes to
Chelsea, and his information is that ‘Shevchenko seems to be at the core of it’. It is obvious, he says, there is something in the air but, intriguingly, he insists he doesn’t want Mourinho to leave because he would miss the sense of competition and the challenge of beating him.

  It is a diplomatic response but we wouldn’t be surprised if his fingers are crossed behind his back. Ferguson has suffered badly at the hands of Mourinho and, at the very least, he must take great satisfaction from the fact Chelsea have spent £30 million on one striker while United have sold Van Nistelrooy for £10 million and still been far more prolific. So far this season United have scored fifty-two goals in twentythree games, thirteen more than Chelsea and ten more than this time last season.

  Ferguson’s theory is that the team are more fluent and cohesive with Saha rather than Van Nistelrooy in attack and that they were previously too reliant on one player to score all the goals. Saha may never accumulate scoring records like Van Nistelrooy but he is sleek and athletic and more of a team player. He roams right and left, creating space, running into it. One moment he is in front of you, the next he is on the wing and suddenly Rooney or Ronaldo will be coming through the middle. Always, there seems to be an attacker in space. Always, Scholes or Carrick seem to pick them out. Scholes’s passes are forward both in geography and thinking. Carrick is more of an acquired taste but he has an appreciation of space and is starting to show he is a United player in the truest sense.

  Ferguson has also brought in Henrik Larsson, a former Sweden international striker, on a nine-week loan from Helsingborgs. Larsson is a former European Golden Boot winner, with three World Cup campaigns on his CV and a Champions League medal with Barcelona. He is thirty-five now but he looks lithe and sharp and eager to impress, and it is an outstanding piece of business on Ferguson’s part.

  As for Van Nistelrooy, he is having a successful first season at Real Madrid, on course to be the leading scorer in la Liga, but there have been times when he has seemed slightly obsessed, and maybe a little aghast, by the success his former employers have had without him. He was always a restrained public speaker in Manchester but his choice of language has become noticeably more colourful since he moved to Spain. He has admitted ‘exploding’ with anger in front of Ferguson at the end of the Carling Cup final, describing it as ‘the end of everything’. He has talked of Ferguson ‘kicking my soul’ and complained about being ‘stabbed in the back’. Which is not strictly accurate. Ferguson has been accused of many knifings throughout his managerial career but on each occasion the blade is always plunged through the victim’s chest.

  Not that this really matters any longer. The fans have stopped singing Van Nistelrooy’s name and it is noticeable how Ferguson seldom, if ever, refers to him in public. The most prolific striker at Old Trafford for thirty years has become a fading memory, consigned to the gulag of indifference just like Alan Green, Brian Barwick and so many others.

  ARSENAL AWAY

  21.1.07

  Arsenal 2

  Manchester United 1

  We arrive at the Emirates stadium today wondering whether this is going to be the day United in effect finish off Chelsea in the title race. The newspapers are packed with new revelations about divisions and rifts at Chelsea. The Stamford Bridge family tree is depicted as a network of cliques and there are reports that Mourinho will be sacked at the end of the season, that the arguments with Abramovich have led to an irreparable rift, and that he is already looking for a new club.

  Judging purely by results, sacking Mourinho would be an act of madness. Yet Chelsea operate by their own rules and Mourinho has not only apparently fallen out with Abramovich, his relationship with Peter Kenyon and the director of youth development, Frank Arnesen, has reputedly been strained. There is a clash of egos. Several clashes, in fact. Behind the scenes at Stamford Bridge they used to look on proudly at Mourinho’s sophisticated mind games and the way he sought to undermine anyone he perceived as an obstacle to his ambitions. Now, it seems, his charm has worn thin and this is the time when United have to capitalise. Chelsea are too strong, too belligerent, too damn good, to allow the blip to extend into anything more prolonged, but substantial damage has already been done and when Ferguson takes his seat in the dugout he knows a win will take United nine points clear with fourteen games to go – i.e. the sort of gap that can feel like a chasm for the side in second place.

  The misery of what comes next is made all the worse because, at first, everything goes to plan. For the opening hour United are the better team, brisk and business-like, probing for Arsenal’s weaknesses. Evra surges up the left and whips in a perfectly measured cross. Rooney is free at the far post and flings himself at the ball. It thuds against his forehead and the squash of United fans behind the goal is suddenly a writhing mass of euphoria.

  Mentally, this is the point when United are cracking open the champagne, eye to eye with the title. Arsenal look beaten. United have their foot on Chelsea’s throat. The clock is ticking down and Ferguson is on the touchline, checking his watch and barking out instructions.

  Football clubs can be extraordinarily inventive when it comes to finding ways to inflict misery on their supporters. The United fans are going through their victory songs when a ball comes across the penalty area and Neville, a man you would normally bet your mortgage on, doesn’t react quickly enough. There are only seven minutes to go. Robin van Persie slashes in the equaliser and Ferguson’s shoulders slump.

  The momentum is with Arsenal and the killer blow is landed in stoppage time. Emmanuel Eboue gets a yard past Evra. His cross is fast and whipped, and Thierry Henry has peeled away from Vidic. His header is immaculate and then he is off, on his victory run, pursued by his team-mates.

  Two-one.

  Daylight robbery.

  ARSENE WENGER

  26.1.07

  Ferguson is still upset about the way his players threw the game away. He hasn’t slept. He has been up to three, four, five in the morning, trying to get his head around what went wrong. He is tired and grouchy and he has taken umbrage about some of Arsène Wenger’s remarks after the match.

  Wenger had rubbed salt into United’s wounds by saying the title would have been ‘over’ if United had held on. Critically, he also said he had been analysing United’s statistics and had noted a trend of the team conceding goals in the final twenty minutes of matches, indicating there might be an underlying problem with stamina. After seventy minutes, he said, they were ‘not the same side’.

  The irritation in Ferguson pours out in a stream of expertly delivered barbs.

  He calls Wenger ‘petty’ and accuses him of talking ‘a load of nonsense’. He accuses the Arsenal manager of trying to score cheap points and he says there is no evidence to back up the claims. ‘I can’t think why he has said it,’ he tells us, and then he leans forward and smirks wickedly, ‘but I think it’s about making him look great again.’

  Then he puts on his most sarcastic voice.

  ‘I’m … the … great … Arsène … Wenger.’

  It is a world-class putdown, great newspaper copy, and Ferguson looks as pleased as punch. What he says will dominate tomorrow’s sports pages and we get the impression he is looking forward to reading the headlines already. Wenger will be ‘blasted’ and ‘slammed’ and Ferguson is grinning mischievously. He seems to like the idea of his old rival spraying a mouthful of coffee over his breakfast table.

  Wenger’s press conference is a couple of hours later at Arsenal’s training ground in Hertfordshire, and the London hacks try to get him to bite back, but with no success. He claims it is a misunderstanding and says he doesn’t want to get involved in spats, bust-ups, feuds and wars-of-words. Which surprises everyone because, usually, Wenger is more than happy to have the final say when it comes to verbal sparring with Ferguson.

  At the height of their feuding, long before Mourinho pitched up on the scene, the rivalry between Ferguson and Wenger became so bitter and twisted there were complaints from the M
etropolitan Police and government ministers. The FA wrote to both clubs demanding an official ceasefire and the League Managers’ Association offered to mediate. There was even talk of arranging a peace summit on neutral territory before everyone accepted what was blindingly obvious: that entente cordiale was not a possibility.

  Manchester’s football writers interviewed Wenger after a game at Bolton Wanderers and he was trembling with anger.

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ he told us, ‘is that he, Ferguson, does whatever he wants and you are all at his feet.’

  Wenger is well over six feet and surprisingly scary when he wants to be. He has a pale, lined face with hooded eyes and he was pointing an accusatory finger every bit as long and bony as ET’s. ‘In England you have a good phrase,’ he said. ‘It is “to bring the game into disrepute’‘. The managers have a responsibility. Yet Ferguson does what he wants. He lays explosives. He should go abroad and see how it is over there.’

  When we asked him to explain he stopped us in our tracks.