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

by Daniel Taylor

  The McClaren press conference is a strange experience, particularly for those of us who are used to dealing with Ferguson. Here is an England manager who is so desperate to be liked it would be of little surprise to find him standing at the doorway handing out Liquorice Allsorts. Someone will ask a routine question about injuries or formations and he will enthusiastically nod his head: ‘That’s a very good question. I’m glad you’ve asked that question. I’m really glad you’ve asked that question.’ Or someone will make a lighthearted remark and he will tip his head back and roar with a kind of laughter that sounds forced.

  For someone who spent two and a half years at Old Trafford as Ferguson’s assistant, McClaren doesn’t seem to have cottoned on that football managers get good press by inspiring confidence and winning matches rather than buttering up reporters. It is not just a question of being a good guy or a bad guy, of being liked or disliked, approachable or aloof. All these things are secondary to the quality that is essential for a top manager: the capacity to dominate and take control.

  When Ferguson walks into a room there is immediately a hush of anticipation. If someone is slouched in a seat, that person will instinctively sit to attention, bolt upright. We ask the questions. But he is generally in control.

  McClaren has a very different approach. He has learned the name of everybody who matters in Fleet Street. He has had television coaching. He has employed the celebrity publicist Max Clifford to get him ‘in’ with the tabloid editors. Off-duty, McClaren is a likeable man. Yet put him in an FA blazer and place him in a room of journalists and he takes on the role of a new stepfather: matey and jocular, obviously doing his best, but largely viewed with suspicion, however hard he tries.

  He is relatively new in the job but some of the newspapers already have their knives out and McClaren is plainly conscious of his shortage of admirers. He sent a carefully selected list of the ‘Number Ones’ a text message on Christmas Day along the lines of: ‘Dear (insert name), have a fantastic Christmas, best wishes, Steve.’ There is nothing wrong with being friendly, of course, but there is a difference between friendliness and strategic sweettalk, and the journalists were generally stunned by this message given that their newspapers had enthusiastically put into place the beginnings of a ‘McClaren Out’ campaign. Then just before midnight on New Year’s Eve, the same journalists’ phones bleeped again. ‘Dear (insert name), have a happy and prosperous new year, looking forward to seeing you in 2007, Steve.’

  The average England press conference now is an ego-destroying interrogation, far worse than anything to which Eriksson was subjected. Eriksson was an owlish little man, with his rimless glasses and stacked shoes, and he could be fist-eatingly boring. Yet he didn’t really give a fig what was in the newspapers and in an odd way that earned him kudos. He was always unflappable, whereas McClaren looks like he needs a Bloody Mary as soon as the questions get tough. He is not an easy man to quote. There is never a single moment when you find yourself listening to him, thinking ‘this is great stuff’ while hoping that the batteries in your tape recorder don’t conk out.

  The top managers are confident enough to march to a different drumbeat from the rest. They don’t need the gimmickry of PR or clever little ‘buzz phrases’ when they are possessed with judgment and nerve. Ferguson comes into this category, as do Mourinho, Wenger, Benitez and, overseas, the likes of Luis Felipe Scolari and Marcello Lippi. But there are times with McClaren when his lips don’t seem to move and you find yourself thinking: ‘who the hell is operating this guy?’ He straight-bats questions with formulaic, carefully structured sound bites and when someone chucks in a googly he cannot think on his feet. He freezes in his seat and clams up, like a panicking supply teacher. It is what a comedian would know as ‘dying’.

  BOMBAY MONEYLENDERS

  9.2.07

  An email has gone out from Old Trafford telling us off for being too scruffy. Some of the directors have complained about our appearance and we have been asked to wear suits if we want to fly with the team in future. United have drawn Lille in the next round of the Champions League and it is made clear that we will not be welcome on the plane if we flout the rules by wearing denim.

  The order has come from the board but Ferguson, as always, is aware of everything that happens at Old Trafford and he is braying with laughter when he comes into the pressroom.

  ‘I want to see this new dress code then,’ he announces, checking us out from head to toe, and it is one of those moments when you desperately hope your shoes are polished and your flies are done up.

  He is tut-tutting, shaking his head with faux disgust, racking his brains for the killer line. Then his eyes sparkle as it comes to him.

  ‘You look like a bunch of Bombay moneylenders,’ he says. ‘Your mothers wouldn’t be proud of you.’

  Then he claps his hands together and says he wants to get down to business because there is a new signing to tell us about.

  Our mouths fall open.

  ‘What new signing?’ we ask simultaneously and he wheezes with more laughter, chuffed to bits with the combination of his wit and our gullibility.

  To see Ferguson right now is to observe a man who is utterly in love with his work. Last weekend, United went to Tottenham and thrashed them 4-0 with goals from Ronaldo, Vidic, Scholes and Giggs. It was their biggest ever win at White Hart Lane and when the cameras panned on Ferguson he was laughing and joking in the dugout, totally relaxed – until one moment, deep into stoppage time, when we were treated to a wonderful insight into what makes him tick. Ferdinand made a mistake and Ferguson was out of his seat, throwing his arms in the air and furiously swearing, while Rooney and Giggs were collapsing in giggles in the next row. There are not many managers who could blow a gasket when their team is winning by four goals at White Hart Lane but this, perhaps, is what makes Ferguson different from the rest. The man, at his very best, is a perfectionist.

  The only time his stare becomes disquieting today is when he is asked about the ‘kicking’ that Steve McClaren has had in the newspapers.

  England lost 1-0 against Spain. It was a dishevelled performance, full of misplaced passes and dreary, sideways football, and there were 58,000 people inside Old Trafford letting McClaren know exactly what they thought of it. His smile was the thinnest of slits in his post-match conference and there was nothing subtle about the next day’s headlines.

  The country is going through its first cold snap of the winter and the Sun mocked up McClaren as a snowman, with a carrot nose, under the words ‘England in Snowman’s Land’. McClaren has talked about wanting to find the ‘real bull’ but some of the reporters misheard him and thought he said ‘rainbow’, and the Mirror superimposed a picture of him between Bungle, Zippy and George from the children’s television show.

  Ferguson is keen to stick up for his former colleague. ‘One of the big problems of the England job these days is you press,’ he tells us. ‘The players are fearful of putting in a bad performance because of the reaction there will be in the press. You lads will not agree with that. You think it’s your duty to do what you’re doing but I don’t see how you’re going to get a positive response when you treat England the way you do.’

  Fair enough. Some of the criticism has been over the top, maybe personal, and there are some journalists who clearly take a sense of pleasure out of the national team doing badly. The England manager’s job is close to becoming a poisoned chalice and it doesn’t reflect well on our industry that what Ferguson says, interesting as it is, won’t appear in many of the newspapers simply because it contains an anti-media vibe.

  A FRENCH FARCE

  20.2.07

  Lille 0

  Manchester United 1

  Champions League, first knockout game

  Claude Puel, the Lille manager, is a friend of Arsène Wenger’s and used to play for him at Monaco. That doesn’t automatically make him an enemy of Ferguson’s but it is useful information when analysing their relationship. Ferguson, to Puel, i
s someone to view with extreme caution. Puel, to Ferguson, is not a man he wants to befriend.

  The tone was set when Lille drew 0-0 at Old Trafford last season and Ferguson complained, long and hard, about the French tactics, accusing Puel of sending out a team that had tried to kick their way to success. Giggs left the pitch with a fractured cheekbone and Ferguson talked about ‘punches in the back, elbows in the face and kicks’. In Ferguson’s world, there is no more devastating snub than to refuse to shake hands with an opposition manager and he studiously ignored Puel when the sides met again at the Stade de France.

  We asked Ferguson about it at his pre-match press conference yesterday and he laughed it off, claiming it was simply because Puel had disappeared in the Lille celebrations. It was a diplomatic answer but we weren’t sure whether to believe him. Ferguson versus Puel is not a rift to compare with Clough and Revie or, indeed, Ferguson and Wenger, but it is a rift, nonetheless, and worse is to follow tonight.

  For eighty-three minutes it is a grey game, on a grey night, in a grey stadium. Then United win a freekick, twenty-five yards from goal, and Giggs clips it into the goal while Tony Sylva, the Lille goalkeeper, is lining up his wall. Sylva barely moves. His wall is only in the construction stage but the referee has given Giggs permission to take it early.

  Bedlam is the best description of the scenes. Lille’s players crowd round the referee, screaming in his face. He is flashing yellow cards for dissent, ordering them to back off but they are bug-eyed with anger, refusing to accept what has happened. It takes at least three minutes before the game finally restarts and, straight from the kick-off, something extraordinary happens. The Lille players down tools. Gregory Tafforeau, the captain, hoofs the ball into touch and then starts to follow it. A white-haired guy – later identified as the team’s goalkeeping coach Jean-Noel Duse – appears in the technical area and, at first, it looks like he is just unloading a stream of invective at the referee. Then it becomes apparent he has more sinister motives. Tafforeau is walking off the pitch and Duse is signalling for the other players to follow, waving them in like a lifeguard at high tide.

  All hell breaks loose. It dawns on Ferguson what is happening and he is out of his dugout. Some of the United players run over and Ferguson is incandescent. He gives Neville a sharp push in the back and orders him to get on with the game. Neville takes exception to being singled out and gives him a mouthful.

  The atmosphere is poisonous when the game restarts. Bottles and flagpoles are thrown from the crowd towards anyone in a United shirt. It is a night that has ‘UEFA investigation’ stamped all over it.

  The press conference is a must-see event and Ferguson doesn’t disappoint. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ he says, and his anger grips the room. ‘It is an absolute disgrace what has happened tonight. I’ve seen a lot of bad things in football over the years but nothing like that. It is totally wrong.’

  The goal, he re-iterates, was perfectly legitimate and Lille should just have accepted it. ‘They were trying to intimidate the referee, incite the fans and create a hostile atmosphere. Gary Neville was struck to the side of his head and there were other objects thrown at our dugout. It shouldn’t be allowed.’

  He is angry with his own players too. ‘We should have taken a quick throw-in,’ he says. ‘We should have gone down the other end of the pitch and scored a second. That’s what I was telling Gary. I told him he should have stayed on the pitch. It was our job to get on with the game and if we had taken the throw-in quickly it may have defused the whole thing. Gary was trying to be the peacemaker but there was no need because the problem wasn’t with us.’

  Puel is next in and his argument is very, very flaky. He denies that his players were trying to abandon the match and he says they were simply trying to lodge a protest with the fourth official. Paddy Crerand, the former United player, can be seen in the second row, in his role as MUTV analyst, shaking his head incredulously and struggling to stop himself from laughing out loud. We all feel like that, to be honest. But Puel carries on. His club will appeal against the result to UEFA, he says. He wants the game to be replayed and he says he isn’t bothered by anything Ferguson has to say.

  ‘I don’t understand why Alex Ferguson has said anything on the matter. He shouldn’t have said anything but we have had these problems with Ferguson before, haven’t we? He likes to influence referees and he enjoys trying to create polemic situations. That is his style. But I don’t want to be bogged down with him.’

  It is interesting what happens here – all the French journalists take Puel’s side and all the English journalists back Ferguson. The French seem to think their entire values as a sporting nation are being challenged and they concentrate their questions for Puel on the perceived injustice of Giggs’s goal. They flash us dark looks and scowl exasperatedly when we demand an explanation for the walk-off, and at one point Puel rolls his eyes for their benefit, as if to say: ‘Who the hell are these guys?’ Then at the end of the conference the reporters from L’Equipe, Le Monde and the other French newspapers start to remonstrate with us because of the tone of our questions. They say we have it wrong and that it is ‘tradition’ in France to walk off the pitch to complain to the fourth official.

  We have no time for an argument. It is essential we speak to Neville to see how he is, so we make our way to UEFA’s ‘mixed-zone’ interview area: a long, snaking walkway in which we wait behind barriers and try to bribe, beg and bully the players into talking to us as they leave the stadium.

  All the players have to come through and Neville, as captain, is usually happy to stop for a very brief interview. Others will march straight past as if they would rather nail their toes to the floor than talk to us. On England duty some players even avoid talking to us by pretending they are on their mobiles, a ruse that was exposed when a player’s phone started ringing in the middle of one ‘conversation’. But Neville doesn’t go in for those tricks. He either says yes or no, and it is usually yes.

  Van der Sar is first through and he stops for half a dozen questions with MUTV. Saha is next and he knows some of the French journalists, so he stops too. The other players head straight for the bus. Then Neville appears and he has a lump the size of an egg above his right eye.

  ‘Any chance of two minutes please, Gary?’

  ‘No,’ he clips, not even breaking stride.

  We wait for him to snake back round and a journalist from one of the Sunday newspapers leans forward.

  ‘Gary? Just one question?’

  ‘I said no, didn’t I? Are you deaf?’

  LUNCH WITH FERGIE

  1.3.07

  Ferguson comes to the Football Writers’ Association’s managers’ lunch at Haydock Park today. It is a great do and he is in cracking form, holding court, telling stories and wheezing with loud laughter as he recites, from one to eleven, the line-ups of his favourite Scottish teams from the 1970s, even breaking into song over dessert.

  The picture is of a man without a care in the world. United are at Liverpool this weekend, one of the last major obstacles if they are to win the league, and yet he doesn’t seem the slightest bit agitated.

  Everything is going swimmingly until we get to the point when the managers traditionally begin to drift round the tables for individual interviews.

  David Moyes, of Everton, comes over first, followed by Wigan Athletic’s Paul Jewell. Sam Allardyce, the Bolton manager, heads over to speak to the Sunday newspaper reporters and everyone seems happy to talk. Except Ferguson won’t budge.

  An Evening News reporter drifts over apprehensively and asks if he can have a couple of minutes.

  Ferguson laughs teasingly. ‘The Evening Blues? The Manchester Evening Blues? No thanks. Go and interview FC United of Manchester …’

  Our interviews with Jewell and Moyes wind up and we look plaintively in Ferguson’s direction. He is still laughing, enjoying watching us squirm.

  ‘Come on Alex, you know you’ll enjoy it.’

  ‘Boys, y
ou’ve got more chance of getting an interview with the Pope.’

  THE MOMENT

  3.3.07

  Liverpool 0

  Manchester United 1

  There is always one moment in every season when everything falls into place and the team that are top of the Premiership know they are going to finish as champions. One moment when the worrying stops and everyone at that club knows it is going to be a season to cherish. A goal, or a miss, or a referee’s decision. A defining moment when everything turns and all the hard work comes together.

  Go through Ferguson’s twenty years at Old Trafford and his career is littered with such moments – Steve Bruce’s header against Sheffield Wednesday in 1993, Eric Cantona’s volley at Newcastle in 1996, Andy Cole’s lob against Tottenham in 1999 and today, at Anfield, it is another of those seminal days when it is impossible to leave the stadium without feeling that we have surely witnessed the defining moment of the 2006-07 season.

  Liverpool have been the better team. Rooney has come off injured and Scholes has been sent off for swinging a punch at Xabi Alonso. Ninety-two minutes have been played when Ronaldo shapes up to take a freekick, over by the left touchline. It is the last chance to win the game and the Kop is whistling for full time.