by Michael Cox
This incident was unfortunate for Van Nistelrooy, who continually struggled to develop good relationships with other attackers, on and off the pitch. He spoke to Ferguson and announced his desire to leave the club in 2005, saying he didn’t want to wait for Ronaldo and Rooney to mature into Champions League-winning players, which stunned his manager, who suggested Van Nistelrooy should be acting as their leader.
Things got worse the following season. United again looked better without Van Nistelrooy, and when he realised he wasn’t going to get off the bench in the 2006 League Cup Final, an easy 4–0 victory over Wigan, he called Ferguson a swear word that appeared in various publications, mysteriously, as both ‘****’ and ‘******’. Ahead of United’s last game of the 2005/06 season – against Charlton – Van Nistelrooy booted Ronaldo in training, which prompted Rio Ferdinand to get revenge by kicking Van Nistelrooy, who responded by swinging at Ferdinand, narrowly missing. Such incidents aren’t uncommon in training, but this was the final straw. Upon his arrival for the Charlton game Ferguson told him in no uncertain terms to go home, and he departed for Real Madrid that summer.
Van Nistelrooy might have been trying to force a move to Spain – the Dutchman had demanded a clause in his contract specifically mentioning Real – but it was an incredibly undignified ending for one of the Premier League’s most prolific goalscorers. He linked up effectively with his old pal Beckham in Madrid, although when Ronaldo followed him there in 2009 it was notable that Van Nistelrooy only played one further game, even if the two patched up their differences. Van Nistelrooy later wholeheartedly praised Ronaldo’s incredible improvement, and phoned Ferguson to apologise for his behaviour during that final campaign with United.
But Ferguson was right to sell him. After Van Nistelrooy’s departure in 2006 United became the Premier League’s dominant force again, winning three straight titles and the Champions League. Rooney inherited the number 10 shirt, while Ronaldo exploded and became United’s main goalscorer. Most pertinently, Ferguson didn’t even seek a replacement for Van Nistelrooy, not signing another centre-forward for two years, as he had learned a crucial lesson about strikers: scoring goals was, in itself, no longer enough.
11
Invincibles & Convincibles
‘When you start off, everyone wants to be a centre-forward – but some of us end up having to defend.’
Martin Keown
Arsenal’s Invincibles, who achieved the historic feat of going the entire 2003/04 league campaign undefeated, are the most celebrated side of the Premier League era. That season, however, was simply the final move in a three-card trick.
Two years beforehand Arsenal won the Premier League in similarly impressive fashion, setting two extraordinary records in the process. First, they foreshadowed the Invincibles campaign by becoming the first top-flight side in over a century to go the entire campaign undefeated away from home. At this stage they appeared more fearsome on their travels; their home ground Highbury had the smallest pitch in the league, so Arsenal found more space away from home, where the opposition felt the onus to attack and left gaps that Arsenal could exploit in counter-attacks. Second, and even more impressively, they became the first side in top-flight history to score in every league game, a record that’s been unfairly – if understandably – overshadowed by the Invincibles campaign. If anything, it typified Arsenal better, underlining the consistency of their attacking threat.
Ahead of the following campaign, 2002/03, Arsène Wenger made an incredible forecast. ‘Nobody will finish above us in the league,’ he told reporters. ‘And it wouldn’t surprise me if we were to go unbeaten for the whole of the season.’ The reaction was a mixture of scepticism and astonishment at Wenger’s arrogance. But he went back for more. ‘I am still hopeful we can go through the season unbeaten,’ he repeated after a 4–1 thrashing of Leeds in early September 2002. It was a very specific objective, which had no precedent since the Preston North End side of 1888/89. Wenger was left embarrassed the following month at Everton when Arsenal’s 30-game unbeaten run was ended by Wayne Rooney’s debut Premier League goal, a 90th-minute, 25-yard strike in off the crossbar. ‘He’s supposed to be 16,’ Wenger sighed afterwards, devastated that his dream of an unbeaten campaign was over.
The psychological blow clearly affected Arsenal, as they contrived to lose four consecutive matches, their worst run since 1983. By April, with Manchester United favourites for the title, Wenger’s ‘unbeaten’ prediction was widely mocked. ‘I’m sure they would love to turn the clock back six months,’ Sir Alex Ferguson said. ‘It might come back to haunt them.’ Arsenal eventually limped home in second place behind Ferguson’s side, their fate sealed by a shock 3–2 home defeat to Leeds, who simultaneously confirmed their Premier League survival and denied Arsenal the title. Martin Keown, the veteran centre-back, blamed Wenger for the failure, saying his pre-season forecast had piled pressure upon the players.
But, incredibly, that Leeds setback was Arsenal’s final league loss before another staggering unbeaten run, this time of 49 games, which included the entirety of that 2003/04 campaign. Wenger’s seemingly ludicrous prediction came true – simply a year later than he’d anticipated.
Arsenal’s 2001/02 and 2003/04 title-winning sides were extremely similar in terms of personnel. There were only two changes to Wenger’s first XI: Gilberto Silva played alongside Patrick Vieira in midfield, with Ray Parlour and Edu demoted to deputies, while Kolo Touré had displaced Martin Keown at centre-back. In fact the 2003/04 side was structurally similar to Wenger’s first title-winning Arsenal side of 1997/98 – still essentially 4–4–2, featuring two holding midfielders and a deep-lying forward, in a shape that would eventually be considered 4–2–3–1. Vieira remained in midfield, Dennis Bergkamp was still the number 10. Up front, Thierry Henry was a refined version of Ian Wright or Nicolas Anelka, Robert Pirès was a goalscoring left-midfielder in the mould of Marc Overmars, and Freddie Ljungberg a hard-working, onrushing right-sided midfielder in place of Parlour. Gilberto was the Emmanuel Petit figure – both solid, World Cup-winning defensive midfielders who allowed Vieira to charge forward. In midfield and attack, the Invincibles were not revolutionary themselves, simply a continuation of Wenger’s initial revolution.
Defensively, however, everything had changed. For 1997/98 Wenger had stuck with the old back four developed by George Graham: Lee Dixon, Keown or Steve Bould, Tony Adams and Nigel Winterburn. They were proper, old-school defenders: tacklers, tight markers and a famously cohesive unit, particularly in terms of catching opponents offside. They could play, too, as Arsenal’s legendary title-clinching goal in 1997/98 proved, with Bould chipping the ball over the opposition defence for Adams, who burst forward from centre-back before smashing the ball home with his weaker left foot. With his first title-winners, Wenger encouraged his defenders to attack. The Invincibles back line, however, were natural attackers whom Wenger had convinced to play in defence.
As Jamie Carragher once said, all full-backs can be broken down into two types: failed centre-backs and failed wingers. But the latter are a relatively modern phenomenon, and the development of attacking full-backs was among the most noticeable tactical shifts at the start of the 21st century. At this point, with 4–4–2 the dominant formation, it was often the full-backs who had most space ahead of them, as the opposition’s wide players dropped back alongside their midfield colleagues. The full-backs, therefore, could push forward to become vital attacking weapons.
Ashley Cole was a perfect example. A promising forward in Arsenal’s youth team, Cole switched to a defensive position in his late teenage years. He would develop into the world’s outstanding left-back, but his first couple of seasons were characterised by frequent positional errors. Wenger, however, loved his acceleration, stamina and quality in possession, and correctly believed that Cole had the right attitude to improve his defensive attributes. ‘I didn’t really want to be a defender; I never really liked defenders or defending,’ Cole admitted after Euro 2004,
the tournament in which he confirmed his status as one of the world’s best full-backs. ‘I always liked scoring goals and attacking, and when I was asked to go to left-back for the Arsenal youth team I had to just take it. I know now I wouldn’t have made it as a striker and I’m not disappointed that I’m a left-back, but initially I suppose I was. I always wanted the glory of going up front scoring goals for the team.’
Arsenal right-back Lauren wasn’t a natural full-back either and was initially sceptical about the positional switch. ‘When I first came I was playing as a right-winger. Wenger thought I was capable of playing as a right-back, but at first I didn’t know it. It was something progressive; at the beginning it was a bit difficult … Arsène gave you the confidence in yourself to realise you could play in a new position.’ Most remarkable, however, is the fact Wenger included a third unnatural defender in his regular back line. Centre-back Kolo Touré joined Arsenal as an energetic, slightly clumsy all-rounder who deputised effectively in midfield but looked uncomfortable when given opportunities at full-back, being dismissed before half-time in a goalless Champions League game against PSV in late 2002. He had never played centre-back until pre-season 2003/04, when Wenger paired him with Sol Campbell for a 1–0 friendly victory over Beşiktaş in Austria. Opposition manager Mircea Lucescu praised the power of Arsenal’s centre-back combination, convincing Wenger that Touré could play there permanently.
Even Campbell, unquestionably the most solid of Arsenal’s four defenders, had played higher up the pitch during his formative years. As a teenager at the FA’s School of Excellence at Lilleshall he was often fielded on the right of midfield, and when breaking through at Tottenham was considered a potential centre-forward. He eventually became a settled defender, admitting he was forced to overcome initial problems with his heading ability, which is incredible when you consider his aerial dominance by the time he controversially crossed the north London divide in 2001. Arsenal’s back four all developed with an emphasis upon attacking.
‘I changed every player into a more technical player,’ Wenger later said of his defence. ‘First by improving existing players. After, when they had to be replaced, by a player who could contribute more to offensive quality, to build up the game from the back, like Kolo Touré, Lauren, Ashley Cole.’ Wenger had done the same at Monaco, converting youngster Lillian Thuram from a right-winger to a right-back, in which position he would later be considered Europe’s best. Maybe it was a personal mission – Wenger was a midfielder himself, then moved to defence towards the end of his modest playing career. But he wasn’t a defensive driller in the mould of Graham, and plenty of coaching came from the experienced defenders; Cole thrived thanks to Adams’s instructions, Touré improved because Keown took him under his wing, Lauren had Dixon as a role model. This was the crucial difference between Wenger’s Arsenal defence full of attackers and Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle rearguard; the Arsenal brigade were actually taught how to defend.
‘People always speak of the defence I inherited when I arrived here, and it was an exceptional defence,’ said Wenger in 2013. ‘But people forget a lot about the defence that was unbeaten. They never speak about that and it’s unbelievable that that defence never gets any credit. It was Lauren, Kolo Touré, Sol Campbell and Ashley Cole, and they were absolutely exceptional. They didn’t lose a game and yet no one speaks about them … Kolo and Sol were both very pacey players with unbelievable physical power. When a striker went beyond any of them you knew they would come back and catch them up, they were less calculating but much more physical. On the flanks we had two more footballing players, because Lauren was a midfielder and Cole has made a fantastic career.’
The idea that defenders could base their game around pace and ‘catching up’ with forwards, rather than nullifying their threat proactively, would have infuriated the old Arsenal back four – but then they would have loved to have possessed enough speed to catch up with Michael Owen, whose pace won Liverpool the 2001 FA Cup Final against Arsenal. As Wenger acknowledged, increasingly quick strikers necessitated increasingly quick defenders. Other defensive imports around the turn of the millennium, like Frenchmen Mikaël Silvestre at Manchester United and Chelsea’s William Gallas, weren’t imposing aerially, six foot and five foot 11 respectively, but were astonishingly fast. Both, incidentally, would later be signed by Wenger.
Meanwhile, their compatriot Laurent Blanc struggled at Manchester United because he desperately lacked speed. The World Cup-winning centre-back, who started as an attacking midfielder and once scored 18 goals in a season for Montpellier, was hugely intelligent and a talented technician, but by the time he reached United at the age of 35 his lack of mobility was repeatedly exposed and he proved a disastrous replacement for Jaap Stam. United suffered a mini-crisis at the start of 2001/02, slipping into mid-table shortly before Christmas, and the first letter of the five clubs who had defeated them highlighted United’s problem: Bolton, Liverpool, Arsenal, Newcastle, Chelsea. Ferguson’s solution, the following summer, was dramatic – breaking the British transfer record to sign Leeds’s Rio Ferdinand.
Ferdinand was considered a potential world-class performer from his days in West Ham’s academy, playing alongside Frank Lampard in midfield. They took West Ham to the 1996 FA Youth Cup Final, where they lost to a Liverpool side featuring Michael Owen and Jamie Carragher, but Ferdinand was nevertheless named man of the match. That summer, a select group of promising youngsters was asked to train with the full England side ahead of Euro 96, where manager Terry Venables, with great foresight, identified Ferdinand and Lampard as the two players with the brightest futures. That former West Ham midfield partnership would eventually win a combined 247 England caps and nine Premier League titles, and both would lift the European Cup as captain.
Ferdinand was renowned for his adventurous dribbling and tendency to take risks in possession, having fallen in love with football watching Diego Maradona at the 1986 World Cup. He first dropped back to defence when a West Ham teammate didn’t turn up for a game. He impressed in that role, and his coaches gradually convinced him it should be his long-term position. ‘I suppose defending came naturally to me but it certainly wasn’t a pleasure,’ he said later. ‘I had a strangely unfulfilled feeling after games, even if we won. I thought, “Yeah, but I didn’t do anything” … Admittedly I did enjoy racing against a forward and beating him for speed, but the art of defending just left me cold. Even playing for England I still wasn’t actually enjoying defending.’ As with other players at the time, Ferdinand was pushed into the change of position because of his speed and ball-playing abilities rather than traditional defensive attributes.
Dropping back from midfield became a theme among England’s emerging centre-backs. Ledley King, who made his debut for Tottenham in 1999 and later became club captain, was similar in style to Ferdinand. ‘I never enjoyed calling myself a defender,’ King said, recalling his teenage years. ‘I hated being pinned at the back; I felt I had too much to offer. I felt I could affect the game more from the midfield … I didn’t study or watch defenders either, I loved attacking players, flair players.’ King played in the same east London youth side, Senrab FC, as a young John Terry. Sure enough, the future Chelsea centre-back was yet another who started in a more advanced position. ‘He played in midfield back then and was quite short, but he had a leap on him and was great in the air,’ King said. ‘He made a big difference as a midfield general.’ While not considered as cultured as King or Ferdinand, Terry’s excellent passing skills have always been overlooked, although he lacked the speed of Ferdinand or King and preferred playing in a deeper defensive line.
Ferdinand was particularly fast, capable of running the 100m in 12 seconds, making him perfect for the new generation of defenders happy to ‘catch up’ with opponents. Ferdinand was always highlighted as a special case, eternally described as being ‘prone to lapses in concentration’, something of a problem for a centre-back. He was the first central defender in English football whose major weakn
ess was defending, which later wasn’t an entirely unusual problem; John Stones, for example, is a similar case and considers Ferdinand his role model. Widely considered a ball-playing centre-back, Ferdinand was actually more of a ball-carrying centre-back who loved dribbling forward. ‘When you create an extra body in midfield the opposition look as if to say, “Where’s he come from?”, and if other players are being marked there’s usually not a spare player to mark you,’ he said. But his actual passing ability wasn’t particularly outstanding; it was about his calmness in possession, rather than his incision.
Ferdinand has always proudly spoken of his roots, but he had unusual interests for a Peckham council estate boy and attributes his graceful playing style to taking ballet classes four times a week, improving his ‘flexibility, movement, coordination and balance’. He also loved drama, at 13 starring in his school’s production of Bugsy Malone, playing Fizzy, the man who swept the floor of a speakeasy. As it turned out, a sweeper role was peculiarly prescient.
In the mid- to late 1990s English football was desperate to discover a homegrown centre-back boasting guile, intelligence and ball-playing ability to make a 3–5–2 system – then considered the natural alternative to 4–4–2 – work properly, with the spare man stepping forward from defence. The masterful Matthias Sammer’s performances as the German sweeper – he was named player of the tournament on English soil at Euro 96 – underlined the value of this type of footballer. In those early days Ferdinand was considered almost purely in terms of the 3–5–2 system, given the uncertainty about whether he possessed the toughness and natural defensive qualities to play as a man-marking centre-back in a 4–4–2.