Alex Ferguson My Autobiography

by Alex Ferguson

  And he would say, ‘Right, boss, where’s the chainsaw?’

  I had a few like that. Phil would do anything for the team. He would only think of the team. For the most part, if he were to play a limited part in the successful functioning of the side, he would find a way to be happy with that. In the end, though, Gary came to talk to me, to see how I felt about Phil’s diminishing role.

  ‘I don’t know what to do, he’s such a great lad,’ I told Gary.

  ‘That’s the problem,’ Gary said. ‘He doesn’t want to come to you.’ Phil lacked Gary’s directness, you see.

  I invited Phil out to the house for a talk. He came with his wife Julie. At first I didn’t notice her in the car. ‘Cathy, go and bring Julie in,’ I said. But when Cathy got out there, Julie began crying. ‘We don’t want to leave Man United,’ she was saying. ‘We love being at the club.’ Cathy took her a cup of tea, but she wouldn’t come into the house. I think she was worried she might break down and embarrass her husband.

  My point to Phil was that I was doing him more harm than good with the way I was using him. He agreed. He told me he needed to move on. I left him to work out how he would approach that with his wife.

  When they had left, Cathy said: ‘You’re not going to let him go, are you? You can’t let people like that go.’

  ‘Cathy,’ I said, ‘it’s for his own good. Do you not understand? It’s killing me more than it’s killing him.’

  I let him go cheaply, for £3.6 million. He was worth double that, because he could play five positions for you – in either of the full-back positions or all across the midfield. He even played centre-half for Everton, when Phil Jagielka and Joseph Yobo were injured.

  Letting Nicky Butt go was similarly traumatic, although Nicky had no problem standing up for himself. Nicky was a cheeky sod. Gorton boy. Great lad. He would fight your shadow, would Nicky.

  He would come in and say: ‘Why am I not playing?’

  That was Nicky. I loved that. And I would say, ‘Nicky, you’re not playing because I think Scholes and Keane are better than you.’ Sometimes, away from home, I would put him in ahead of Scholesy. In the Champions League semi-final at Juventus, for example, I played Butt instead of Scholes. Scholes and Keane were on two bookings and I couldn’t afford to risk them both missing the final, though in the event both missed out through suspension. I brought Scholes on for Butt when Nicky picked up an injury – and Paul was booked. In the end I sold Nicky to Bobby Robson at Newcastle for £2 million. What a great buy that was.

  The clouds began to clear in 2002 with the 5–3 win over Newcastle at the end of November. Diego Forlán, who had taken 27 games to score his first goal for us – a penalty against Maccabi Haifa – was a factor in our 2–1 win at Liverpool, after Jamie Carragher had headed the ball back to Jerzy Dudek and Forlán had nipped in to score. We then beat Arsenal 2–0 and Chelsea 2–1, with Forlán again scoring the decisive goal. On the training ground that winter, we worked intensively on our defensive shape.

  In February 2003 we lost an FA Cup fifth-round tie 2–0 at home to Arsenal. It was the game in which Ryan Giggs missed an open goal, lifting the ball over the bar with his right foot, when the net was undefended. ‘Well, Giggsy,’ I told him, ‘you’ve scored the best-ever goal in the FA Cup, and now you’ve added the best-ever miss.’ He had all the time in the world. He could have walked the ball into the net.

  That game, which sent me into a fury, was to have more serious implications for my relationship with another graduate of the 1992 FA Youth Cup winning side. A butterfly plaster was involved, but it couldn’t heal the wound. The boot I kicked in anger just happened to fly straight at David Beckham’s eyebrow.

  After losing the Carling Cup final to Liverpool, we ran into another major rival from that period. By the end of my time as manager, Leeds United were nowhere to be seen on the list of threats, but in the spring of 2003 they were a menace, although we won that match 2–1. I should say a few words about our rivalry with Leeds, which was disturbingly intense.

  When I first arrived in Manchester I knew about the derby games with City and the clashes with United’s Merseyside rivals, Everton and Liverpool. I knew nothing of the animosity between United and Leeds. In the old first division, Archie Knox and I went to see Crystal Palace beat Leeds.

  It was 0–0 at half-time. The second half was all Leeds. With 20 minutes to go, Leeds had a penalty turned down and the crowd were going crackers. A Leeds fan began shouting at me: ‘You, you Manc bastard.’

  ‘What’s that all about, Archie?’ I said.

  ‘No idea,’ Archie replied.

  So I looked for a steward. The directors’ box at Leeds is small and the fans are all around you. Palace went to the other end and scored. That’s when the crowd really lost it. Archie wanted us to leave but I insisted we stay. Palace scored again, and that’s when our new friend hit me in the back with a Bovril cup. The abuse was astonishing. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ I said to Archie.

  The next day I was speaking to our kit man at the time, Norman Davies. He said: ‘I told you about Leeds. It’s pure hatred.’

  ‘Where does that come from?’

  ‘The sixties,’ Norman said.

  Leeds used to have a commissionaire called Jack who would come on the bus as we arrived at Elland Road and announce, like the town crier, ‘On behalf of the directors, players and supporters of Leeds United, welcome to Elland Road,’ and I would mutter: ‘That’ll be right.’

  Some of the fans would have their kids on their shoulders, radiating the most incredible hatred. In the semi-final of the League Cup at Leeds in 1991, they did give us a bit of a battering in the second half, but Lee Sharpe had broken away, at 0–0, with two minutes to go, to score. It looked 10 yards offside. I was on the pitch, Eric Harrison was in the dug-out. A lot of people think Eric looks like me. One Leeds supporter certainly did, because he whacked Eric. Absolutely panned him. The guy thought he was hitting me. On came the fans. Pandemonium. And yet there was something about the hostile atmosphere at Elland Road that I quite liked.

  In the Peter Ridsdale years, when Leeds were ‘living the dream’, as the chairman later put it, I sensed the club was built on sand. When I heard what kind of wages they were paying, my alarm bells rang. When we sold them Lee Sharpe, I believe they doubled Lee’s wages, on a 35,000 crowd.

  But they constructed a useful team. Alan Smith, Harry Kewell, David Batty. Back in 1992, they won the League with one of the most average teams ever to win the title, but they were as committed as it’s possible to be. And they were superbly managed by Howard Wilkinson. A decade later, we would hear about the boy from Derby joining them, Seth Johnson, and him discussing with his agent what they were going to ask for. The story goes that the sum they came up with was £25,000. Leeds’ offer was apparently £35,000 a week, climbing to £40–45,000.

  Clubs don’t learn these lessons. The emotions of the game trap you.

  I remember a local Manchester businessman coming to me and saying: ‘I’m thinking of buying Birmingham City, what do you think?’

  I said, ‘If you’ve got a hundred million pounds to risk, go ahead.’

  ‘No, no,’ he said, ‘they’re only eleven million in debt.’

  ‘But have you seen the stadium?’ I replied. ‘You’ll need a new stadium, for maybe sixty million, and then forty million to get them into the Premier League.’

  People try to apply to football the usual principles of business. But it’s not a lathe, it’s not a milling machine, it’s a collection of human beings. That’s the difference.

  We faced some seismic fixtures before that season’s end. A 4–0 home win over Liverpool – Sami Hyypiä was sent off in the fifth minute for stopping Van Nistelrooy’s run on goal – led us into a Champions League tie against Real Madrid. In the first of our games against Madrid, Van Nistelrooy was our only scorer. Luis Figo and Raul, twice, left us facing a 3–1 deficit in the home leg, for which I left Beckham on the bench. This was an epic ga
me, watched, the story goes, by Roman Abramovich, who was inspired by our 4–3 win, and the hat-trick by Brazilian striker Ronaldo, to seek his own involvement in the great global drama by buying Chelsea.

  Though we had been nine points off the lead at one stage, we raced eight points clear with a 4–1 win over Charlton in May 2003, in which a Van Nistelrooy hat-trick lifted him to 43 goals for the season. On the penultimate weekend, Arsenal needed to beat Leeds at Highbury to have any chance of catching us, but Mark Viduka helped us out with a late goal for our Yorkshire rivals. In our 2–1 win at Everton, David Beckham scored from a free kick in his last game for us. We were champions again for the eighth time in 11 seasons. The players danced and sang: ‘We’ve got our trophy back.’

  We regained the League but said farewell to Beckham.

  five

  FROM the moment he first laid boot on ball, David Beckham displayed an unbreakable urge to make the best of himself and his talent. He and I left the main stage in the same summer, with him still prominent in European football and opportunities galore ahead of him. He went out at Paris St-Germain much as I did at United: on his own terms.

  Sometimes you have to take something away from someone for them to see how much they loved it. When Beckham moved to America to join LA Galaxy, I believe he began to realise he had surrendered a part of his career. He worked incredibly hard to return to the level he had been at in his prime, and showed more enthusiasm for the hard graft of the game than he did at the end of his time with us.

  David didn’t have many choices at the point of his transfer from Real Madrid to Major League Soccer in 2007. I imagine he also had his eyes on Hollywood and the impact it would have on the next phase of his career. There was no footballing reason for him to go to America. He was giving up top-level club football as well as the international game, although he fought his way back into the England squad. That proves my point about the disappointment at the heart of his career in its later stages. He drew on a huge resilience factor to regain his prominence at the elite level.

  Because I saw him grow up, along with Giggs and Scholes, David was more like a son to me. He joined United as a young London lad in July 1991. Within a year he was part of the so-called Class of ’92, winning the FA Youth Cup with Nicky Butt, Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs. He made 394 appearances for the first team and scored 85 times, including one from the halfway line, against Wimbledon, the goal that really announced him to the world.

  When I left the United dug-out in May 2013, Giggs and Scholes were still with us, but by then it had been ten years since David had left for Spain. On Wednesday 18 June 2003 we told the Stock Exchange he would be joining Real Madrid for a fee of £24.5 million. David was 28. The news flashed around the world. It was one of those global moments for our club.

  I hold no rancour towards David at all. I like him. I think he’s a wonderful boy. But you should never surrender what you’re good at.

  David was the only player I managed who chose to be famous, who made it his mission to be known outside the game. Wayne Rooney was on the radar of an industry that would have liked to change him. His profile was established in his teenage years. He had offers that would make your mind boggle. He was making twice outside of football what we were paying him. The corporate world would love to have taken over Giggsy, but that was never his style.

  In his final season with us, we were aware that David’s work-rate was dropping and we had heard rumours of a flirtation between Real Madrid and David’s camp. The main issue was that his application level had dropped from its traditionally stratospheric level.

  The confrontation between us that caused so much excitement around the game was an FA Cup fifth-round tie against Arsenal at Old Trafford in February 2003, which we lost 2–0.

  David’s offence in that particular game was that he neglected to track back for the second Arsenal goal, scored by Sylvain Wiltord. He merely jogged. The boy just kept on running away from him. At the end I got on to him. As usual, with David at that time, he was dismissive of my criticism. It’s possible that he was starting to think he no longer needed to track back and chase, which were the very qualities that had made him what he was.

  He was around 12 feet from me. Between us on the floor lay a row of boots. David swore. I moved towards him, and as I approached I kicked a boot. It hit him right above the eye. Of course he rose to have a go at me and the players stopped him. ‘Sit down,’ I said. ‘You’ve let your team down. You can argue as much as you like.’

  I called him in the next day to go through the video and he still would not accept his mistake. As he sat listening to me, he didn’t say a word. Not a word.

  ‘Do you understand what we’re talking about, why we got on to you?’ I asked.

  He didn’t even answer me.

  The next day the story was in the press. In public an Alice band highlighted the damage inflicted by the boot. It was in those days that I told the board David had to go. My message would have been familiar to board members who knew me. The minute a Manchester United player thought he was bigger than the manager, he had to go. I used to say, ‘The moment the manager loses his authority, you don’t have a club. The players will be running it, and then you’re in trouble.’

  David thought he was bigger than Alex Ferguson. There is no doubt about that in my mind. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Alex Ferguson or Pete the Plumber. The name of the manager is irrelevant. The authority is what counts. You cannot have a player taking over the dressing room. Many tried. The focus of authority at Manchester United is the manager’s office. That was the death knell for him.

  Then, of course, after finishing top of our Champions League group, we were drawn against Real Madrid. In Spain, for the first leg, David seemed especially keen to shake hands with Roberto Carlos, the Madrid left-back. The following Saturday, after our 3–1 defeat at the Bernabéu, he withdrew from the game against Newcastle, saying he wasn’t fit. I played Solskjaer, who was magnificent in a 6–2 win, and he stayed in the side.

  David’s form, quite simply, wasn’t good enough for me to pull Solskjaer out of a winning team for the Old Trafford leg against Real. During a round of head tennis before the return game, I pulled David aside and told him, ‘Look, I’m going to start with Ole.’ He huffed and walked away.

  There was a terrific hullaboo that night, with David coming on as sub for Verón in the 63rd minute and giving what looked like a farewell to the Old Trafford crowd. He scored from a free kick and struck the winner in the 85th minute. We won 4–3, but Ronaldo’s wonderful hat-trick and the defeat in Spain sent us out of the competition.

  David was looking for the sympathy vote from the fans. But there is no doubt there had been a direct attack on me. The move to Real Madrid was clearly accelerating. From what we could gather, there had been dialogue between his agent and Real Madrid. The first contact we had was probably in the middle of May, after our season had ended. Our chief executive, Peter Kenyon, called to say: ‘Real Madrid have been on the phone.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘we expected that.’ We were looking for £25 million. I went to France on holiday and Peter called my mobile, while I was in a restaurant, having dinner with Jim Sheridan, the film director, who had an apartment over the place where we were eating. I needed a private phone.

  ‘Come up to my apartment, use mine,’ said Jim. So that’s how it was done. ‘He doesn’t go unless we get the twenty-five,’ I told Peter. I believe it was £18 million down, with add-ons, that we eventually received.

  David hadn’t disappeared from the team altogether. We won the title with a 4–1 win against Charlton at Old Trafford on 3 May 2003. He scored in that game and again at Everton on 11 May as our season ended with a 2–1 win. A free kick from 20 yards was not a bad way for him to depart on a day when our defence was hounded by a young local talent called Wayne Rooney. David had played his part in our victorious League campaign, so there was no reason to leave him out at Goodison Park.

  Maybe he wasn’t mature
enough at that time to handle everything that was going on in his life. Today, he seems to manage things better. He is more certain of his position in life, more in control. But it was reaching the stage back then when I felt uncomfortable with the celebrity aspect of his life.

  An example: arriving at the training ground at 3 p.m. before a trip to Leicester City, I noticed the press lined up on the road into Carrington. There must have been 20 photographers.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I demanded. I was told, ‘Apparently Beckham is revealing his new haircut tomorrow.’

  David turned up with a beanie hat on. At dinner that night he was still wearing it. ‘David, take your beanie hat off, you’re in a restaurant,’ I said. He refused. ‘Don’t be so stupid,’ I persisted. ‘Take it off.’ But he wouldn’t.

  So I was raging. There was no way I could fine him for it. Plenty of players had worn baseball caps on the way to games and so on, but none had been so defiant about keeping one on during a team meal.

  The next day, the players were going out for the pre-match warm-up and David had his beanie hat on. ‘David,’ I said, ‘you’re not going out with that beanie hat on. You’ll not be playing. I’ll take you out of the team right now.’

  He went berserk. Took it off. Bald head, completely shaved. I said, ‘Is that what this was all about? A shaved head that nobody was to see?’ The plan was that he would keep the beanie hat on and take it off just before kick-off. At that time I was starting to despair of him. I could see him being swallowed up by the media or publicity agents.

  David was at a great club. He had a fine career. He gave me 12 to 15 goals a season, worked his balls off. That was taken away from him. And with that being taken away from him, he lost the chance to become an absolute top-dog player. For my money, after the change, he never attained the level where you would say: that is an absolute top player.