Alex Ferguson My Autobiography

by Alex Ferguson

  So the figure we inserted was £35 million, which, we thought, would deter all-comers, even Real Madrid. They agreed it. To David, I said, ‘If they come back next year and pay thirty-five million, at least we’ll know we have doubled our money on him. If they don’t come, we’ll get the two years in his contract out of him, and he will be twenty-nine by that point. We’ve had him four years. We’ll be able to move him on.’ Fine, but the moment Ruud signed that contract he changed. In his last season he became a really difficult boy. I don’t think he was popular by the end. The alteration in him was dramatic.

  My brother Martin had seen him play for Heerenveen and said: ‘I really like this lad, he does look the part.’ With that glowing review I needed to get cracking. We went back to see him again but received word he had already signed for PSV a month previously. That confused me. But it seemed a done deal. We kept an eye on him regardless and made our move in 2000.

  On a short holiday in Spain, during an international break, I received bad news: a message from our doctor to say Ruud had failed the medical. We were sure we had spotted cruciate ligament damage. PSV disagreed, insisting that all their tests had shown only minor ligament disruption of the kind that would not prevent him passing the examination. Mike Stone, however, would not sign it off. So we sent him back to PSV, who sent him back into training and filmed it, for our benefit. In the practice session Ruud’s knee completely went. The footage found its way onto TV, where you could see him screaming. What should we do?

  ‘These days, if you have the right people looking after you, you can be back from this kind of injury in a few months,’ I told Martin Edwards.

  Van Nistelrooy followed the trusted route to Dr Richard Steadman in Colorado and was out for almost a year. He returned towards the tail end of that season and we signed him in 2001, after I had been to watch him against Ajax. His mobility was not impaired and his pace had not diminished. He wasn’t the quickest striker; he was a galloper who had a quick brain in the penalty box.

  I’d also been to see him at his home while he was convalescing and had told him we would still be taking him to Old Trafford, irrespective of his injury. That was an important message for him, because I don’t think he was the most confident lad at that point in his career. He was a country boy.

  He was a typical old-fashioned Italian-type centre-forward. Forget all that running out to the wings and tackling. Back in the early 1960s, Juventus had a centre-forward called Pietro Anastasi, who would contribute little in games before winning them with sudden goal-scoring bursts.

  That was the kind of centre-forward who dominated the game in that era. You left them to do their work in the penalty box. Van Nistelrooy was from that template. Opportunities had to be created for him. But he was a flawless finisher who scored some true poacher’s goals.

  In fact, he was one of the most selfish finishers I ever saw. His personal goal tally was his guiding obsession. That single-mindedness gave him the edge of a great assassin. He had no interest in build-up play or how many yards he had run in a game, how many sprints he had made. The only aspect he was ever interested in was: how many goals did Ruud van Nistelrooy score. He was superb at the ‘early hit’. He would dart to the side of the defender and deliver that quick, lethal strike.

  If you put my great goal-scorers together (Andy Cole, Eric Cantona, Van Nistelrooy, Rooney), Ruud was the most prolific. But the best natural finisher was Solskjaer. Van Nistelrooy scored some magnificent goals, but many were scabby, six-yard box goals. Andy Cole scored some fine goals, too, but plenty were close in, scrambled, off the leg, just-get-it-in goals. Solskjaer’s finishing, though, could be majestic. His thought processes underpinned his skills. He had that analytical mind. As soon as he arrived in a shooting position, he had it all sized up. He had mental pictures everywhere. Yet he didn’t play all the time because he wasn’t the most aggressive of strikers. He developed more of that later, but was a slender young man without the physique, in his early days, to clear a path.

  In games, sitting on the bench, and in training sessions, he would make notes, always. So by the time he came on he had analysed who the opponents were, what positions they were assuming. He had those images all worked out. The game was laid out for him like a diagram and he knew where to go and when.

  Ole was a sweet-natured boy who was never looking to be confrontational with me. There was no risk to my office door from Ole wanting to smash it down to demand a place in the first XI. We knew he was content with his role, and that helped us, because if we had a difficult decision to make about the other three strikers, which one to leave out, the fourth was content to play a supporting part. So we just had the three grumpy forwards to deal with. Yorke, Cole and Sheringham.

  At first I believed Ruud’s range of attributes was wider than it turned out to be. I expected to see from him more of the donkey-work that Manchester United players have to do. There were times when he did his share, and would apply himself to it, but he was not inclined to be that kind of industrious player. He wasn’t endowed with great stamina. His test results were never startling. Yet you knew he could always put the ball in the net if you fed it into his path.

  In the preceding years we had lost Cantona, Teddy Sheringham had gone, Ole was having his knee problems, Yorkie had lost a bit of focus and Andy was still fit, fresh. You could always rely on Andy, but I knew when I took Van Nistelrooy on, I was bound to have problems with Cole, because he thought he was the best centre-forward in the world. I say this affectionately, because it was a useful self-image to have, but he was miffed when I started pairing him with Ruud.

  Displeasure had been apparent too in Andy’s relationship with Cantona. The only colleague he really related to was Yorkie. Their season in 1998–99 was made in heaven. Their partnership, their friendship, was phenomenal. They hadn’t known one another when Yorkie came to the club, but they just gelled. In training they would work on runs together, little dummies, one-twos. They synchronised beautifully. I think they scored 53 goals between them.

  Pairing up with Van Nistelrooy wasn’t going to work for Andy, so I sold him to Blackburn Rovers. He was in his early thirties by that point and we felt we’d had some fine years out of him. We signed him in 1995, got seven years out of him and received £6.5 million from Blackburn. His cost from Newcastle had been £7 million, plus Keith Gillespie, who was worth no more than £1 million. So we almost recovered our money after seven years of productivity. Not bad.

  Another striker who ran up against the problem of Ruud’s singularity was Forlán, a grand player. Ruud wanted to be the No. 1 finisher. That was his nature. Diego Forlán didn’t register on his radar at all, so when you put the two of them out there together there was zero chemistry. Diego was better with a partner. But he scored some priceless goals. Two at Anfield, a goal with the last kick of the game against Chelsea. He was a good player and a terrific pro.

  The other complication I had with him was that his sister was an invalid, in Majorca, and it fell to him to look after her. But he was great about the place, always smiling. Spoke five languages. A breath of fresh air, as a person. We let him go for £2 million, which I thought was too cheap. With his wages, no club was willing to bid any higher. The next thing we knew he was moving on for £15 million. He floated over the ground. He was small but had a good upper body. Tough. He was such a good tennis player that he might have become a pro and had to choose between that and football. I knew that, when he joined. During our pre-season tennis tournament, I tried to get a bet on him. I said to Gary Neville, who ran the book: ‘What price is Diego?’

  ‘Why? Why?’ said Gary, alarmed. ‘Does he play?’

  ‘How would I know?’ I said. ‘Why don’t you ask him?’

  But Gary was already on to me. There would be no betting on Diego. He slaughtered them all. Cut them to ribbons.

  ‘You think we’re stupid, don’t you?’ Neville said.

  I said, ‘Well, it was worth a try. I was hoping you’d say ten-to-one!’
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  twelve

  THE first time I recognised José Mourinho as a potential threat was at his opening press conference as Chelsea manager in the summer of 2004. ‘I’m the special one,’ José announced. ‘What a cheeky young sod,’ I thought, as I watched him entertain the press with richly quotable material.

  An internal voice told me: New kid on the block. Young. No point in discussing him. No point in taking him on. But he’s got the intelligence, the confidence, to deal with the Chelsea job.

  I had spoken to Carlos a lot about José and he had told me, ‘He is a very clever boy.’ His knowledge of Mourinho stretched back to a time they had shared in academia. José was one of Carlos’s students in Portugal. ‘My best student by far. By far,’ Carlos told me. Forearmed with that knowledge, I watched him ride the wave of expectation he had created for himself; the wave that carried him from Porto to London to work for Roman Abramovich. José was one of those guys on a surfboard who can stay longer on the wave than everyone else. I knew straight away it would be unwise to engage him in psychological conflict. I would find another way to tackle him.

  In the period from August 2004 to May 2006, we won one trophy: the 2006 League Cup. Chelsea and José won the Premier League in both those campaigns. As Arsenal dropped away, Abramovich’s wealth and José’s managerial ability became the biggest obstacle to our rebuilding.

  Traditionally, our preparation for a new season had emphasised the second half of the 38-game programme. We always finished strongly. There was science as well as spirit behind our talent for winning games in the months that really mattered.

  José was fresh in town, working for an employer with stacks of money, and with hype clearing his path. In the autumn of 2004 he needed to make a strong start in his first weeks at Stamford Bridge. Chelsea skated to a six-point lead and we could never make it up. Once they hit the front in the title race, José made sure they won plenty of games narrowly. It was all one- and two-nil victories. They would take the lead in games and then consolidate. Chelsea were becoming an incredibly hard team to break down. They were much better organised than before. I didn’t win a game at Stamford Bridge after Mourinho arrived.

  José put in lots of pre-season work on the defensive shape and played initially with a back three, two wide men and a midfield diamond. Very hard to play against, that formation.

  Our first encounter had been the 2003–04 Champions League campaign, when José’s Porto knocked us out. I had a spat with him at the end of the first leg. But I often had disagreements with fellow managers when first running into them. Even George Graham and I clashed after our first meeting when George was at Arsenal. Later, we became good friends. The same is true of Mourinho. I always found him very helpful and very communicative. I think he realised he was dealing with someone who had experienced all the emotional extremes in the game and enjoyed our conversations.

  My indignation in that first leg stemmed from all the diving his Porto players were doing. I think he was a bit taken aback by my anger. I went too far. There was no need for me to vent my feelings on José. I was more angry with Keane for being sent off. Playing on my mind was the knowledge that Martin O’Neill had complained about the conduct of José’s players in the UEFA Cup final between Porto and Celtic, which Porto won. There was a seed in me. I had watched that final but didn’t think they were atypical of a Portuguese team. But when Martin O’Neill kept on and on about it, I started to persuade myself that José’s team were cynical.

  My first impression in the away leg was that Roy had been the victim of a refereeing misjudgment. On review, it was clear he’d tried to leave his mark on their goalkeeper. That reduced us to ten men and meant Keane was suspended for the return leg.

  In the Old Trafford leg, the referee behaved bizarrely. We attacked three or four minutes before the end of the game. Ronaldo beat the full-back and he chopped him down. The linesman flagged but the Russian referee played on. Porto went to the other end and scored.

  I congratulated José at the end of that match. When a team knock you out, it’s imperative to find a way to say ‘all the best’. We had a glass of wine and I told him: ‘You were lucky, but good luck in the next leg.’

  The next time he appeared at Old Trafford, he brought a bottle of his own wine, a Barca-Velha, and that started a tradition. The wine at Chelsea was awful, which I could never understand. I said to Abramovich once, ‘That’s paint-stripper.’ The next week he sent me a case of Tignanello. A great drop, one of the best.

  As for José’s gallop along the touchline at Old Trafford, I’ve done it myself. I think back to when we scored against Sheffield Wednesday and Brian Kidd was on the pitch, on his knees, with me rejoicing on the touchline. I admire people who show you their emotions. It shows you they care.

  That Champions League victory over United launched José. Beating Celtic in a UEFA Cup final was an achievement, but defeating Manchester United at Old Trafford and then going on to win the European Cup was a fuller demonstration of his talent. I remember saying to him around 2008, ‘I don’t know when I’m going to retire. It’s difficult when you get older because you’re scared to retire.’ José said: ‘Don’t you retire, you’re keeping me going.’ He said he had other challenges, but definitely wanted to come back to England. He won the Champions League with Inter Milan and La Liga in Spain with Real Madrid before returning to Chelsea in June 2013.

  Everyone I speak to tells me that José is exceptionally good with players. He’s meticulous in his planning, the detail. He’s a likeable person when you get to know him, and he can laugh at himself, turn a joke back on himself. I don’t know whether Wenger or Benítez had that capacity.

  Watching José tackle the Real Madrid job after his appointment in 2010 was fascinating. It was the most interesting appointment I could remember in the game; the most intriguing match of styles, managerial and playing. Every coach who has worked there has had to adhere to their philosophy. The galáctico philosophy. When they appointed Mourinho, I’m sure they must have accepted that they would need to bend to his thinking if they were to win the European Cup.

  It’s like any profession. You bring someone in and suddenly everything is altered, and the authors of that appointment say, ‘Just a minute, we didn’t know we were going to get this.’ There would have been a few fans sitting in the Bernabéu thinking: ‘I’m not happy with this. I didn’t pay for this. I’d rather lose 5–4 than 1–0.’

  So the spectacle of José’s time in Madrid held me in its grip. It was the greatest challenge of his working life. He had proved the merits of his ways, at Porto, Chelsea and Inter Milan. He had won two European Cups with different clubs. Could he reshape Real Madrid in his own image, to his own thinking? From the beginning, there seemed little prospect of him abandoning his most sacred ideas in favour of all-out attack and celebrity exuberance. He knew that wasn’t the way to succeed in modern football. Barcelona would attack beautifully, but they would also hound the ball when possession was lost. They were a hard-working unit, a collective. In that spell when Real reached three Champions League finals in five years, they had the best players: Zidane, Figo, Roberto Carlos. Fernando Hierro, Iker Casillas in goal, Claude Makélélé sitting in the middle of the park to break everything up.

  They stayed with the galáctico system after that, importing Dutch players en masse, and David Beckham, Van Nistelrooy, Robinho, but the European Cup eluded them after the Glasgow final of 2002. Mourinho proved he could make big teams win, but the question I wanted answering was whether he would be allowed to do it his way in Madrid.

  José was a pragmatist, no question. The starting point in his philosophy is to make sure his team don’t lose. Against Barcelona in the previous season’s Champions League semi-final, he knew his Inter side were going to cede 65 per cent of possession. All teams knew that. Barcelona’s policy was to ensure they were always overloaded in the midfield area. If you played four there, they would field five, if you played six, they would up the ante to seven. By doi
ng so they could rotate the ball, in and out to the back four. You would end up on their carousel, going round and round, and wind up dizzy. Occasionally you might fall on the ball. Watch a carousel and you will see what I mean. The eyes go woozy.

  So José knew Inter would not see much of the ball against Barcelona, but he had weapons of his own, mainly concentration and positioning. Esteban Cambiasso, his central midfielder, was a vital component in that Inter team. If Messi appeared over here, so would Cambiasso. Should Messi pop up in another area, Cambiasso would be there as well. It sounds easy, but as part of a general team plan in which all the defensive duties would connect, it was marvellously effective. Later, I watched a Real Madrid game in which José made three substitutions in the last 15 minutes. They were all defensive in nature, to make sure he won the game.

  But all this came much later than our battles in the middle of the decade, when Chelsea won their first League title for 50 years and retained it 12 months later, in the summer of 2006. If 2004–05 was a horrible season, with no trophies, the following year brought only the League Cup. A new team was growing, but I was not to know we could win three Premier League trophies in a row.

  Our strategy was to rebuild for the eventual departures of Keane, Giggs, Scholes and Neville. Three of them stayed beyond that plan, while Keane had to go. The intention was to assemble a group of young players who could develop over a number of years, with the experience of Giggs and Scholes and Neville to assist that process. Now I can look back on that policy as an unqualified success.