He was always doing surprising things to keep us on our toes. Right at the beginning of my Old Trafford career, I injured my ankle in my very first game, a friendly against Boca Juniors and their young star Carlos Tevez. Over the next five weekends, me being me as I was at 23, I over-indulged in Manchester’s famous nightlife. On the fifth week, as I ran out for training, Fergie called me over and asked ‘How are you doing, son? How are you enjoying Manchester? Have you settled in OK?’ I was nervous because it was Sir Alex Ferguson I was speaking to. So I said: ‘Yes, boss … erm … gaffer … I’m OK. I’ve been to a couple of restaurants here and there, you know, just taking things easy.’ And very calmly he says: ‘Does that include Sugar Lounge and Brasingamens?’ Those were two of the biggest nightspots and I’d obviously been caught red-handed. Then he gives me one of his looks: ‘I know everything, son, so let’s get off on the right foot here. Now go and train.’ My legs went! My new boss, the great Sir Alex, knew I’d been partying hard and being unprofessional. I thought ‘Will he sell me? Will I even get a game now?’ It was never mentioned again but he’d well and truly marked my card. One day we were winning 2–0 at halftime at Bolton which was one of the hardest places to go. It was one of the best performances I’d been involved in and we came in buzzing. He walks in, slams the door, and goes, ‘You’ve got to fucking sort yourselves out! It’s a fucking disgrace! You should be fucking 6–0 or 7–0. This championship could go down to the wire on goal difference so you better fucking make sure you score more goals.’ He was digging out individuals: ‘You’ve missed chances … you’ve been slack with your passing.’ Everyone was sitting there, shell-shocked. He walks out the changing room and everyone looks at each and says ‘Was he watching that game or what? We were on fire; we were unbelievable.’ We went out and I think we scored another two in the second half. After the game he said he was just trying to make sure we didn’t get complacent and to understand that it’s not just about this game, we’ve got a season to finish. We had to win the league.
Another thing he was big on was concentration. ‘Make sure you’re all concentrating, especially defenders.’ And he would never, ever make an opponent out to be a great team, so we never went onto a pitch thinking: ‘these guys are so good we’ve not got a chance.’ He would always play it the other way. ‘This is the worst Liverpool side I’ve seen,’ he’d announce before the game. ‘You ain’t going to get a better chance to beat them.’ Steven Gerrard had a few standout games against us but we very rarely let him dominate. That was because the manager knew he was their danger man and he knew we had to stop him and smother him. With Frank Lampard, Ferguson would say, ‘Make sure someone follows his runs, because he can score a goal.’ Or: ‘Don’t let Drogba bully you … if I see Drogba pulling that ball down and bullying any of you, I swear to ya …’
I think perhaps the biggest thing was that he never confused us with too much detail – just a few key points and a mindset that there’s no doubt that we’re going to beat the other team. If you go out with a clear, strong idea, you’ll execute that in a more decisive manner. Clarity and energy: that’s what he gave us. The truth is that football is not as complicated as people sometimes make out. Just win your individual battles, make sure your team is set up in a good shape, work harder than the other side, and be decisive in the final third and in your own box. If you do all that you have a good chance of winning games. People like to pretend there’s a big mystique to winning football matches. But a lot of it is simple: don’t make things too intricate, and let people play off the cuff a little bit. Management isn’t easy, but people often try to overcomplicate. Don’t get me wrong; tactics are important. But sometimes, the game takes care of itself.
Looking back, there’s a moment that gives me particular pleasure. I scored our winning goal at Old Trafford against Swansea on 12th May 2013. It was a peach of a volley, I must say, but I didn’t realize its significance until later. In the changing room I was next to Nemanja Vidić and he was just sitting there smiling at me. I said ‘What?’ He said: ‘Don’t you know, big man? You just scored the very last goal here of Ferguson’s time as manager.’ I honestly hadn’t thought about it. I was just happy about scoring and winning. But when Vida said that it hit me! I had a big old smile for ages afterwards.
Wildebeest
We park our cars
We take it for granted in England that football coaches and managers give instructions, and players do what they’re told. That was certainly the case with Ferguson. He would tell us stuff and we’d be quiet, accepting what he said and taking it as gospel. This is what happens: we’re told exactly what to do, and we go along with it and trust the manager’s judgment on a lot of things. But in other sports it can be very different. I remember speaking to Andy Farrell, the England rugby player and coach and I was amazed by what he described. Basically, when they have team meetings about tactics and stuff in rugby the players seem to run those meetings. The coaches say their piece but it’s the players who make most of the running. Everyone gives their opinions and then they decide – as coaches and players together – how they’ll play.
Whereas in football, we’re all used to the tradition that the manager decides the tactics and the players adhere to what we’re being told. I’m not saying which is the better method but I found it interesting. I mean, I’ve always been used to that and I’m comfortable with being told what to do. But I’d like the opportunity to be able to put my opinions forward without it being looked upon as being destructive. Usually, a player coming out of the pack and putting his own ideas forward is frowned upon. That’s just been the environment we’ve been brought up in. It’s no slant on any individual player – it’s just how it is. It’s been like that at every team I played in, even the England team. As football players we’re creatures of habit, so we don’t really question it. It’s just what happens. I mean, we’re allowed to have an opinion but everyone is very clear that ultimately it’s the manager who makes the decision. But in rugby, if the players have an idea about something it gets fully discussed and their opinions are taken much more seriously. They have more of a say.
It must be weird looking at it from the outside but what people have to understand is that as football players we are treated like children a lot of the time. We are ushered and ferried around from ‘A’ to ‘B’. When we go to airports, for example, we don’t have to look for anything or think about anything – we just follow security and follow people telling us what to do. We’re like a herd of bleeding wildebeest. None of us knows where we’re going or what we’re doing; we just follow each other. That’s it – everything’s on the board. We’re told what to do at every stage. All we’ve got to organise is making sure we get there transport-wise – that’s it. Just turn up to the meeting place. Once we get to that meeting place and park our cars, we’re in the hands of the club, and the club takes care of every single little thing – no stone’s left unturned.
All that’s done for a reason – so we can concentrate solely on playing football. But it also means we’re treated a bit like babies. There’s an obvious downside: as soon as you take players out of that environment, some of them can’t handle it because they’re used to being wrapped in cotton wool and having everything taken care of.
But maybe it’s the more effective model. Sometimes in a team you get divisive characters coming out and that ruins it for everybody. Or you get a manager that lets the changing room control and dictate what happens, and that can be successful. But ultimately in football, if the manager’s not leading, then the players generally don’t become successful. That’s what I’ve noticed: I think there are players who will make decisions on the pitch, but ultimately when you have the manager dictating from the top, that’s when the teams tend to do best. You might get the odd team that does it the other way around but, over a sustained period of time, I think you need a leader. That’s the manager and he leads. Some people have argued that the role of managers can be almost irrelevant, that results are
mainly down to the players on the pitch, and the manager’s main function is to get sacked and be the scapegoat when results start to go wrong. I think it’s a bit of both.
In my experience, the way a manager sets up his team – from a psychological point of view – is massive. Once you get on the pitch, then it’s up to you to produce the goods and execute what the manager has put in front of you and prepared you for. The psychological aspect is huge.
On Balance
Do you really
Do ballet?
I’ve never been one to be boxed in by other people’s prejudices. Who ever did gymnastics on my estate? No one. But I enjoyed it so I did that and it led onto something else. Someone spotted me doing gymnastics for Southwark in the London Games and thought I had potential as a dancer; they offered me a five-year scholarship at a ballet school on the other side of London, in Farringdon.
We didn’t have enough money to get me from Peckham because it was an expensive long journey, over the bridge, across the water, so my Mum used to do fund-raisers. She organised little charity events to raise money for me and another two guys to go. So I ended up going each week and it was great. At first I went because there were lots of girls there and loads of different people to meet – it was more an adventure than anything else. But I really enjoyed it for the first two or three years. Then it started to be a little bit of a drag, I didn’t enjoy it at the end. But I kept going because my Mum and Dad had put so much into getting me there.
I don’t think in the long run I would have made it as a dancer, though I think I could have done something in the performing arts. Maybe as an actor – I was always into that kind of stuff. But being a ballet dancer is a really tough skill. They said I didn’t have long enough hamstrings to have been a professional but learning to dance there left me in good stead in terms of balance and flexibility, and I’m sure it helped my movement later as a footballer. A lot of people don’t realise how physically difficult and demanding ballet is. If you’ve seen Billy Elliot you know there’s a kind of prejudice against it, but dancers have to work at least as hard as footballers, maybe harder. I had to put up with some stupid comments. People found it a bit bizarre – ‘Do you really do ballet?’ At first I didn’t even tell people because I was quite young and I didn’t know how people would react. It wasn’t that I was embarrassed – I just didn’t want to have to answer any questions.
But I was comfortable. I told a few of my close mates and they never said anything and after that I didn’t care. Because I was quite a boisterous lad and quite cool within my group of mates when I was at school, no one really pressured me or was bothered by it. Maybe someone with a less outgoing personality might have had a harder time. I mean it shouldn’t be a problem, should it? But that’s just the way society is.
People often commented that on a football field I had a slightly different way of moving. Alex Ferguson talks in his book about me being ‘graceful, balanced’. When I was a kid I was never into the traditional English hustle and bustle. Maybe that’s because I played midfield. And, unlike other defenders, I was always thinking about the attacking elements rather than the full-blooded defensive stuff. I didn’t enjoy heading the ball or making big tackles; I got my joy from doing skills or scoring or making a nice pass.
A lot of the way I moved on the field might have come from doing gymnastics and the ballet. Certainly I’ve never consciously tried to change the way I play to make myself look better. It was just natural to me. Maybe I’m just fortunate. But I think ballet contributed: I think it gave me a slightly different awareness of my body from other players.
Barça
If I stayed there would be trouble
And if I went it would be double
We lost to Barcelona in two Champions League finals and I still have nightmares about it. The two games, Rome in 2009 and Wembley 2011, were so similar they’ve blurred together in my mind as a single trauma. Both times we went into the match as champions of England and one of the best teams in Europe and on both occasions we were destroyed. Both times I went on holiday afterwards and couldn’t even remember winning the league a few weeks earlier. Winning the league is a huge achievement, but all I could think about was how Barcelona had taken us apart. Was it my fault? Could we have done better? Flashbacks would hit at any moment. One time I was lying on a beach, soaking up the sun, listening to the waves. I’d just cracked open a cold beer. I was having a fantastic holiday with my family and … BANG! All of a sudden I saw the Barcelona players celebrating. All the images from the game started playing in my mind like a video loop. I sat there thinking, please, just get out of my head!
Generally I don’t remember our victories as clearly as our defeats. I think much less about the trophies we won than the ones that got away. Those two games haunt me more than all the rest. We weren’t just beaten; we were embarrassed. It never happened to us before, and it never happened after. Don’t get me wrong, Barcelona were the best side I played against; they had some of the best players that have ever played football. But I still believe that out of the two finals, we should have won one. If we hadn’t played the way we did, I think we would have done.
After the first match, I remember the manager talking to us in the changing room. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘you were beaten by the better team today. You didn’t turn up. You didn’t perform. You didn’t play.’ He hammered us a bit – it was all the things you’d expect him to say. Then he said, ‘Just make sure we’re back here next May and fucking beat this lot because they’ll get to the final again next year and you’ve got to make sure we’re here to meet them.’ So we knew what we had to do. We had to get back and right a wrong. It took us both a couple of years to meet again and we didn’t right the wrong. But at least we got back. I don’t think there are too many teams who would have recovered at all.
You probably remember the Rome game, when Barcelona won 2–0. What you might not remember is that we went into that match as favorites. We were reigning European champions and Barça had changed a lot since they’d won the competition in 2006: Frank Rijkaard, their manager, had left; some of their biggest stars like Ronaldinho and Deco had left. A new side was emerging under then-new manager Pep Guardiola.
It was an evolving team really. We’d beaten them in the semi-final the year before but we certainly didn’t take them lightly. In the first ten minutes our tactics, which were to meet them high up the pitch and attack quickly, seemed all right. If we’d finished a couple of early chances, the game could have been different. Ronaldo had one and Ji-Sung Park had a chance that Piqué cleared off the line. Then Samuel Eto’o scored and after that it was just one-sided. They played the tiki-taka we now know all about, while we were wide open and just chasing shadows.
The most devastating thing about Barcelona that night was their confidence in possession. They had three of the best midfielders in Sergio Busquets, Xavi Hernández, and Andrés Iniesta, all great technicians, and they just strangled us with the ball. But they never passed just for the sake of it: everything had a deeper purpose. Lionel Messi, who was just emerging as the world’s best, gave us hell as the ‘false nine’ and their wingers, Thierry Henry and Samuel Eto’o, played high and wide. Because we were trying to play on the front foot, we were caught between wanting to get forward but having to stay back to stop their runners. What was the best way to deal with Messi? He played from deep but if I went chasing him, I’d leave a hole for their midfielders and wingers to exploit. Should I stay or should I go? I never knew. Gaps opened and Messi exploited the space between our lines.
I think one of our problems heading into the game was that Sir Alex thought Barcelona would be like Arsenal. Both teams liked to attack and had technical midfielders who liked to pass around you. We’d thumped Arsenal in the semi-final, and the 4–1 battering we gave them at their place really felt like a case of men against boys. I think maybe we got a little bit carried away by that result; we didn’t realise how much better Barcelona were. Their play was more stru
ctured; there was a real philosophy behind everything they did. They were a good few levels above Arsenal. Unfortunately we only found that out on the night.
What really hurt afterwards was feeling we hadn’t played to our strengths. The style we’d developed over a period of years against the best teams in Champions League games was more counterattacking than attacking, and I thought we should have played that way against Barcelona. In 2010, José Mourinho’s Inter Milan beat them with a defensive game and I think we were better and stronger than Inter. We never used to park the bus, and we didn’t sit too deep. But we did like to sit; we’d keep a good shape with two banks of four, soak up pressure and then hit fast on the break. We had two important principles: no gaps between midfield and defence. When we won the ball the manager always told us to play the ball quickly into our dangerous wide and forward players.
So that’s how we normally played, and we had players who were perfect for it. We were solid and strong at the back, and direct and clinical in our finishing. With guys like Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney and Carlos Tevez up front, we broke records. In our best years, if anyone came to Old Trafford and played two strikers and two central midfielders, we were rubbing our hands, licking our lips thinking, ‘Wow. This could be anything. This could be like 4–0 or 5–0. How dare they come to Old Trafford and disrespect us? We’ll show them.’
#2Sides: My Autobiography Page 9