Fergie Rises

by Michael Grant

  Ferguson was delirious. Archie Macpherson’s job was to grab him for an immediate BBC interview: ‘He was incoherent. I was the first to hug him coming off the pitch. All you can do is take what he babbles. What he’d done was a phenomenal achievement. Why? Because he was a Glasgow man. He exported the street fighting qualities of Glasgow into this prissy atmosphere up there where Aberdeen had lovely managers but they didn’t know how to win.’

  As supporters chanted ‘Fergie, Fergie’ he darted between one player and the next, not sure who to celebrate with first, reacting as he had when the league was won in 1980. McLeish’s head was still a mess because of that first-half pass back, and he was struggling to put it in perspective. ‘It ate me up. I was thinking, “Nobody will be focusing on us winning the cup, it’ll be all about my mistake.” You start to magnify things in your head. If we’d lost that could have affected my career because it was a mistake at the highest level. I was the last player in the shower after the game, still feeling sorry for myself. I was cuddling the boys and so excited but in my head I’m still thinking, “What a mistake.” I cared. Fergie came into the shower, his suit soaked, and said, “I’m proud of you. A lot of guys would have crumbled but you stayed strong.”’

  Real Madrid were gracious losers. The beaten Di Stéfano delivered a classy quote which Pittodrie still cherishes: ‘Aberdeen have what money can’t buy: a soul, a team spirit built in a family tradition.’ Early in 2014, having taken a coaching job with Colorado Rapids in the United States, Real Madrid’s centre-half in Gothenburg, Johnny Metgod, agreed to cast his mind all the way back to 1983. Metgod’s distinguished career included spells with Nottingham Forest, Tottenham, Feyenoord and, of course, Real Madrid. ‘If you play for a club like Madrid the only thing that counts is winning,’ he said. ‘To say that people were disappointed in 1983 is an understatement. What do I remember? It was pissing down. Strachan did me a couple of times. He went past me as if I wasn’t on the pitch. It was sort of the start of Alex Ferguson as a manager, but for me it wasn’t about Ferguson that night, it was more about McLeish and Miller and Black and McGhee and Strachan. The emphasis wasn’t on the manager. He was young and upcoming. Real weren’t complacent. Absolutely not. Any team who reaches a final hasn’t done it by being lucky. Aberdeen had something. Players like Doug Rougvie, Alex McLeish and Willie Miller typified them. They were just a really good team who fought for every yard on the pitch. As a reasonably smaller club in Europe they were in a final against Real Madrid and they beat them. I don’t think it can get any sweeter if you’re an Aberdeen fan.’

  The euphoria and chaos continued. Some of the players went to find their family and friends, others headed to the Real Madrid dressing room to swap shirts. Weir went in and found the right-back he had tormented, Juan José, in tears. McGhee was derailed by press interviews. ‘By the time I got back there was hardly anyone left in the dressing room. All I could hear was Archie Knox singing at the top of his voice, “What becomes of the broken-hearted? Paid a penny and only farted”. Totally random! He was just happy, just letting it out.’ At a celebration party back at Fars Hatt the drink and speeches flowed. Ferguson made a point of thanking the wives and girlfriends for playing a huge role. The boozing continued long into the night and there was more of it when the cup was filled with Champagne and passed around on the flight home the following afternoon.

  The city came to a standstill. An open-top bus carried the team and the cup from the airport to Pittodrie. An estimated 100,000 lined the streets, especially the city’s grand Union Street, with a further 20,000 waiting at the stadium. It took the team two hours and forty minutes to get from the runway to Pittodrie. The city had never seen anything like it. There was red-and-white everywhere. The local authority refused to close the schools early, but most of the kids skipped classes anyway to stand with their pals or mums and dads. The bus inched its way through the city, through the beaming, cheering crowds. Players waved, held the cup aloft and pointed to familiar faces on the streets. Supporters had started flooding into Pittodrie from 2pm. It was three-and-a-half hours later before the team arrived. Ground staff tried to keep younger fans off the pitch, but they kept vaulting the barriers before being herded back. Some kissed the centre circle. When Willie Miller emerged with the cup he and the other players were engulfed. ‘It was like trying to keep quicksilver under control,’ said Grampian Police chief superintendent John Gordon, who was in charge of controlling the crowds. ‘They were here, there and everywhere.’ The players did laps of honour, each taking their turn with the cup. They posed for photographs and hugged fans, staff and each other. The celebrations went on and on. At last, fully satisfied, the numbers began to thin. The players began to leave, each with family and friends. They were absolutely drained.

  After nearly twenty-four hours of backslapping, partying and general hysteria, a weary John Hewitt eventually reached home. He checked his video recorder and discovered it had stopped taping after the first ninety minutes with the score at 1–1.

  It was a local triumph but one which registered on a national, even international level. In Glasgow the city’s Evening Times carried an editorial in its news pages: ‘We really are the greatest. Aberdeen proved it again last night when they slaughtered the pride of Europe Real Madrid and claimed the Cup Winners’ Cup for Scotland. The football was superb and so were the fans. We were all Aberdonians.’ Uefa had sold television rights for the final to sixty-eight countries and the estimated audience was 200 million. Ferguson had made his first impression on an international stage. ‘Ferguson is a winner,’ wrote Alex Cameron in the Daily Record. ‘His only defeat of the European tie was by his wife. He lost a bet with her on the game and it will cost him a £3,000 fur coat.’ A motion was tabled in the House of Commons congratulating the club. Messages arrived from the president of Bayern Munich, Liverpool manager Bob Paisley and other football figures. The Queen Mother, whose Birkhall estate south-east of Aberdeen was in natural Dons-supporting territory, sent a telegram: ‘I was delighted to learn of Aberdeen’s splendid victory in the European Cup Winners’ Cup and I send my warmest congratulations to all concerned. Elizabeth R.’ The Press & Journal reported that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher sent ‘congratulations and well done’. On BBC Breakfast Time the morning after the game, presenter Selina Scott, who had begun her broadcasting career in the North-East, wore an Aberdeen scarf.

  In Sweden the biggest-selling morning newspaper summed up the way everyone felt. On 12 May 1983, the headline in Aftonbladet said: A NEW TEAM IS BORN IN EUROPE.

  Chapter 15

  THE HAIRDRYER AND THE BASEBALL BAT

  For ten days after Gothenburg there was unprecedented attention and hubbub around Pittodrie. Aberdeen still had the chance of pulling off the club’s first league and cup double. Having drunk long into the early hours of Thursday, with a few top-ups during the flight home, it was a contented but delicate group of players who took on Hibs that Saturday afternoon. Aberdeen were third going into the final day, and had to win, hope leaders Dundee United would lose, and that Celtic would drop a point for the dream to be realised. ‘I really believe Dundee United will win the title,’ Ferguson told the newspapers. ‘But we will be much more relaxed than United or Celtic. We have done our week’s work by winning in Gothenburg.’

  The Hibs players lined up to applaud the heroes on to the pitch. Adrenalin carried Aberdeen to a 5–0 rout, but a bigger story unfolded sixty-six miles south, where Dundee United secured the victory they needed to claim their maiden league title. It was the week when the ‘New Firm’ really arrived. A European trophy and a league title were the greatest achievements in Aberdeen and Dundee United’s histories and, more than three decades later, they remain so. For Ferguson, if the championship was not to go to Aberdeen, he was pleased that it went to Jim McLean. He felt a symbiotic relationship between the clubs and saw United’s triumph as helpful in suppressing the Old Firm.

  Ten days after Gothenburg, the 1983 Scottish Cup final threw Aberdeen
and Rangers together yet again, but now the landscape had changed. No one questioned the temperament or ‘bottle’ of Ferguson’s team this time. The Rangers striker Sandy Clark said in a match programme that Aberdeen still had ‘something to prove’, but this was wishful thinking. For the first time Aberdeen took on one of the Old Firm at Hampden as the bookmakers’ clear favourites. Close to 30,000 descended on Glasgow to roar them on. ‘The whole of the North-East is coming to support us,’ said Ferguson. The final was Rangers’ last chance to salvage something from a dreary season. They had finished eighteen points behind the champions, and been beaten by Celtic in the League Cup final. In the Uefa Cup they had lost 5–0 to Cologne. Manager John Greig was under growing pressure after five bleak seasons. ‘I have never wanted to win a match so much,’ he said ahead of the cup final. ‘Underdogs? That’s a laugh. Well, if people want to think that, let them.’

  Hampden was Aberdeen’s sixtieth fixture of the season. They had played thirty-six league matches, eight League Cup ties, eleven European games and four rounds of the Scottish Cup. Willie Miller, Gordon Strachan, Alex McLeish and Jim Leighton had barely had a break since the previous summer’s World Cup finals in Spain. Even during the domestic season they had continued to play for Scotland. Gothenburg had been the team’s physical and emotional peak, but Hampden demanded that they crank themselves up again. They were more vulnerable than they seemed.

  Rangers delivered a proud and eager display. Their midfielder, Jim Bett, was excellent and almost scored with a long-range shot which Leighton somehow pushed over the crossbar. Billy Davies had the ball in the net for Rangers but was ruled offside. The game stayed goalless deep into extra-time. Aberdeen had been flat and one-paced, but four minutes from the end, when the game seemed bound for a replay, they scored. Rangers gave the ball away in midfield and as Aberdeen flooded forward Mark McGhee’s cross spun up off a defender for Eric Black to leap and head into the corner. Aberdeen became the third team in the twentieth century, after Rangers and Celtic, to retain the Scottish Cup, and had won two trophies in a season for the first time in their history. What followed was all the more remarkable.

  Ferguson had torn into Leighton on the pitch between the end of the ninety minutes and the start of extra-time, telling him he was ‘Rangers’ best fucking player’. In fact the goalkeeper had made important saves from Bett and John MacDonald and he was not slow to put Ferguson straight. The exchange was merely the first spit of lava ahead of the volcanic eruption which came after the cup was won. On-the-pitch interviews with managers who have just won a trophy are tame affairs. The beaming boss is asked to describe how happy he is or to praise the wonderful fans. There has never been another interview like the one Ferguson delivered that day. And he did it all more than once, not only to STV and the BBC, but another version in the Hampden press room for the newspaper men. When it was STV’s turn the camera fixed on his face. He was visibly seething and bulldozed over the reporter’s questions. ‘We’re the luckiest team in the world,’ he said with a face like thunder. ‘It was a disgrace of a performance. Miller and McLeish won the cup for Aberdeen. Miller and McLeish played Rangers themselves. A disgrace of a performance. I’m no’ carin’–winning cups disnae matter–our standards have been set long ago and we’re no’ gonnae accept that from any Aberdeen team. No way can we take any glory from that.’ Archie Macpherson received a similar outburst for BBC viewers. ‘He went mental. His first answer was, “That was a disgrace.” I thought he was talking about Rangers. He fulminated. “How could they play like that?” Suddenly I realised he was talking about the team who had won the Cup Winners’ Cup and now beaten their bitter rivals. I didn’t get it. I still don’t get it.’

  The players returned to the dressing room with the cup, unaware of what was about to hit them. When Ferguson walked in they were told, ‘Sit on your arses’, and ordered to listen to what he had to say. Weir said: ‘He started shouted and bawling. We were looking at each other going, “Is this a wind-up?”’ In the past eight weeks they had overcome Bayern Munich, strolled through a European semi-final, beaten Real Madrid, taken the league title race to the final day of the season and beaten Celtic and Rangers at Hampden to win the cup. Neale Cooper kept looking at the trophy sitting in the middle of the room. ‘I turned to Johnny Hewitt and quietly said, “Did we just win that?” It was brutal. He hammered us.’ When Dick Donald walked in with bottles of Champagne Ferguson told him there was no need.

  Managers often give more measured interviews to the newspaper journalists than to the cameras. In those precious few minutes between the dug-out and the press room they cool off, step back, take control. That day Ferguson’s line barely wavered. He was asked why Aberdeen had been below par. ‘You’d need to open up their heads and look into their minds to find out. The team looked tired, dead. There was no spark or movement about them. It was all square passing stuff. Nothing football. The only excuse I can make is that they looked knackered, as if they need a holiday. But I’m still not prepared to accept it. If Aberdeen players think I will accept that standard of performance I will be looking for new players next season.’ When he left the press room the reporters looked at each other in disbelief. He had just filled their front pages, let alone the back. But he had also crossed a line. The Sunday Mail wrote: ‘Plain Lucky! Boss puts the boot in. Aberdeen manager Alex Ferguson launched an amazing verbal assault on his players yesterday.’ Under the headline WHAT’S THE POINT? chief sportswriter Allan Herron had quickly penned a critical comment piece. ‘I am astounded that Fergie should blast his players publicly after winning the Scottish Cup at Hampden. What does it achieve?’

  The evening after the final the team was driven to a celebration party and overnight stay in St Andrews, but the mood was sombre and strained. Ferguson had made the biggest misjudgment of his Aberdeen career. He had publicly criticised the players who had delivered so much, spoiling what should have been one of the happiest nights of their year. They could not understand his behaviour and for the first time since his early days at Pittodrie there was real tension between team and manager. Worse, it was shared by even his most loyal lieutenants. Gordon Strachan was so fed up that he and his wife walked out of the ‘party’ and drove off to visit his parents. Some players joked that if Miller and McLeish had won the final on their own the club could dispense with a bus for the next day’s victory tour through Aberdeen–a tandem would suffice. But such wisecracks were for their ears only; they were not for Ferguson’s.

  While the Aberdeen players were going through the charade of ‘celebrating’ their cup win, Alan ‘Fingers’ Ferguson was receiving calls from some of the newspaper men telling him what had happened after the match. ‘He’s done them in,’ they told him. The following morning he rose early to get the Sunday papers and saw the negative headlines, reading criticism where there should have been adulation. ‘I phoned him at St Andrews and said, “What have you done?” He goes, “What are they saying?” “They’re saying you’ve done your team in.” You know the boys left their legs in Gothenburg. I know you want to win in style but the records show they won two cups in ten days.’ By then Ferguson had already reached the same conclusion as the press. After breakfast he gathered the players together in the hotel. He stood in front of them and apologised. The Monday newspapers happily relayed his contrition. ‘I asked the players to understand that the comments were made at a vulnerable time. I’m tired and in need of a holiday and I haven’t slept properly since coming back from Gothenburg. I feel terrible about the criticism of the players. I am not very proud of myself when I look at the coverage we got on television and in the Sunday papers. It happened because managers–particularly me–are vulnerable immediately after a game. Sheer courage won us the trophy. On reflection, I could see that the team had hit its peak in Sweden. That should have been the finale to the season.’

  The apology was grudgingly accepted, but the damage was done. For many of the players, the episode continues to rankle. Even those whose allegiance to hi
m is beyond question, and whose respect borders on reverence, have struggled to disguise the hurt they felt. Peter Weir said: ‘That is one of the worst memories. As much as I loved Alex Ferguson and all the things he did for the club, he was totally wrong there. No one could believe the great man had done that. The next day he apologised before taking the cup around Aberdeen. But we couldn’t really forgive him. Even taking the cup around Aberdeen–which were always big days, the people turned up in their thousands–inside it hurt us guys, it really did.’ Others were more sanguine, though, seeing in his outburst a kernel of truth. The two men exempt from his criticism, Miller and McLeish, have always credited Ferguson for swiftly apologising to the team. Miller, in particular, remembered the episode with mild amusement: ‘I thought he was spot on, to be honest.’ McGhee was similarly unperturbed: ‘I don’t remember it really hurting me. Looking back on it, it was another great Aberdeen moment. Hilarious. Wee Gordy stomped off out of the party! Big Alex and Willie were perfectly fine! I wasn’t offended at all. We were shit in that final.’