Except the score, that is; there are times when only the quality of the football matters and this was transcendental. The purity of United’s passing style made it so.
The match was against Morecambe’s reserves at The Cliff, on a dank Saturday morning. United had Kevin Pilkington in goal; a back four of John O’Kane, Gary Neville, Chris Casper and Steven Riley; a midfield of Keith Gillespie, David Beckham, Nicky Butt and Ben Thornley; then Paul Scholes lurking behind a centre-forward called Richard Irving, who, though he was one of the few not destined for the Premier League, did pretty well for himself in other areas, becoming an airline pilot – inspired by a visit to the flight deck on the way home from honeymoon in Mauritius – and setting up a property renovation company. Robbie Savage, whom Ferguson was always telling to get his hair cut, was among the substitutes.
Gillespie darted down one wing while Thornley plied the other with an elegant subtlety that reminded me of John Robertson, the Scot who had so wonderfully complemented the verve of Martin O’Neill in Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest teams (and who was to assist O’Neill in his managerial career). Scholes was a little magician. But the one who enthralled me was Beckham. He epitomised the style. Lean and upright, with floppy hair, he exuded the calm you seldom found in English footballers of even the highest class (the death of Bobby Moore in 1993 had been a reminder of that) and I had to tell someone about it, to share the excitement of the discovery.
There was only one other person. The car park at The Cliff, the only vantage point for those not allowed access to the pitch side where Harrison and the other coaches gathered (if Ferguson was watching, he would have been peering through the window of his office), offered a good elevated view and the fellow a few yards away was clearly accustomed to it. He had parked his big old-fashioned Rover and leant against the spare wheel strapped to the boot. I shuffled across, started a conversation and soon offered an opinion of the right-central midfield player who had my eye. ‘That number eight – he’ll get fifty caps for England,’ I said. ‘I hope so,’ said Ted Beckham. ‘He’s my son.’
Three years later, David Beckham made his fifth League appearance for the United in that opening match at Villa Park. It was his tenth League appearance in all – Ferguson had sent him to Preston North End for a couple of toughening-up lower-division months – and he came on as a substitute for Phil Neville, scoring United’s goal. Both Nevilles started, as had Butt and Scholes. O’Kane was the other substitute, replacing Pallister. With these kids United lost 3-1. With these kids they won the next five matches in a row. Then Cantona returned from exile after the kung-fu incident and, with these kids, took up where he had left off.
He was happily resettled in Manchester, with his wife in a little house that was startlingly unpretentious for a footballer. He felt loved again and Ferguson deserved a lot of credit for that, having flown to Paris to lift Cantona from the depths of his gloom at being cast out of the game in which he had finally felt at home. Cantona’s lawyer arrived at Ferguson’s hotel on a Harley-Davidson, handed him a helmet and drove him through backstreets to a restaurant where Ferguson and Cantona talked football like fans, delightedly raiding the fridges of their memories; the feast lasted beyond midnight and a unique manager/player relationship was strengthened.
Ferguson always made allowances for Cantona, wisely exempting him from the hairdryer treatment. He was the only exception. Once, the squad were invited to a reception at Manchester Town Hall and in advance Ferguson issued strict instructions about dress. Every player duly turned up immaculate in club blazer, trousers, collar and tie. Except Cantona. He wore a tracksuit and trainers. Any other player would have been sent home. Because it was Cantona, Ferguson pretended not to notice.
His sensitivity in handling Cantona had been noticed by Gérard Houllier. ‘Not once during Eric’s long suspension,’ he said, ‘did Alex criticise him. Never. Not a word. He showed loyalty. And every day, or two days at the most, he would call on him and have a coffee and a chat about what was going on at the club, while never mentioning the Selhurst Park incident. That was top-class management. You show care. You show interest despite the fact that the boy cannot play for your team. In the art of management, it was a lesson from the master. And, when the boy came back, all that faith and support was repaid.’
As was to prove the case with David Beckham after the 1998 World Cup, when he was sent off against Argentina, and Cristiano Ronaldo, in 2006, when his sly wink after the dismissal of Wayne Rooney enraged the English media. Both were liberally to repay Ferguson for standing by them.
The impact of Cantona’s return was not dramatic. Not at first, understandably. Indeed, there was a tricky spell leading to Christmas, when only three points were taken from five matches. But January and February found United recovering their momentum, closing on the leaders from the start, a Newcastle United invigorated by Kevin Keegan with Keith Gillespie, the makeweight in the deal that had taken Andy Cole to Old Trafford, looking much the better part of the bargain, and the glamorous David Ginola on the other wing; with Peter Beardsley and Les Ferdinand up front; and then, in the last third of the season, Faustino Asprilla, a Colombian of dazzling skills and infuriating individualism who, in the eyes of many observers, was to prove one egg too many for the good of the pudding.
Certainly Asprilla’s arrival coincided with a dip in Newcastle’s form, of which United took advantage by winning through a Cantona goal at St James Park in early March. That was in the midst of a six-match run in which Newcastle dropped fourteen points and United, dropping only two in eleven matches, overtook them. The stage was set for a remarkable piece of television on the night of 29 April.
I Will Love It . . . Love It
The star wore headphones. Kevin Keegan stood in an interview area at Elland Road, Leeds, after his team had defiantly won their third match in succession and told Andy Gray in the Sky studios: ‘You’ve gotta send Alex Ferguson a tape of this game, haven’t you? Isn’t that what he asked for?’ Ferguson had, of course, being playing mind games before Newcastle went to Leeds, goading Howard Wilkinson’s home players, who were in mid-table, still nursing the wound of a League Cup final defeat by Aston Villa and drifting to the extent that they were to take only one point from their final seven League matches.
‘Well,’ said Gray, ‘I’m sure if he [Ferguson] was watching it tonight there would have been no arguments about the way Leeds went about their job and really troubled your team.’
Keegan, emotion rising as he recalled Ferguson’s complaints to the League fixture arrangers, went on: ‘And we’re playing Notts Forest on Thursday [three days later] and he objected to that! That was fixed up four months ago. I mean – that sort of stuff. We’re bigger than that.’
Richard Keys, co-presenting alongside Gray, played devil’s advocate: ‘But that’s part of the psychology of battle, Kevin, isn’t it?’
Gray: ‘No, no . . .’
Keegan: ‘No.’
By now he was emphasising his points with a stabbing finger. ‘When you do that about footballers, like he said about Leeds, and when you do things like that about a man like Stuart Pearce [the England left-back and a member of the Nottingham Forest team who, having lost 5–0 to United at Old Trafford the previous day, were to hold Newcastle to a 1–1 draw at the City Ground later in the week] . . . I’ve kept really quiet, but I’ll tell you something – he [Ferguson] went down in my estimation when he said that. We have not resorted to that. But I’ll tell him now if he’s watching it. We’re still fighting for this title. And he’s got to go to Middlesbrough and get something. And I’ll tell you something – I will love it if we beat them, love it.’
This entered football’s mythology as the rant that cost Newcastle the title. In fact, the title was all but United’s as Keegan spoke. They had only that single match at Middlesbrough to play. It was their second in eight days and even a narrow victory would require Newcastle to win their concluding two by a combined margin of eight goals (in the event that would
have been ten goals because United won 3–0 at Middlesbrough). The visit of Tottenham to St James Park would be Newcastle’s third match in seven days; it was a minor reversal of the situation United had faced at the end of the season when Leeds beat them to the title. Now Newcastle ran out of steam, drawing with both Forest and Tottenham. But Andy Gray’s little interjection on the side of Keegan as he had delivered his outburst stuck in the mind. Sometimes Ferguson’s mind games were at the expense of the game’s dignity. Yet he was to cross that line so often in the years to come that, in retrospect, Gray might seem almost puritan, a killjoy. Not that Ferguson was the only culprit. But it is fair to say that the standard of sportsmanship Gray was defending became a casualty of war in the Ferguson years.
As more than worthy champions nonetheless, United proceeded to Wembley, where Cantona, already Footballer of the Year, used immaculate technique in driving the only goal. The ball flew past a Liverpool goalkeeper, David James, who had been among the most fetching models of the off-white suits in which, to their eternal shame – and even now it is cited as evidence of the club’s decline – a team now managed by Roy Evans had taken their pre-match stroll on the pitch.
Ferguson’s side, by contrast, was built to last. The kids were barely out of their teens (or, in Phil Neville’s case, still in them), Keane and Giggs were in their early twenties. There appeared plenty of mileage in Cantona and Irwin. Only the thirty-five-year-old Bruce, whose place went to David May in the Cup final, was deemed past his best and allowed to move to Birmingham City, dropping a division.
As the Double was celebrated, there were few toasts to absent friends – football is not like that – but it does seem extraordinary to reflect, at a distance, on the widespread belief that United had been reckless in jettisoning Hughes, Ince and Kanchelskis.
Ferguson had known that, with the kids, United would be all right. But he had thought some more ready for the fray than others. Beckham he had put in the latter category. He was not alone among the United staff, some of whom cited Beckham’s apparent diffidence as evidence of a lack of fire inside. Ferguson even thought about buying another right-winger – and considered Darren Anderton and Marc Overmars – before replacing Kanchelskis’s pace with youthful craft. Butt was to shoulder the central-midfield burden with the discipline Ince had lacked, forming a solid central axis with Keane. And this, with Beckham and Giggs on the outside and Cole ahead of Cantona, was to be the shape of things to come, a formation that, with the odd coming and going here and there, would win two more Doubles and the first Champions League of the Ferguson era.
That it was still not quite ready for Europe had, however, been emphasised by a first-round Uefa Cup knockout on away goals at the hands of the Russian club Rotor Volgograd. Even Raith Rovers did better than that, reaching the third round before succumbing to Bayern Munich.
Gordon Brown would have been proud of Raith. Born, like Ferguson, in Govan but brought up a son of the manse (child of a Church of Scotland minister) in Kirkcaldy, he had been a Stark’s Park regular from boyhood to his election as MP for Dunfermline East in 1983, while Tony Blair was winning Sedgefield, and was never to waver in his affection for the little Fife club.
Blair would have been pleased to see his favourite club, Newcastle, challenging the best. Yet he was to go one better than Keegan and lift a most coveted trophy: the keys to 10 Downing Street.
He had been elected Labour leader in 1994, after the sudden death of John Smith, and was soon being praised by Lady Thatcher as probably the most formidable since Hugh Gaitskell. ‘I see a lot of socialism behind their front bench,’ she said, ‘but not in Mr Blair. I think he genuinely has moved.’
Ferguson, for all his continuing protestations of allegiance to the traditional Labour cause, would have perfectly understood that. He had been introduced to Alastair Campbell by the ubiquitous Jim Rodger – both had worked on the Daily Mirror, Campbell as a political correspondent and Rodger as a chronicler of football’s comings and goings – and formed a friendship with not only the power-in-waiting behind New Labour’s throne but, in the run-up to the general election that was finally to oust the Conservatives, Blair himself.
In the summer of 1996, less than a year before the election, Ferguson sent a Cantona shirt to Campbell to auction at a dinner and, as Campbell recorded in his published diaries, it fetched £17,500.
That was the summer of Euro 96. The European Championship was held in England and ‘Football’s Coming Home’ grated on the ears of those, like Ferguson, whose hearts favoured visiting teams. Ferguson did, however, dutifully approve Terry Venables’s selection of Phil Neville, aged only nineteen, and his brother Gary for the England squad.
Scotland, under the management of Craig Brown, had qualified and been drawn in England’s group. A memorable goal from Gascoigne, volleyed after a flick over Colin Henry, sealed their fate. Nor did the reigning champions from Denmark, with Schmeichel in goal, last long. Gary Neville was an ever-present for England until the semi-finals, in which they lost to Germany on penalties. The Germans beat the Czech Republic in the final and Ferguson, for whom I was ghosting a column in the Sunday Telegraph, identified the unsung hero as the midfield workhorse, the thirty-one-year-old and hitherto barely known Dieter Eilts, of Werder Bremen. But he had been quietly sizing up a couple of others for Manchester United.
The first indicated Ferguson’s uncertainty about whether Beckham would settle on the right or in a central role. This was Karel Poborsky, a star of Euro 96, the scorer of a delicious goal for the Czechs against Portugal – having chipped the goalkeeper without breaking stride, he described his virtuosity afterwards as ‘the easiest thing to do in the circumstances’ – but destined to leave little impression on Old Trafford. The other was Jordi Cruyff, son of Johan, the Barcelona equivalent of Darren Ferguson and, likewise, to prove not good enough for United.
To think that Alex Ferguson could have had Zinedine Zidane – or at least made a more determined bid for him. Zidane, suffering the after-effects of a car crash in his final season with Bordeaux, was a pale shadow of himself at Euro 96. Juventus still had faith in him and, although Ferguson was to try to buy him from the Turin club for £10 million a year later, the boat had been spectacularly missed
Relatively inexpensive though they might have been, Poborsky and Cruyff were poor buys, lucky to end the season with League championship medals after making only twenty-six starts between them.
Ferguson obtained infinitely better value on the Norwegian market cornered by Rune Hauge. He got Ole Gunnar Solskjær, who immediately took over from Cantona as Ferguson’s leading goalscorer. Not that Cantona minded: as a partner, he clearly preferred the intelligent Solksjær to Cole. At the back, Ferguson tried to replace Bruce with another Norwegian, Ronny Johnsen, a fine player who never seemed far from his next injury; though the same was true of Solskjær, both were to earn Champions League medals, in Solskjær’s case unforgettably.
Putting on Spectacles
Perhaps the most significant development of 1996/7 was the emergence of Beckham as a major influence. He was given an England debut early in the season, being instantly called up by Venables’s successor, Glenn Hoddle, to start the World Cup qualifying process in Moldova and, for his club, saw off the flimsy challenge of Poborsky and Cruyff for a place on the right, where Ferguson soon became convinced he was best suited with his wonderful gift for crossing.
Early exits from the domestic Cups focused midweek attention on Europe. This was a slightly better Champions League campaign, even though Ferguson, only too aware that United had never lost at home in Europe, was obliged to suffer the personal indignity of being the man in charge when they finally went down, 1–0, to Fenerbahçe of Istanbul. They were to lose by the same margin at home to Juventus and, in the semi-finals, Borussia Dortmund.
The home match against Borussia had brought about a change in Ferguson’s appearance. ‘It was after it that I started to wear glasses,’ he was to recall. The subject of his memory had co
me up when I observed that, unlike many managers of the early twenty-first century, notably José Mourinho, he never took notes. ‘I’ve a great memory,’ he modestly explained. ‘I rely on it. What I say at half-time is important and it has to be accurate. That’s why I started wearing glasses after the Borussia game.’ Lars Ricken scored for the Germans after seven minutes and, at half-time, Ferguson blamed Schmeichel for letting the shot in. Schmeichel defended himself on the grounds that it had taken a deflection. ‘There was no fucking deflection,’ said Ferguson. ‘There was,’ interjected Gary Pallister. ‘It came off my leg.’
The spectacles Ferguson, then nearly fifty-five, had been given years before but never worn were brought out. ‘You can’t be wrong at half-time,’ he said. Later he thought about having a screen in the dressing room on which incidents could be replayed. He discussed it with Carlos Queiroz, his assistant at the time, but decided against. ‘You only have fifteen minutes at half-time and while you were showing something somebody had done wrong you’d be ignoring everybody else. A team talk is about everyone. Say Gary Neville’s made a mistake – you don’t want all the others sitting around watching it.’
So everything was logged mentally; there were no bullet points to consult. ‘When I’m walking along the touchline, when I’m walking towards the dressing room, I’m thinking about the first thing I should say. Then, after seven or eight minutes, I take a break and my assistant comes in. And then I start working on the last thing to say before they go out for the second half. It’s usually a summary of where they are and where they are going. Because there’s always a road. And these next forty-five minutes are your last chance of reaching the destination. This is the time on which you’re going to be judged.’
Football – Bloody Hell! Page 23