Leading

by Alex Ferguson

  St Mirren’s crowds were barely larger than a church choir, so one weekend I resorted to communicating with brute force. The club electrician taped a loudspeaker to the roof of a van and, like a politician casting about for votes, I toured Paisley, microphone in hand, imploring people to turn out to support their team. We stopped in the city centre, where I extolled the virtues of the team. It worked, and the crowds began to increase.

  I had to do some public speaking when I was managing in Scotland, but the level of activity–and scrutiny–increased when I moved south. Manchester United had charity dinners on the first Monday of every month and I sometimes used to speak at these events. The first one was a fiasco. I tried to make a joke about England and Scotland but it just sailed over the heads of the audience. I had expected a few laughs but all I got was silence. Jokes are tricky things to deliver with any degree of assurance, and I understand why comedians go to small clubs to test out their routines before appearing in big venues or going on television.

  As much as it’s essential to maintain eye contact when talking to a small group of people, I always found it disconcerting to catch someone’s eye when speaking in front of a big room. I tended to look towards the audience because I knew that staring at notes on a lectern is one sure way to lose a crowd’s attention. However, I never looked at any particular individual. Instead, I’d pick a spot at the back of the room slightly above the heads of the audience.

  It’s easy to get thrown off your horse if you look directly at someone in a crowd of people. Eric Harrison, United’s youth coach between 1981 and 1998, discovered the perils of this in 1992. He had asked my advice about public speaking and I’d told him to look at the wall at the back of the room and also to move his head as he spoke so that the entire audience felt included. Instead, he made the fatal mistake of locking eyes with one member of the audience, which was not a smart move, particularly as Eric was speaking in Liverpool, and the crowd consisted of Liverpool and Everton fans. He came scuttling back to Manchester with his tail between his legs because the person he had picked out of the crowd did two things. First, he had slowly crossed his throat with his index finger, and then, when that didn’t throw Eric off his stride, he started to wave a white handkerchief. That did the trick and Eric, thoroughly rattled, had to sit down.

  When Sir Matt Busby died in 1994, I was asked to speak at his funeral mass at the church of Our Lady and St John in Charlton-cum-Hardy near Manchester. It was a big event, and thousands of United fans had lined the route of the cortege. The church was packed to the rafters. I was speaking from notes, which I don’t usually do, and I got a roasting from my harshest critic, Cathy, my wife. She said, ‘You were hopeless. I told you not to use notes. You’re useless when you try to speak from notes.’

  Speaking without notes is not for the faint of heart, and sometimes it’s been my comeuppance. I gave a talk at Goldman Sachs in London some years ago, and I thought it went well enough, but Mark, my son, lambasted me for hopping from point to point and for an overall lack of structure. I discovered that, with or without notes, there’s always someone ready to skewer you–one of the perils, I suppose, of opening your mouth in public.

  Writing

  There were only two ways for me to communicate with the broad base of fans–either via the press or through the notes in the match-day programmes. Every now and again there would be an opportunity at a dinner, or special event, to transmit a message to season-ticket holders or supporters’ clubs, but those formats don’t offer a way to communicate with 75,000 people, let alone millions of fans scattered all over the world. Communicating through newspapers or on television programmes is fraught with peril. Publishers and broadcasters have their own agendas, so it is very easy for a message to get garbled or taken out of context. However, I knew that I could count on the match-day programme as a vehicle with which to convey messages to the people who came to watch us at Old Trafford.

  At St Mirren, Stan Park, a local journalist for the Paisley Daily Express, would come in once a week, and I would tell him what I wanted to convey. He ghost-wrote my programme notes, but I would always proof-read them before they went to press to make sure Stan had captured the nuances. That routine seemed to work, so I followed this format at Aberdeen, where I sometimes used the programme notes to exhort the supporters to be more vocal. The running joke, which was a bit harsh, was that the crowd at Pittodrie sometimes made more noise unwrapping their sweetie papers than they did supporting the team.

  At United I worked with David Meek, a reporter for the Manchester Evening News. Early in my tenure I tried to convey a sense of the possible at United, because when I arrived there was tremendous disaffection, not just with the performance that had the club second from bottom of the old Division One, but also at its ownership.

  I used the programme notes to show that, at least on some issues, I sympathised with the supporters. For example, I felt that the ticket prices were too high and had conveyed precisely the same sentiment to Martin Edwards and the rest of the board. I also tried to inject a sense of intimacy, so that the notes weren’t just about a recent performance or a new signing, but about the softer side of our club. Every now and again I’d pay tribute to a former player who had died, or to friends, like Douglas Smith, who founded and ran one of my first clubs, Drumchapel Amateurs, or Sean Fallon, Celtic’s assistant manager. People don’t want mundane recitals of the obvious. They want to read something different and learn about the unexpected.

  While I was at Aberdeen I published my first book, A Light in the North. I wrote it as a way to supplement my income, but it was more a blow-by-blow description of my time at the club and was written in the wake of our 1985 League victory. The first book I paid real attention to was Managing My Life, which came out in 1999 after United won the Treble. I collaborated with Hugh McIlvanney on this work and I found it a cathartic experience. It was a busy period in my life and I found myself scribbling down thoughts and memories during spare moments. Eventually I handed Hugh over 200,000 words of notes, assembled on all sorts of different sheets of paper. He sorted them all out and wove them into prose, but I took great relish in–and derived a lot of consolation from–recounting my childhood years and relaying the tone of the setting and the era in which I was raised.

  My most meaningful pieces of writing were probably the shortest–notes or letters written in reply to the correspondence that used to come pouring into the office. Remember, the majority of my managerial time was spent before the era of e-mail and texting, so a personal response came in the form of cards or letters. As the leader of United I felt that it was expected of me, depending on the occasion, to send condolence or congratulatory messages or just to thank people for suggestions they had sent to the office. And every year I send out about 2,000 Christmas cards. Some people might say: why not send that money to charity instead? It’s a fair point, but my reason for sending these cards is to let people know that I am thinking of them. I like receiving Christmas cards for precisely the same reason.

  Answering

  There aren’t many areas where I would claim that I’ve been under more pressure than other leaders, but dealing with the press might be the one. These days it is probably only the leaders of the world’s biggest countries who find themselves in front of more microphones and cameras than the football manager of one of Europe’s best football teams. It’s funny how politicians, particularly when they are campaigning for office, are desperate for press coverage. There were many times when I pined for the opposite and wished that reporters would just leave me alone to concentrate on my job. If United won, we were on the back page of the newspapers. If we lost we wound up on the front pages.

  It was one thing to deal with the press in Scotland. At East Stirlingshire in 1974, all I had to do was talk to a young reporter from the Falkirk Herald, whose circulation was only about 40,000. The stadium at Aberdeen didn’t even have a dedicated press room. I used to have to give my post-game interviews in the foyer of the Pittodrie sta
dium.

  Manchester United was another matter, because it attracted the local and national newspaper, television and radio reporters, and–in the past decade–the growing crowd of internet bloggers who would appear for the regular briefings at United, or the hundreds of international journalists who would come out of the woodwork before major games, and whose reports would almost instantly be transmitted to tens of millions of people all around the world. At Old Trafford they even have cameras, microphones and tape recorders in the players’ tunnel, some of which feed the club’s own demand for content for its website, TV channel, radio station, magazine and match-day programmes. After a regular game, I’d give three or four television interviews.

  During my last few years at United, a comment at a press conference–or even a video taken surreptitiously on a mobile-phone camera at a private function–would quickly be relayed in newspapers and magazines, on Sky Sports News, in innumerable blogs and via an ever increasing number of apps. Here’s just one example of how the world cannot get enough of football. Eric Cantona’s infamous ‘kung-fu’ kick at Crystal Palace in 1995 has now garnered over two million views on YouTube. All this for an event that took place 20 years ago–before many of today’s football fans were even born!–and ten years before YouTube was even founded.

  I’ve long understood that the press gravitates to what’s popular and what will sell newspapers or boost television ratings, even if what is published sometimes isn’t closely related to reality. It’s easier to get more readers and viewers when writing or talking about popular topics. The press isn’t going to spend much time writing about a steelworker who lost his job or a wee guy in a call centre who was fired because of a recession. Those things don’t mean a thing to the general public. Football does.

  When I joined Rangers, the manager, Scot Symon, had no time for the press. He would not give them the time of day. On one occasion Rangers were playing Sparta Rotterdam in a European Cup tie, when thick fog obscured visibility. A journalist phoned to ask Scot whether the game would be played and he answered, ‘No comment’. Imagine if you gave that answer today.

  Ron Atkinson, my immediate predecessor at United, had a different approach. I think he spoke to the press every single day of the week, and probably on every single day of the year, because I bet he took telephone calls on Sundays. Ron also allowed the press near the players at the training ground. Ron is a big, outgoing character and he enjoyed the interaction with the press, but his approach was not my cup of tea. First, I would not have known what to talk about if I had met the press every day. I might have been able to say something about the weather or the wine that I had drunk the previous evening, but I would quickly have exhausted my supply of fresh material–at least as it related to United. There was also the bigger issue, which was that I didn’t want to have the press in my hair every day, asking me to respond to all sorts of inane questions so that I would blurt out something colourful that they could use to create a story where none existed. I immediately eliminated all the daily briefings and, instead, limited my meetings with the press to the day before a game and immediately after the match. Eventually these sessions just became a waste of time after the more prominent journalists began to skip them as they went in search of the players instead. After a game at Tottenham in the early 2000s, I walked into the press conference and all the main journalists were in the tunnel trying to get hold of the players. There was a smattering of young wire reporters. It was a waste of time.

  Encounters with the press, which come in many guises, are all about control. Complete control is easy when you’re issuing a press release or a pre-recorded video, when you can edit every word and clip. It’s more difficult to retain control during a press conference, or if you get ambushed at an airport when everyone is looking for a chink in your armour. The press are looking for the slightest of slips. The journalists are waiting for a verbal slip while the cameramen are like hunters, ready to snap the shutter as soon as you purse your lips or grimace.

  The rulers of North Korea or Cuba may be able to control their press, but it is sheer fantasy to think that anyone in England is going to be able to do the same.

  Jock Stein, the manager of Celtic and Scotland, had his own technique. He seemed to know everything about the journalists covering Celtic. He used to know the ones who had drink problems or were gambling too much. He knew all their failings and all their weaknesses. He understood who they were and they knew it. I’m sure that many of them thought twice before writing anything that might embarrass Jock.

  While I developed friendships with some of the reporters who covered United–Glenn Gibbons, Bob Cass and Hugh McIlvanney–and came to trust a handful, I never had the easy rapport with the press that Jock developed. They frequently got under my skin, and every now and again I would lash out at one of them in response to something they had written. The reporters would usually blame it on their editors but, if you are the victim of a distorted account, that doesn’t matter. I was always determined to communicate with the press on my own terms and, to the best of my ability, control the messages we wanted to disseminate. This revolved around answering questions or, more precisely, not answering questions. If reporters peppered me with questions about injuries or my Saturday line-up, I’d either change the subject or, depending on my mood, tell them it was none of their business. The journalists didn’t own the press conferences. I did.

  It is important to remember that the reporters are not always asking questions of their own. Frequently, they are planting topics suggested by others. Football reporters have close ties with many of the more important agents. They rely on them for morsels of information that the agents themselves have heard from the players they represent. So when an agent is eager to provoke a bidding war for one of his clients, it’s easy for him to plant a question at a press conference by getting a friendly reporter to ask whether we were interested in a particular player.

  When journalists or news organisations abused their power, I cut them off. There were always plenty of others eager to take their place. After a series of run-ins with the BBC, I refused to talk to any of their journalists or appear on any of their radio or television programmes for seven years. There were a few reporters who got my goat. Over the years I must have banned over 20 journalists who manufactured stories. I wasn’t going to accept it–I would give them the chance to correct it; if they refused to do that, I refused them access. Even though he became a friend and I eventually trusted him, I banned Glenn Gibbons, a Scottish journalist who had grown up in the same area of Glasgow as my father, multiple times. Glenn would always try to appeal to my better instincts by saying, ‘What would your dad think of you–banning a boy from the Cowcaddens?’ Sometimes I found MUTV, United’s own football channel, irritating, and there were some occasions when I just needed a breather and stopped giving interviews to MUTV for a week or two.

  It’s hard to control your emotions, especially if you’ve been going through a tough spell, or a player has done something daft that’s embarrassed the team. I always tried to be aware of the fact that journalists and photographers would be paying as much attention to my body language as to my words. Paul Doherty, head of sports for Granada Television, told me to always rub my face before I gave a press conference so that I appeared bright and cheery and did not display a hint of tension. He had told me that I was showing too much concern at press conferences and instructed me to, ‘Go in there emotionless, with no expression on your face. If you are straight as a die, it will kill them. They are all looking for a weakness.’ I took that to heart and, before walking into a press conference, I always used to rub my face. However, to remain emotionless is a lot easier to say than to do, and I remember marvelling at the way President George W. Bush was able to maintain a completely impassive face after he was informed of the 9/11 attacks while sitting in front of a classroom of children and the Washington press corps. I don’t think I could have pulled that off. No matter how hard I tried, my emotions and body language
changed depending on the circumstances. If things had gone poorly, it was hard not to grimace or have pursed lips and, by contrast, when we had just thumped an opponent it was important not to appear too confident or smug. Either way, I was always aware that a confident air went a long way with the constituency that mattered the most–the players. I also always remembered another piece of advice that Paul Doherty gave me. He said, ‘You have to walk out of every press conference unhurt.’

  Once in a while I was so upset that I chose not to face the press for fear that I would say something about the referee or assistant referees that would get me into hot water with the authorities. When United lost the second leg of the Round of 16 Champions League tie against Real Madrid in March 2013 because of the bizarre decision of the referee, Cüneyt Çakir, to give Nani a red card for committing a foul on a player he didn’t even see, I was beside myself. I knew that the journalists waiting for me in our press room would be like a hundred matadors waving red capes, and I was not about to risk charging at every single one of them. Instead, I sent Mick Phelan to deal with the ridiculous judgement of the referee. I knew on that particular night I would break my own rule and commit the cardinal mistake of actually answering the questions.

  It is probably fortunate for me that I did not have to contend with social media for most of my career. The legions of fans following United on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram massively outnumber the fans tracking the club through the Sun or Daily Mirror. I would wager that younger managers might even start gradually bypassing the major newspapers, skipping the big, formal press conferences and just communicate directly with fans. They say you need a thick skin to deal with some of the abuse on Twitter, but–though it may come from many more quarters–beyond the foul language it isn’t any worse than what a manager experiences from newspapers and the television pundits. At least the social networks provide a platform for precise control of the message that you want to communicate, and a way to answer questions, even if they sometimes provoke an unexpected backlash. No matter how savage the treatment in the press, no matter how many questions I didn’t answer, I probably was harder on myself after we lost a game than any journalist. If I lost a game it affected me more than anyone else. The journalists could file their column and go to the pub. I had to figure out why we lost and set about fixing the problem.