When he talks of making ‘decisions’ it is a rare reference to the break with Keane and Van Nistelrooy and we ask him whether they were the most difficult choices he has had to make. ‘Well, Roy was, certainly, because he was such an influence at the club … (he pauses) but I’m not sure about Van Nistelrooy being a big decision at all.’ Interesting.
The follow-up question is whether the squad is more harmonious a year on, and he nods in agreement. ‘You need a good team spirit and this season, from day one, we have just gelled. I’ve kept referring to that all season. The spirit has been brilliant in the dressing room.’
‘So was Van Nistelrooy’s departure important to the spirit?’
Another pause. ‘I’m not getting into that.’
It is the only time in an hour of his company that he clams up and, even then, it is accompanied with a knowing smile rather than the conquering stare. He ranks his ninth Premiership title as his ‘greatest achievement’ and when you consider where it has come from, and the depths to which United plumbed last season, none of us thinks of this as a knee-jerk reaction.
Typically, he is already thinking to the next title and another go at the European Cup. ‘Why should I give up?’ he says. ‘It’s easy to retire. I decided to retire a few years ago and I regretted it within days. I feel invigorated by our young players. Last season I was tired. I wanted to get on my holiday, get started for the new season. But this season I just feel invigorated.’
He still feels young and energetic, he says, and he still has his health. ‘Age creeps up on you very quickly. I still think I am fifty-eight, you know. Then I see in the papers I am actually sixty-five and I think: “I can’t be sixty-five, can I?” I do wonder sometimes where the years have gone. Then I wonder how I compare with five or six years ago. I don’t notice any dramatic changes in myself. But there must be some because age does that to you.’
One reporter asks if he will emulate Sir Bobby Robson by managing at the age of seventy. But he draws a firm line.
‘No, no.’
‘Sixty-nine then,’ someone quips, and he smiles appreciatively.
Deep down, he would rather have won the league at Old Trafford and it is a mild disappointment that only one of his nine titles has been confirmed on United’s own ground. But winning it at City is not a bad alternative. To put it into context, the souvenir stalls outside the City of Manchester stadium were selling Milan scarves and flags. City’s dislike of United borders on obsessive. The enmity is so extreme that City’s employees are forbidden from having red company cars and – seriously – diners in the executive lounges get blue ketchup to splash over their chips.
Ronaldo scored the winner from the penalty spot, his twenty-third goal of a season that has seen him win the Professional Footballers’ Association’s Player of the Year and Young Player of the Year awards, as well as a landslide victory in the Football Writers’ Association’s vote. Van der Sar kept out a late penalty and, after that, Chelsea had to win at Arsenal. Ferguson turned off his mobile and defiantly didn’t switch on his television until the game was seventyfive minutes old. ‘I went to see my grandson play in the morning because he had a cup final of his own. Then I went home and watched the racing on telly and when that was finished I had nothing to do but twiddle my thumbs. So I watched the last fifteen minutes.’ Chelsea had a goal disallowed and spent the final moments camped in Arsenal territory. ‘I was in agony,’ says Ferguson. ‘I was sure Arsenal were trying to throw it away.’
United have won twenty-eight of their thirty-six Premiership games, compared to Chelsea’s twenty-four. They have scored eighty-three goals to Chelsea’s sixty-three. They are seven points better off, with two games to go. Their goal difference is a Premiershiprecord – plus-fifty-seven, seventeen better than Chelsea – and they have eight players (Van der Sar, Neville, Ferdinand, Vidic, Evra, Scholes, Giggs and Ronaldo) in the PFA’s Team of the Year. Ronaldo is the first player in history to win all three Player of the Year awards, and a Portuguese reporter has travelled to Carrington to ask Ferguson to assess the winger’s contribution.
‘He has won all the awards and it just shows you that even the journalists in England can get it right every now and then,’ Ferguson tells him. ‘Did you know that in 1999 they picked David Ginola for the football writers’ award? We won the Treble that year. In fact, the only thing we didn’t win was the Boat Race – and they still gave it to Ginola! Can you believe that?’
As for Premiership Manager of the Year, who else but Ferguson? He will be presented with the award before the final game of the season and it is telling that even Arsène Wenger has already stated that nobody deserves it more than his old bête noire.
‘You might have lost one friend and made another,’ Ian Ladyman, the Daily Mail’s Manchester man, says to Ferguson.
Ferguson grins back. ‘I might even buy him a drink,’ he says.
Not that Ferguson seems willing to prolong the argument with Mourinho. He will be taking a ‘nice bottle’ to Stamford Bridge for United’s next game and, suddenly, he has nothing but good things to say about Mourinho again. Mourinho has been on television to congratulate United as ‘deserved champions’. He has also rung Ronaldo to apologise and Ferguson is happy to declare a ceasefire – at least until the FA Cup final.
‘Jose has been very complimentary and I expected that,’ he says. ‘I’m sure he understands that, winning and losing, you have to deal with it in the right way. If you win you don’t need to gloat and if you lose you don’t need to go bananas about it. You have to accept defeat and he has done that.’
The champagne runs out soon afterwards and Ferguson has to go through the seventy-five text messages on his mobile. ‘Okay, boys?’ he asks, and then he is heading to his car and the 100-yard journey back to his office. ‘Astalavista!’ he calls over his shoulder.
SCHADENFREUDE
9.5.07
Chelsea 0
Manchester United 0
There cannot be many better sights for a Manchester United fan than watching Chelsea’s players standing in line to applaud the newly crowned champions out of the Stamford Bridge tunnel. Two years ago, when Mourinho won his first Premiership title and Chelsea came to Old Trafford in their final away game, the guard of honour was United’s responsibility and Gary Neville could barely make eye contact with the victorious players. Now it is Chelsea’s turn to suffer. John Terry, for one, looks like he is clapping burglars into his house.
The guard of honour is a relatively new tradition in football. For the winners, it is the point of maximum smugness. For the losers, it is the equivalent of being placed in stocks and pelted with rotten tomatoes. There is something noble, almost Corinthian, about the way a team as supremely competitive as Chelsea will grit their teeth and put on a respectful front for the side that has toppled them as champions. But it is an exercise in forced humiliation. The television cameras tend to focus on the losers rather than the winners. Everyone puts on a brave face, straight-backed and dignified, and tries to hide what they are really feeling. But it is impossible.
The rumour beforehand is that Chelsea’s supporters plan to turn their backs to the pitch in a synchronised snub. Instead, they mostly stand, arms folded, watching in silent indignation. Some applaud. Others whistle and respond with a defiant chant of ‘Chelsea’. But this isn’t an easy night for anyone connected with Chelsea – the supporters, the players, the accountants, the Russians and, most of all, Mourinho – and Ferguson has chosen a team that seems strategically designed to exacerbate their torment.
This is Manchester United-Lite: a team of reserves and maybes with only eighty-one Premiership appearances between them all season.
Kuszczak. Lee. Brown. O’Shea. Heinze (capt). Eagles. Fletcher. Smith. Richardson. Solskjaer. Dong.
The look on Terry’s face is a picture. Here is the England captain, as proud and competitive as anyone in professional football, corralling his team-mates into two neat lines and making sure they are all respectfully in posit
ion, and then out comes Ferguson’s second string, including three players making their first Premiership starts. Chelsea are not even clapping out the real champions. They are clapping out the understudies and there is utter disdain on Terry’s face.
This is only the start of the indignation. ‘You’re not special any more,’ United fans sing at Mourinho. ‘That’s why you’re runners-up,’ they gloat after a promising Chelsea attack peters out. Then ‘sacked in the morning’, as Mourinho comes to the touchline. In Germany, it is called schadenfreude. In Stretford and Collyhurst and Gorton and Chorlton-cum-Hardy it is known as ‘taking the piss’ and there are few fans with more biting wit than United’s. After Chelsea’s game at Arsenal, Mourinho had marched over to his club’s supporters and made an unusual gesture for everyone to keep their chins up. Now, three days on, there are thousands of United fans doing the same, gleefully cackling ‘keep that chin up’.
The match is a dead rubber. A few weeks ago this fixture was hyped as a title decider and tickets were selling on eBay for the price of a Mediterranean holiday. Yet Ferguson is resting his first-team for the FA Cup final. Mourinho has left out some of his big-hitters too and the game starts slowly, deteriorates from there and ultimately means nothing apart from gloating rights.
The outstanding performers are United’s supporters and at one point Mourinho turns to them with a half-smile. Later, however, his cover is blown and he loses his cool when a free-kick is awarded against his team. He is out of the dugout, wagging his finger at the referee and when he is ordered back to his seat he misunderstands and thinks he has been sent to the stand. No sooner has he climbed into the seats behind the dugout than he is informed of his mistake and sheepishly has to make his way back. It is an embarrassing faux pas greeted with another crowing chorus of ‘you’re not special any more’.
This, unmistakeably, is Mourinho’s maximum point of vulnerability. When he was at his peak he strutted about Stamford Bridge as if he owned London. He was ‘new-school’, with an excitingly vigorous approach to management and a wardrobe to die for. Tonight, he is wearing a dowdy grey Chelsea tracksuit. His eyes are circled with dark smudges. His thick plume of once-silky hair is a greying bouffant. His glare is wild.
In the opposite dugout, Ferguson looks splendid in his long black overcoat, smartly creased trousers and polished shoes. He is unhappy about some of the Chelsea tackling but, generally, he sits back and enjoys the moment. And when your eyes flash across to Mourinho sniping at the referee, jabbing out a finger and flapping his arms in disgust, it is impossible not to think how the roles have reversed.
COLLECTING THE TROPHY
13.5.07
Manchester United 0
West Ham United 1
The rain falls hard on a humdrum town. It is a typical Mancunian day: the final home game of the season is to be played out in a late-spring downpour. But the weather scarcely matters when the Premiership trophy is waiting to be presented. There are no early leavers today. It has been 1,093 days since this shiny, metallic piece of job satisfaction belonged at Old Trafford and, for the most part, the crowd are willing the game to end so the business of receiving the trophy can get underway.
West Ham do their best to spoil the party – winning saves them from relegation and their celebrations at the final whistle are long and raucous – but the game is merely a sideshow to the main event: the fireworks, the tickertape and the sight of the trophy adorned in red, black and white ribbons. This is the moment Ferguson has been waiting for. Lifting the trophy.
It is fifteen minutes before the small army of Premiership roadies have erected the winners’ podium and when the trophy finally appears it somehow looks larger in real life than in photographs. A white-haired chap, stiff-kneed and grandfatherly, wearing a black overcoat and a proud smile, carries it out of the tunnel and he is identified as Jack Crompton, the goalkeeper from the championship-winning side of 1952. Behind him follow five of the Busby Babes: Bill Foulkes, John Doherty, Jeff Whitefoot, Wilf McGuinness and Albert Scanlon. Six happy old men, aged from sixty-nine to eighty-five, old enough to remember playing in this stadium when it was being rebuilt after two direct hits from German planes in the Second World War.
They form a guard of honour on the pitch and the volume cranks up as Ferguson’s backroom staff, led by Carlos Queiroz, appear from the tunnel. There are loud, appreciative cheers. The crowd are on their feet and Queiroz waves appreciatively to the fans behind the goal. In many ways, it has been as remarkable a journey for Queiroz as it has for Ferguson. He, too, has been labelled a has-been and had his work dissected in the media. He, like Ferguson, has come out the other side. He is a good guy and it is a nice moment.
Ferguson is next. His arms are raised and This is the One by the Stone Roses starts to play. John Squires on the guitar, Reni’s drums, Mani on bass and Ian Brown’s sweet vocals. It is an unusual choice as United’s club anthem but it works brilliantly as Ferguson turns to salute the Stretford End and then the corner of the South Stand where, on a September day in 2005, V-signs were flashed at him. He walks on a few yards, soaking up the applause, and when he sees the club’s mascot Fred the Red there is the surreal sight of the oldest manager in the Premiership leaping into the arms of a fancydress red devil with a forked tail and little black horns.
He is wearing a black waterproof coat and a cap that seems a size or two too large and bears the words ‘2007 champions’. The entire squad follow behind, all in fresh kits, and Rooney is the first to reach the podium and collect his medal. Neville and Giggs are the last and, between them, it is their privilege to lift the trophy.
The noise is incredible but the crowd fall obediently silent as Ferguson takes the microphone: ‘All I want to say is that it’s been a fantastic season for our club,’ he begins, and there is an affectionate cheer and instinctive applause. ‘Every one of us – you supporters, the staff and (pointing at the players) these lot here – have been absolutely fantastic. I can’t speak highly enough of them. It’s been a wonderful year. Thanks for your support and let’s hope we can do it again next season.’
The party starts in earnest after that and a clan of mini-Fergie grandchildren join him on the pitch. The players’ wives and girlfriends appear and a stampede of little boys and girls is let loose. Liberty Giggs gets her first appearance on national television. Noah Solskjaer waves to the North Stand. There is Luka Vidic and Aaron Scholes and many, many others. Ronaldo starts the lap of honour with a Portuguese flag tied round his neck, and his mother, Dolores, holding his hand. Rooney is wearing a jester’s hat.
At one point Ferguson breaks off and waves triumphantly to the directors’ box. David Gill can be seen belting out ‘Glory Glory Man United’ with the rest of the crowd. The Glazer brothers, perhaps the palest people in the whole of Florida, have put in a rare appearance but clearly don’t know the words. Sir Bobby Charlton, straight-backed and dewy-eyed, looks emotional and at one stage he turns to his right and gives a thumbs-up to someone in the pressbox. Charlton comes from an era when reporters were not viewed with suspicion and he remains on first-name terms with many of the football writers. When he was younger he used to turn out in some of the press matches and, to our eternal shame, there is a famous story about him misplacing a pass in one game and a journalist on the same team throwing out his arms, in genuine disgust, and raucously screaming at the legendary, World Cup-winning hero of millions: ‘For Christ’s sake Bobby! To feet, man! TO FEET!’
The lap of honour is possibly the slowest in history. The players are determined to milk every moment. This is Giggs’s ninth championship, a new record. It is United’s sixteenth in total, only two behind Liverpool now, and the first under Neville’s captaincy. Neville is still not fit and won’t make it back for the FA Cup final but he is in his kit and kissing his badge. ‘It has been three years of suffering,’ he says. ‘There were times when I’m sure every player, plus the manager and the fans, were all doubting whether we were going to get there again. One year becomes two
, then three and you start to think: “is it going to be ten or twenty?” You have to give great credit to the manager for sticking to his guns, never panicking. The whole empire was said to be crumbling but he’s been proved right yet again.’
The turning point, he says, came towards the end of last season. ‘There was a period of six months when it became a little too easy. We were becoming a club it was easy to knock. We went out of Europe early, we went out of the FA Cup at Anfield, we lost two or three league games. We just had enough. The club had had enough. We were getting battered for every single defeat or draw and after two years you think: “right, that’s it, stop this now.” Ronaldo, Saha and Rooney started playing together and all of a sudden the speed in our play – what I call the Manchester United way – returned. Quick, counter-attacking football. Defending one minute, the ball in the back of the opposition net ten seconds later. We had lost that for some reason for the previous couple of years.’
Neville remembers ‘not many people giving us a chance’ at the start of the season and it is difficult to disagree. The fanzines are out tonight and they put it in perspective. ‘The men in white jackets would have been around with their straitjackets if you’d suggested we would win the league with two games to spare and still be in with a shout of the Double, as well as reaching the semi-finals in Europe,’ according to one Red Issue writer. ‘It has been a truly remarkable year that has exceeded all our expectations. Gone are those sterile 4-5-1 formations and instead we’ve seen thirteen away wins, eighty-three goals and eight occasions when we’ve scored four or more.’
This is the One: Sir Alex Ferguson: The Uncut Story of a Football Genius Page 28
