Leading: Learning from Life and My Years at Manchester United

by Alex Ferguson

  Being willing to reappraise your targets during a game is crucial too. If you are in real trouble, it often seems like an impossible task to set things right. That happened to us in 2001 when we were 3–0 down to Tottenham at half-time. At the break I was realistic with the players and told them we were in a royal mess. There was deathly quiet in the dressing room and all I said was, ‘Score the next goal and let’s see where that takes us.’ I didn’t say something like, ‘We’ve got forty-five minutes to score four times.’ That would have seemed impossible. When we walked into the tunnel to take to the pitch, Teddy Sheringham, a former Manchester United player now playing for Tottenham, was barking at his team-mates, ‘Don’t let them score early.’ Having experienced life inside Old Trafford he knew how dangerous we could be when coming from behind. However, we did score the one goal, and that led, inconceivable though it sounds, to a further four. We eventually won the game 5–3.

  Once United started winning domestic competitions, I began to have higher aspirations. I shared these with the coaching staff and explained that, while we obviously had to pursue the League title with a vengeance, our new target was to win the European Champions League. By 1993, the year that United won its first League title while I was manager, the club had only won the Champions League–or the European Cup as it was known until 1992–once compared to six victories for Real Madrid, four for AC Milan and Liverpool, three for Bayern Munich and Ajax and two for Benfica and Nottingham Forest.

  I employed the same approach to the pursuit of the European Cup as I did for the domestic trophies. We had to do it step by step. The first obvious goal was to emerge from the group stages with at least ten points. We only failed to do this three times–in 1994–95, 2005–06 and 2011–12.

  I operated in a similar manner with players. I never told Cristiano Ronaldo or Dimitar Berbatov that we expected them to score a minimum of 25 goals a season, or instructed Paul Scholes or Roy Keane that they had to maintain a pass completion rate of at least 80 per cent. I never had a particular quota that I expected any player to fulfil, but they all knew I expected nothing but the best from them. Signing a player to a new contract always presented a good opportunity to review performance levels and it gave me room to talk about where they needed to improve. Whenever we bought a player I would make a point of sitting down with him and explaining exactly what was expected of him at a club like Manchester United.

  As for myself, I never wrote out a series of personal goals. When I was 17, I did not tell myself that I needed to score 100 goals by the time I was 30 or finish my playing career with half a dozen medals and a score of Scottish caps. It was similar when I was a manager; although I did know, after Aberdeen had established itself as a winning club, that I wanted to work in a larger setting. Once I got to United, beyond a few brief flirtations with a handful of other clubs, I never thought much about working elsewhere. From time to time people suggested that I become manager of England, but that post, irrespective of the decade, has always held little appeal to me. Not only would I have had to deal with the guilt of turning my back on Scotland, but I would also have had to contend with all the frustrations of the position. It’s a hopeless job because, before any major competition, the press and the public whip themselves into a frenzy. They tend to forget that a national team manager, even though he might be handsomely compensated, is in a part-time role. He only sees the players intermittently, he doesn’t conduct daily training sessions, and it is unrealistic for any group of players, no matter how talented, to instinctively sense, in the way that they can do at their club, what one of their national team-mates might do. I had a taste of the frustrations of managing a national team when I stepped in for a short stint as Scottish manager following the death of Jock Stein in 1985. It was definitely not my cup of tea. In my opinion, international management jobs are for experienced men in the later stages of their career who have the patience to deal with the shortcomings of the post and carry the reputation needed to command a dressing room full of players with whom they spend little time.

  After I got to Manchester, I could not imagine a larger stage than Old Trafford. Obviously I’m very aware of Camp Nou and the Bernabéu, which are both great settings, but for me neither has had the allure of Old Trafford. I never gave myself a quota for the number of League titles or FA Cup trophies I had to win before I retired. If I had said to myself, I cannot go until United has won five Champions League titles, I would still be at Old Trafford, even though, privately, I believe we should have achieved that goal under my watch. I never said to myself that my life would not be complete unless United strikers won a certain number of Ballon d’Or awards or Player of the Year awards. I just don’t operate like that. All I ever wanted to do was win more trophies. I just could never get enough.

  Inspiring

  You don’t get the best out of people by hitting them with an iron rod. You do so by gaining their respect, getting them accustomed to triumphs and convincing them that they are capable of improving their performance. I cannot think of any manager who succeeded for any length of time by presiding over a reign of terror. It turns out that the two most powerful words in the English language are, ‘Well done’. Much of leadership is about extracting that extra 5 per cent of performance that individuals did not know they possessed.

  It was always important that the players erased the memory of the previous season, whether we had won or lost. If we had done well in the previous year, it did not guarantee that we would automatically do so again. And, if we had lost, I had no interest in prolonging any hangover of defeatism. The coaching staff, in particular the sports science crew, would come to me with new ideas before or during the pre-season, but I would never conduct any big post-mortem with the players. I used to gather them around me in a semi-circle at the training ground and re-emphasise my desire to win and use it as an opportunity to set expectations. I used to ask the mature players, who had begun to acquire a taste for United’s victory habits, how many medals they had won. I told them that they could not consider themselves to be a United player until they had won ten medals. I remember saying to Rio Ferdinand that he could never think of himself as a United player until he attained the level of Ryan Giggs. Of course, that was mission impossible.

  It is much easier to do difficult things if others like you. Though I have never tried to court popularity, I always tried to pay particular attention to people at United–or at the other clubs I was involved with–who worked behind the scenes and were our unsung heroes. It wasn’t a false front; it just seemed like the right thing to do. These people weren’t getting the multimillion-pound salaries or public acclaim, and didn’t wear Patek Philippe watches or drive Bentleys. Some of them–the laundry team, the groundsmen, the hospitality waitresses–took the bus to work. They were the mainstays of the club. At United, some of them have been there even longer than Ryan Giggs. In a way, they are the club’s equivalent of the Civil Service–they outlast the governments and, at United, they provided continuity and a connection with our heritage. It was very easy for me to feel affinity towards them, since most had backgrounds much like my own.

  Some managers try to be popular with the players and become one of the boys. It never works. As a leader, you don’t need to be loved, though it is useful, on occasion, to be feared. But, most of all, you need to be respected. There are just some natural boundaries, and when those get crossed it makes life harder. When I was playing at Rangers, they hired a new manager, David White. He was young and a good man but just out of his depth. He was overawed by the club, while at the same time he was living in the shadow of Jock Stein over at Celtic. The players didn’t have much respect for him, and part of the reason was because he was too close to them. The same thing happened at United when Wilf McGuinness succeeded Sir Matt Busby in 1969. Wilf had several things going against him. He was succeeding a legend; he was only 31 years old and had no management experience. But, worst of all, he was managing a group of men with whom he had played. It was an impossib
le position for him. My immediate predecessor at United, Ron Atkinson, had a similar issue. He had enjoyed much more success as a manager than Wilf, but he too chose to fraternise with the players. It just doesn’t work. A leader is not one of the boys.

  It is vital to keep some sort of distance. This could be expressed in small but significant ways. For example, I generally rode at the front of the team bus. The players understood the distance, and at the end of the season when they had their parties, I was never invited. They’d invite all the management staff, but they wouldn’t invite me. I wasn’t offended by this. It was the right thing for them to do. With one exception in Aberdeen, I never attended any of the players’ weddings. There was a line that they were not prepared to cross and they respected my position. It also makes things easier because, as a manager, you can’t be sentimental about them. Jock Stein told me once, ‘Don’t fall in love with the players because they’ll two-time you.’ That may be a bit harsh, but Jock was right that you cannot get too attached to people who work for you. The one time you must have that attachment is when they are in trouble–when they need your advice. I couldn’t count the number of times where I helped players with personal matters, and I’m proud of the fact they trusted me and that they knew that discussion would stay private. In these situations I acted as a priest, father or lawyer–whatever it took to make the problem go away. Even to this day, many former players still come to me for advice; this is a reflection of the trust that underpinned our relationship.

  When players got too old I couldn’t afford to be kind to them at the expense of the club. All the evidence is on the football field. It just doesn’t lie. I had to make a lot of horrible decisions and I had to be ruthless. I never expected the players to love me, but neither did I want them to hate me, because that would have made it impossible to extract the most from them. All I wanted was for them to respect me and follow my instructions.

  Unless you understand people, it’s very hard to motivate them. I learned this years ago in Scotland when I was handed a lesson by a young lad. While I managed Aberdeen, we used to travel down to Glasgow every Thursday night to coach young kids on an AstroTurf field so that we could identify the best young talent. I was down there one night, dressed in my tracksuit emblazoned with its ‘AF’ initials, when I saw this kid, who was about eight, smoking a cigarette. I said, ‘Put that cigarette out, son. What would your dad think if he saw you smoking?’ The boy looked at me and he said, ‘Fuck off!’ and walked away. My assistant manager, Archie Knox, who was with me, burst out laughing at the way this kid had chopped my legs off. But when I started thinking about the incident, I realised that I knew nothing about that boy. I had no idea where he came from, what his parents were like, whether he was taunted by his pals and why he harboured such anger. Unless you know those sorts of things and have an understanding of someone’s personality, it is impossible to get the best out of them. Before we signed players, especially youngsters, I always tried to understand the circumstances in which they had been raised. The first ten or 12 years of anyone’s life have such a profound influence on the way they act as adults.

  Another crucial ingredient of motivation is consistency. As a leader you can’t run from one side of the ship to the other. People need to feel that you have unshakeable confidence in a particular approach. If you can’t show this, you’ll lose the team very quickly. There is a phrase in football about players ‘not playing for the manager’, which I have seen happen a thousand times. Once that happens, the manager is as good as dead, because he has failed in his major undertaking–which is to motivate the players to follow him. The time to be inconsistent is when changes need to be made because the world is changing around you. There was always the temptation when things weren’t going well to change or to leap to a new lily pad. That doesn’t work. Sometimes, if we lost some games, we’d hear that the players thought that our training should be more light-hearted; that our results would improve if, instead of concentrating our training sessions around technical skills, we played mock games. I always refused to bow to those suggestions. Any field on a Sunday is full of people playing park games, work games or pub games, but that doesn’t make these people better footballers. I just believe that continual devotion to improving technical skills, and the enhancement of tactics, lead to better results, and I wasn’t about to change just to temporarily please others.

  Leaders are usually unaware, or at least underestimate, the motivating power of their presence. Nobody sees themselves as others see them. I’d never really understood this until Rio Ferdinand buttonholed me one day because I had missed some training sessions while travelling abroad to scout a player. Rio said, ‘Where have you been? It’s not the same when you are not here.’ It didn’t matter that Carlos Queiroz was running the training sessions and the routine and drills were exactly the same as if I had been there. Rio had noticed my absence, and perhaps some of the players had eased off a little because I was missing from the sidelines. I don’t know whether that actually happened because I wasn’t there–and maybe that’s the point.

  I took Rio’s observation to heart. After that, if I had to go and watch a player or check out a team, we chartered a private plane so I could be at the training ground the next day even if I hadn’t got to bed until two in the morning. The lesson I absorbed was that even if I said nothing during the practice (and I rarely said much), my physical presence was a more important motivational tool than I had realised. Anyone who is in charge of a group of people has got to have a strong personality. That doesn’t mean dominating every conversation or speaking at the top of your voice. Some quiet people have very strong personalities and rooms fall silent when they have something to say. A strong personality is an expression of inner strength and fortitude.

  I always got more out of players by praising them than by scorning them with criticism. Footballers, like all human beings, are plagued by a range of emotions that run all the way from profound insecurity to massive over-confidence. Trying to measure where, along this spectrum, each of these players was on any particular day was very important. If you hope to motivate people, you need to know when to prey on their insecurities and when to bolster their self-confidence. People perform best when they know they have earned the trust of their leader.

  My father was a man of few words. He didn’t dole out praise. His main desire was for me to keep my feet on the ground and retain my humility. After I scored three goals in one game and got home, he just handed out stick. He said, ‘You don’t shoot enough. You don’t pass enough.’ I suppose my dad’s remarks made me want to work harder so that I could garner praise from him but, after I had played well, it was always deflating to hear him utter those sorts of remarks. By contrast, my mother and my granny used to be full of compliments and praise, and their joy in my successes was evident. In retrospect I sometimes wonder whether my parents inadvertently supplied me with two engines: one that made me want to try even harder and a second that made me feel I was capable of anything.

  I wasn’t afraid of criticising a player when I felt I could help him improve, but I always tried to couch this in a positive way. For example, I would tell a young player that he would be far more effective if he passed the ball more. That message is more likely to be absorbed than barking, ‘You’re never going to be any good if you keep hogging the ball.’ After a game I would always try to avoid criticising the players. They had enough pressure, without me piling it on in public. I saved my criticism for the private sessions away from prying eyes. I tried to employ heat shields to deflect criticism from a player who had misplaced a pass that gave away a goal, or another who had missed a sitter that could have won us a game. It was always easy to give the press something else to write about–a couple of decisions that had gone against us, a penalty that should have won us the game, a long injury list or a pile-up of fixtures. I tried to take the pressure off the player who did not need me or anyone else to remind him of his mistake. Most players are mortified when they let down t
heir team. My first inclination was always to defend the player and sort it out afterwards.

  Every player is different, and I came to learn that they all required different care and feeding. Some would be at one extreme and need little from me. This was particularly true of players who had made a couple of hundred appearances, had inner confidence, and understood me. The youngsters and those who, for whatever reason, were less assured, needed different handling. I’m sure that, from time to time, I underestimated the degree of intimidation experienced by new players. All the youngsters who had been part of the United system for years were intimidated enough by the first-team dressing room. But imagine what it was like for a player signed from overseas who had never played in England and sometimes could not understand what was being said. I know that Tim Howard, whom we signed from the American team MetroStars, in 2003, and quickly started to employ as our first-team goalkeeper, found a massive contrast between his former team, which had been at the bottom of the MLS, and United. He had to quickly adjust to the notion that men whom he had worshipped from afar were now his team-mates, and to our more direct and confrontational style of management. I’m not sure there is anything that can prepare someone for a dose of Glaswegian bluntness, doled out by a shipyard worker’s son, particularly when that man is in ultimate control of your destiny.

  You might think that team-mates would resent another player who was treated differently. That would probably be true if he was an everyday character. But, once in a while, someone would appear who required something special. Eric Cantona fits into that category. He had been a bit of a wayward character at his other clubs and had gained a reputation for being unruly and difficult. His disciplinary record was longer than your arm. It was almost as if he was considered some sort of demon. That made no sense to me. When you are dealing with individuals with unusual talent, it makes sense to treat them differently. I just made it a point to ignore what had happened in the past and treat Eric as a new man when he joined United. When Eric was with us I would always make a point of talking to him every day–on the training ground, or in the cafeteria or dressing room. He was a sensitive person who was easily bothered by all sorts of things, but he loved talking about football and that was a way to help restore his spirits. I did things for Eric and for the really special players that I did not do for others, but I don’t think this was resented, because the players understood the exceptional talents had qualities they did not possess. My relationship with Eric might also have been helped by the fact that neither of us were English and, to some degree, we considered ourselves outsiders. But even the players I thought I understood well could react in unexpected ways. I did not realise until fairly recently that, when he was far younger, Gary Neville was unable to sleep after I handed him a tongue-lashing. It just emphasises how any leader needs to put himself in the shoes of the listener. For example, I was always very careful when I rested a player to emphasise how I was counting on him for a subsequent, crucial fixture. This helped–but probably didn’t completely satisfy–their desire to play in every game, and hopefully prevented them interpreting my decision as a lack of confidence in them.