Leading: Learning from Life and My Years at Manchester United

by Alex Ferguson

  We did the same when we built the medical centre at Carrington. Word got round that it was the best in England and immediately all the other Premier League clubs wanted to inspect it. I just didn’t see what the fuss was about. Everyone knew that we had a sizeable medical staff with physiotherapists, doctors, dentists and chiropodists. They knew the sorts of machines we had bought and I’m sure the various manufacturers would have been happy to send them the brochures.

  I’m sometimes amazed by how people get fixated on information. It’s like standing in a hospital room staring at the numbers on the bedside monitors while the patient chokes to death on a chicken sandwich. You have to consider the human element of life and the way that circumstances and chance can upset everything–even the most accurate and clearly reported data. Knowing the heart-rate of a player and doing all the video analysis in the world of his opposite number isn’t going to help you if he loses control and gets sent off in the first minute.

  Confidentiality

  While I like to think that I’m quite open and willing to share experiences, there are some things I’ve always been very careful about because in any intensely competitive pursuit, maintaining secrecy and confidentiality is a potent weapon. There is no benefit to be gained by telegraphing your moves or declaring your intentions to competitors. I would always try to keep a cloak of secrecy over anything we considered important–the amount of money we had at our disposal for new signings, the players we fancied, or injuries. My mantra was, ‘Tell them nothing.’ I’d never give anyone any inkling of who I wanted to sign and I had no interest in letting my fellow managers know the fitness levels of my players.

  In the 2009–10 season, after Wayne Rooney got injured during the first leg of the Champions League quarter-final, I ordered him to keep wearing his rehab boot so that Bayern Munich would not expect him to turn out for the second leg. The subterfuge worked well enough, but unfortunately we failed to make the semi-finals. Stealth and secrecy are two valuable weapons for any organisation.

  I used to announce the complete team line-up to the players a day before the game, but then it kept getting leaked to the newspapers. So I changed my approach and told each individual whether they would be playing but I was careful to ensure that I didn’t disclose the complete team-sheet to anyone until the morning of the match. When Paul Scholes returned from his first experience with retirement to play against Manchester City in an FA Cup game in 2012, even the other players were unaware of his pending appearance until he removed his tie and jacket and put on his strip.

  Agents always badgered their players for this sort of information, which they would then leak in order to curry favour with journalists. They would sit in their cars outside the training ground, waiting for their clients to emerge. They would phone the players and barrage them with questions such as, ‘How are things today? How was training? Who is injured? Are you playing tomorrow? What did the manager say?’ A minute later they would be distributing this feed to their favourite journalists.

  There was a period during which United’s secrets kept popping up in one newspaper written by the same journalist. It drove me bonkers. I couldn’t figure out how this was happening, and then I discovered that the reporter lived in Alderley Edge, a village on the outskirts of Manchester, as did some of our players. It turned out that he would have drinks with some of the players on Saturday nights and, being a good reporter, he had a knack for getting them to say things that they should have kept secret. As soon as I cottoned on to what was happening, I gathered all the players who lived in Alderley Edge and told them in no uncertain terms, ‘If I see one more story that includes facts I don’t want to read, all of you are done. I don’t care who leaked the information, you are all going to be fined.’ That did the trick.

  Graeme Hogg, a defender at United in the mid-1980s, was another player who struggled to understand the concept of secrecy. We were due to play Everton in 1987, the season they won the League, and had spent the entire week working on an approach where I played with just three defenders to counter their two strikers. On the morning of the game I picked up the newspaper and Graeme Hogg had helped fashion a column titled, ‘How we will beat Everton’. I couldn’t believe it. I told myself I had to wait to calm down so that when I got hold of Hogg I would only commit serious assault rather than premeditated murder. Hogg started that game, but he only played a handful more games before we sold him to Portsmouth in 1988.

  All things considered, I had it easy compared to anyone in politics. I had dinner with Tony Blair in Manchester before the 1997 election, and we talked about how hard it would be to keep his Cabinet ministers on the straight and narrow because they were all after his job and would leak nuggets to their favourite journalists in order to gain favourable coverage. I said to him, ‘If you can keep them all in the same room, every day, you won’t have a problem. But they will want to fly the nest.’ He laughed and said, ‘You’re probably right.’ I said, ‘I am right. Don’t worry about it.’

  My circle of confidants was very small. I would confide my real feelings to Cathy and my brother, Martin, and Bridget and John Robertson, my in-laws. Beyond my family members, I knew that close pals from my boyhood and two from our time in Aberdeen, our lawyer Les Dalgarno, and our family friend, Gordon Campbell, could be relied upon to be discreet.

  After Archie Knox headed back to Scotland, I gradually developed close relationships with Carlos Queiroz and Mick Phelan. But, much as I trusted them implicitly, I never was as close to Carlos and to Mick as I was to Archie. But then again, Archie and I had spent hundreds of hours together when we were earning our stripes, and that forms a different, deeper sort of bond. Among managers, I always felt close to John Lyall, and to Bobby Robson, the former England manager, whom I admired greatly, and Sam Allardyce.

  But as I say, the inner circle of confidants is really quite small. Perhaps it is just very difficult to have more than a few close friends because these sorts of relationships build over a long time and lots of shared experiences. As my father always said, you only need six people to carry your coffin and, as I have got older, I have become ever more appreciative of that remark.

  12

  THE RELEVANCE OF OTHERS

  Rivalries

  Football is littered with great rivalries. Many of them are rooted in parochialism and are the outcome of times when travel was far more difficult than it is today. Remember, it was not until the 1950s that British clubs began to venture into Europe, and so in those days everything tended to be far more local. Newspaper journalists got into the habit of headlining local derbies and that remains true. It does not matter whether the game is between Celtic and Rangers, Everton and Liverpool, Tottenham and Arsenal, or Manchester United and Manchester City. A rivalry, particularly a local one, adds spice and bite.

  Some fans, for whom football is bigger than religion, even inherit family rivalries. Their father, or grandfather, might have supported a particular team and those are the colours they will root for until their dying day. I cannot tell you how many photographs we used to receive of a newborn baby, clad in a Manchester United strip and named after a player. These babies were born into tribes, whether they liked it or not.

  I don’t remember a time when I was not thinking about rivalry and competition. In Glasgow the great divide was–and still is–between Celtic and Rangers (the Old Firm). For many decades this had a deeply sectarian edge because Celtic tended to field players who had Irish Catholic roots, while Rangers drew their teams from Protestant Scotland. At Aberdeen our longest rivalry was with Rangers, but during my time at the club a new rivalry developed with Dundee United.

  At United I inherited rivalries that had accumulated over decades. These varied a little, depending on the era, but a few were perennial. For United the tussles with the Merseysiders, Liverpool–whose stadium is only 32 miles from Old Trafford–and Manchester City always loomed large. The same applied to Leeds United, during the era when they were playing in the top flight. From time to ti
me this had a vicious edge, such as the time a Leeds fan attacked Eric Harrison, our youth coach, thinking he was me. In the past 15 years, the dates of fixtures against Chelsea and Arsenal have also tended to be circled in diaries months ahead of the actual game.

  Football was tailored for my personality because winning and losing is so clearly defined and measured so often. Ever since I was a boy, I’ve never wanted anyone to beat me. It might be because of my Glasgow upbringing, or because of my working-class roots (that’s for the psychoanalysts to decide), but in Govan there were always kids who wanted to pick a fight and were natural enemies.

  The spectre of contending with a rival helped goad teams towards higher performance. In Aberdeen I’d portray a visit from one of the big Glasgow clubs as an assault on our manhood. I would tell the players, ‘Rangers and Celtic come up here and think they’re going to walk all over us.’ The implication is obvious.

  Early on during my time at United, I was quoted as saying that my greatest challenge was knocking Liverpool off their perch. Somehow this quote became folklore and it was repeated endlessly. The odd thing is that I don’t remember ever uttering the phrase. Either way, it was helpful, because it captured the century-long rivalry between United and Liverpool and, of course, during the 1970s and 1980s, Anfield was always a furnace. In the 26-year gap of United’s League titles between 1967 and 1993, Liverpool won the League 11 times, the FA Cup three times and, most gallingly, the European Cup four times. Liverpool’s success during this era was unprecedented because no other club had ever dominated English football in a similar manner. I am not sure whether United’s players ever consciously thought about topping Liverpool’s victory record, but I certainly always thought of it as the bogey I had to beat. The spectre of all that silverware heading to Liverpool was an intolerable prospect.

  Once, in 1988, we left Anfield after a 3–3 draw marked by some appalling decisions by the referee. I said to a radio interviewer, ‘It’s no surprise managers have to leave Anfield choking on their own vomit, biting their tongue, afraid to tell the truth.’

  There were obviously some theatrics associated with the way I stirred the competitive juices of our players when we were due to meet a long-time foe, but there were very few examples of either occasions or people (other than referees or linesmen) that made me livid for months. It is healthy for football clubs to have rivals and foes because it spurs them to perform to the best of their abilities, but I’m not so sure it pays to have bitter feuds or real enemies. I cannot think of a manager–even in the midst of our fiercest battles–with whom I would refuse to dine. I just tried to keep my thoughts to myself because the secret is not to put your own weaknesses on display. The best way to get even is to make sure you beat them. I had some well publicised spats with other managers such as Arsène Wenger but these disputes don’t last for ever and he has been very helpful with our work at UEFA.

  You cannot define yourself by your rivals and competitors or change your strategy and approach because of something they do. For years Manchester City, the other club in Manchester, tried to define themselves by what we did. Their chairman, Peter Swales, regularly referred to us as ‘Them across the road’. He couldn’t get Manchester United out of his head. Instead of seeking to improve Manchester City, and concentrate on what was under his control, he worried about us. It made no sense. On the other hand, we had one supporter, Norman Williams, who watched every home game and travelled to many away games. However, in a lifetime of supporting United, he never went to City’s stadium. I asked him once why he refused to do so. His answer: ‘I’m afraid of what I might catch.’

  Nonetheless, you can learn from your competitors and, more importantly, you can raise your standards by trying to match or outperform them. Between 1994 and 1999 Juventus, the Italian club, served that role for United, when they were managed by Marcello Lippi and played at the level I wanted to attain. I greatly admired Lippi. He had such a sense of style and, with his silver hair, leather coat and small cigar, reminded me of Paul Newman. Eventually, I enjoyed one of my greatest nights as a manager there in the 1999 Champions League semi-final. We went two goals down after 11 minutes and came back to win 3–2, to knock them out and reach the final in Barcelona.

  It’s hard to keep your head when competitors do irrational things. In business, if a competitor lowers prices or splurges on an expensive television advertising campaign, it’s easy to automatically assume that’s the correct course. I suspect it requires a steely nerve to avoid following suit. In football, while I was managing, there was a similar phenomenon when other clubs and owners were prepared to pay a king’s ransom to buy their way to success. In Scotland, that was Rangers. In retrospect I might have been a bit fortunate with the timing of my departure from Aberdeen, because it coincided with the arrival of Graeme Souness at Rangers, and the start of a big spending spree as they imported players from England and the Continent. Yet, if I had stayed at Aberdeen, I would not have been tempted to chase Rangers and to resort to spending willy-nilly. I would have stuck to my guns.

  In England, the kings of spending were Chelsea and, in more recent years, Manchester City. Obviously, United have spent heavily since I retired, but that’s over a shorter period. The success that José Mourinho achieved in his first season at Chelsea in 2004–05, when he won the Premier League and League Cup, was mainly due to his stubbornness, the determined manner he scratched out victories and draws and the fact that he had his players believing he was the Messiah. It also did not hurt that he spent almost £100 million during his first season at the club. However, he is a great leader and spectacular manager who has achieved major triumphs in four different countries. It’s hard to think of anyone else who has done that.

  When Manchester City was bought by Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan in 2008, I never for a moment thought, ‘This is going to make it hard for us.’ I just considered it another in a long line of challenges with which we had to contend. I didn’t expect City to do the things that they’ve done in the last few years–some of which have been directly aimed at challenging United, but some of which have also been good for the economy of Manchester. Who could have imagined that they would build 6,000 new homes in some of Manchester’s more rundown areas as part of their development plans? However, my attitude remains the same, despite the fact that they have spent in excess of £700 million from 2008 until my retirement. It’s completely in United’s power to beat them, no matter how much money they spend. There’s no doubt that City’s spending spree and their effort to create an instant history has caused jealousy around the Premier League, but I always tried to reinforce the message that, no matter how many players they bought for huge amounts of money, they could only start a game on a Saturday with 11 men.

  Global Markets

  I have never studied economics, but football gave me a bit of an education in the subject. Though I’ve always been sympathetic towards trade unions, mainly because of what my father and his generation endured in the Scottish shipyards, I have become a big believer in free markets that provide everyone an equal opportunity to compete. Immigration may cause all sorts of social and political issues, but it has transformed the standard of play in the Premier League.

  When I started in football, the sport was parochial. The British clubs had all been brewed in neighbourhoods, towns and cities. Many of the players could walk from their homes to the grounds and this continued for a long time. In 1967, when Celtic became the first British club to win the European Cup, it did so with a team entirely composed of players born within 30 miles of Glasgow. When United won the European Cup under Matt Busby in 1968, it was with a team of seven Englishmen, one Scotsman, one Northern Irishman and two who represented the Republic of Ireland. There had only been one or two foreign players in England prior to the late 1970s, when Tottenham bought Ossie Ardiles and Ricky Villa after the 1978 World Cup.

  When I arrived at Aberdeen, there were no foreign players (and in this case ‘foreign’ includes English, Welsh and Irish).
Every player was Scottish. When I went to United we had just two foreign players–John Sivebaek and Jesper Olsen–and both came from Denmark. Half a generation later, everything had changed. Chelsea were the first top-division side to field a starting XI without a British player when, in December 1999, they selected two Frenchmen, two Italians, and one Uruguayan, a Dutchman, a Nigerian, a Romanian, a Brazilian, a Norwegian and a Spaniard. In 2005 Arsenal, in a game against Crystal Palace, became the first team in the Premier League to select a complete match-day squad without a British player. The first time I fielded a team without a single English player was on 10 May 2009, at Old Trafford, in a 2–0 win against Manchester City, when we had players from the Netherlands, Brazil, Serbia, Northern Ireland, France, Portugal, Scotland, Wales, South Korea, Argentina and Bulgaria.

  The arrival of overseas players occurred in two phases. Prior to 1995, when the European Court of Justice rendered its ‘Bosman ruling’, European players were still partially imprisoned by their clubs. In England, tribunals run by the FA had been used from the early 1980s to settle disputes about transfer prices. Once the European Court of Justice ruled that clubs no longer had to pay transfer fees after the expiration of a player’s contract, all hell broke loose. Suddenly it was a free-for-all. There was increased pressure on the clubs to renegotiate contracts long before they expired, and the players–or at least the good ones–had much more negotiating power.