Football – Bloody Hell!

by Patrick Barclay

  An estimated 50,000 United supporters went berserk and somehow everyone suspected that, for the shell-shocked Bayern troops, the worst was not yet over. Injury time would, of course, be extended to allow for the age it had taken the Germans to drag themselves to the centre circle and three minutes and thirty-six seconds had passed when again Beckham whipped the ball in from the left and Sheringham headed on and Solskjær, with whom Ferguson had replaced Cole in the eighty-first minute, instinctively stabbed it high into the net. Cue delirium.

  Both Ferguson and Gary Neville found the mots justes afterwards. ‘Supernatural,’ said Neville. ‘Football,’ said Ferguson, ‘bloody hell!’ It was indeed one of the most extraordinary manifestations of a game with a mind of its own and, as the celebrations spread through Barcelona, some of us spared a thought for the vanquished. Hitzfeld especially. Had he not been cruelly denied? Ferguson was to consider the point at a distance of some seven years and insist: ‘The people who said we were lucky got it wrong. Bayern, because they hit a post and so on, looked more effective than us, but in those last twenty minutes we had five chances. Five great chances!’

  Not all of them, however, were chronicled by the next issue of the extremely reliable magazine World Soccer. Mysteriously, its respected reporter Keir Radnedge mentions only saves by Oliver Kahn from Sheringham and Solskjaer while at the other end woodwork nervously shuddered. Even if you include the goals, you don’t get a total of five chances.

  As for Hitzfeld’s apparently timely introduction of Scholl: ‘We knew that beforehand. They did it every game in the last twenty minutes, taking Basler and [Alexander] Zickler off and putting on Scholl and [Hasan] Salihamidžić.’ More convincing was Ferguson’s assertion that Bayern suffered for Hitzfeld’s withdrawal of Matthaus, the vastly experienced team leader, in favour of the centre-back Thorsten Fink in the eightieth minute. ‘Matthaus organised their offside. Scholl replaced him on the post [at corners] and, when the first goal went in, Scholl was late coming out, playing Sheringham onside.’

  That was the detail with the devil in it. The whole stadium suspected offside. We had all switched our attention to the relevant linesman. ‘So had I,’ said Ferguson. ‘So had Sheringham. But Scholl had played him on.’ Next to Ferguson, Steve McClaren kept his composure and advised a reversion to 4-4-2 for extra time. There was no extra time.

  What a Knight

  Ferguson had followed in the footsteps of Mr Jock Stein, Sir Matt Busby, Mr Bob Paisley, Mr Brian Clough (and Mr Tony Barton, who had won the European Cup with an Aston Villa team built by Ron Saunders) and, even though, unlike Busby, he had not broken new ground even for his club, his connections made the offer of a knighthood a formality. Indeed, Alastair Campbell had thought ahead and taken advice from the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Richard Wilson. Almost as soon as the final whistle blew, he remembered what to do, and vaulted from his seat into the VIP area at Camp Nou to ask Cathy Ferguson if she thought he would be ‘up for it’.

  Football was a natural relaxation for Campbell. It dovetailed with his job. He made sure of that, but the FA Cup final between United and Newcastle had been an easy fit because he travelled to Wembley with his sons Rory, who had switched allegiance from Burnley to United after getting to know Ferguson, and Calum in the escorted car of Tony Blair. On the way, the Prime Minister worked on Northern Ireland, having ‘a couple of difficult calls’ with David Trimble and Gerry Adams. At Wembley, after he had socialised with, among others, David Beckham’s wife Victoria, Newcastle’s performance was a disappointment to him.

  The crisis in Kosovo, the main issue at the Cabinet meetings of the time because of the deaths of civilians, provided the background as Campbell, with Rory, flew to Barcelona four days later. He put no spin on United’s performance. ‘Bayern should have buried them in the second half,’ he said. When he mentioned the knighthood to Cathy, she was against it, adding: ‘Don’t you think he’s won enough already?’

  Campbell left for the airport and made a call to Ferguson himself, who rang back to say that, for him, the question was whether his parents would have approved or not and that, although he would leave the decision until the morning, his inclination was that they would have favoured acceptance.

  Later that year, he wrote in his autobiography: ‘When I learned during the summer that I was to receive a knighthood, I had to smile at the thought of how far football had brought me.’ He mused on Govan and hand-me-down football boots – and swore gratitude to Manchester United. A couple of years later, he was inviting offers of alternative employment and refusing to rule out rival English clubs.

  Managing to Hurt

  Brian Kidd was not the only victim of Ferguson’s autobiography, but due to events in the time between its composition and publication, he did receive his kicking when he was down. While Steve McClaren had revelled in a pinch-yourself introduction to his old job alongside Ferguson, Blackburn under Kidd had hardly won a match in being relegated and unemployment beckoned.

  At least Gordon Strachan was still in the Premier League. Indeed he was celebrating three years in charge of Coventry City with a sequence of four home wins that left them just below mid-table when he read an account of his negotiations with Cologne when at Aberdeen, coupled with an accusation that he had later been less than candid about a conversation with Martin Edwards at United, and Ferguson’s conclusion: ‘I decided that this man could not be trusted an inch.’

  Strachan had been prepared for something critical – when he had visited Old Trafford with Coventry the previous season, not even a handshake had been on offer – but this shook him. When I met him at Coventry’s training ground a few weeks later, he said he had tried to avoid the subject with a standard reply (‘It’s sad that Alex cannot use his book solely to celebrate his achievements’) but it rankled because the accusation simply did not stick. ‘He, of all people, should know I can be trusted.’

  He and Strachan, of course, went back longer than most. Strachan recalled the days when Ferguson had that tape of the awful Glaswegian singer played on the team bus and even confessed to being the player who hurled it off. ‘So maybe I can’t be trusted after all,’ Strachan sneered. That may have been his anger surfacing, for he later admitted it was someone else. He also spoke of the agent Bernd Killat, who did work for them both. He referred to the friendship between his wife, Lesley, and Cathy Ferguson, who, by Ferguson’s own account, had been left to bring up three boys virtually alone.

  At times, inevitably, Cathy had been near the end of her tether, requiring sympathy and understanding, and, when her husband was not there, Lesley Strachan had not been slow to rally round. So Lesley was hurt, too.

  But Strachan spoke less in anger than sorrow. ‘It’s a shame,’ he said of his relationship with Ferguson. ‘Ever since I left Old Trafford we’ve had arguments, niggles, bits and bobs, and I’d love it if we could just start again. With his confrontational style, I suppose this sort of thing is always liable to happen. But it’s a real pity. To be able to greet each other and talk about the old times would be wonderful.’

  Strachan had to wait several years for that. His fifth season at Coventry ended with the club’s relegation after thirty-four years in the top division. He then revived Southampton, guiding them to eighth place and the FA Cup final, before quitting and taking a sabbatical, from which he emerged to take charge of Celtic in June 2005. Under him, they won three championships in a row and it was when United came to Parkhead for a friendly that Strachan seized an opportunity for rapprochement. ‘Can I have a word with you?’ he asked, and before Ferguson had left his room there was an understanding.

  ‘Now, when we meet, we can talk fitba’,’ said Strachan (this was in the summer of 2009, before he came out of another period of rest to join Middlesbrough). ‘We don’t hug – it’s not his style – but we can have a laugh and a chat.’ Strachan smiled. ‘It’s fine.’

  Only then did I discover that, a few years after Ferguson had labelled him untrustworthy, Strachan had been approached b
y Michael Crick in connection with the book Crick was preparing about Ferguson. He declined the interview in case Crick was ‘looking for dirt’ (although Ferguson was to speak nothing but ill of The Boss, it turned out to be a fair and not unduly aggressive book). Never had Strachan been interested in opportunities to retaliate in kind.

  And never, in nearly twenty years since the insult was delivered, had he forgotten that old feeling of being ready to run through a brick wall for Ferguson. ‘To this day,’ Strachan added, ‘if anyone says something about him, I’m the first to stand up for him.’ Closely followed by his old friend Mark McGhee, whom Ferguson so suddenly and mysteriously ostracised.

  Football – bloody hell!

  UNITED: THE ENCORE

  Goals Galore

  After the treble came the encore: a magnificent Premier League season featuring ninety-seven goals, a record (and, to put it in startling perspective, twenty-four more than Arsenal scored four years later when their ‘Invincibles’ went through a League season unbeaten). The competition in 1999/2000 included Wenger’s Arsenal, of course, a vibrant young Leeds United and a Liverpool showing signs of resurgence under Gérard Houllier. But United left them all trailing.

  Yorke, Cole and the supersub Solskjær, who had set a record of his own by springing from the bench to score four times at Nottingham Forest the previous season, were finding the net so regularly that defensive problems could be absorbed. Stam was still sound, but alongside him Mikael Silvestre, the Frenchman whom Ferguson had bought from Internazionale for £3.5 million because of Johnsen’s injuries, inspired less confidence. Although usefully able to play left-back as well, Silvestre was never to make much more than a squad player.

  Not that you could call his acquisition a Ferguson blunder; to identify one of those from his post-treble summer, you would cite Massimo Taibi. He also came from Italy – from Venezia, after being discarded by Milan – and cost £4.5 million and was not around very long. The problem was that Peter Schmeichel, now thirty-six, had left for a lighter workload at Sporting Lisbon. Ferguson’s first solution was to bring in Mark Bosnich from Aston Villa, where the Australian had become recognised as one of the Premier League’s top goalkeepers, but it soon became apparent that he lacked the work ethic demanded by the manager.

  Taibi had four matches. In one against Southampton he conceded a goal so comically, letting it run between his legs, that someone dubbed him ‘the blind Venetian’. In the last of his four outings, United lost 5-0 at Chelsea. It was an extraordinary result for champions to sustain and, although the Italian was not wholly to blame, he was not picked again.

  At the end of the season Bosnich was replaced by Fabien Barthez and this time Ferguson had got it right, though Barthez was hardly a discovery out of nowhere, given that he had won the Champions League with Olympique Marseille and both the World Cup and European Championship with France.

  Bosnich went to Chelsea, where, in September 2002, he failed a drug test, incurring a nine-month ban from football. He later ascribed a cocaine habit to his relationship with the model Sophie Anderton. Eventually he rebuilt his career in Australia.

  There was little else to report on the domestic front because Ferguson sent a limp gesture of a team to Aston Villa in the League Cup – Bosnich and Solskjær were the only semblances of first-teamers in a side beaten 3-0 – and United did not take part in the FA Cup at all, even though they were the holders. They were criticised for it, but the decision to go to Brazil for Fifa’s inaugural Club World Championship instead had been taken after a request from the FA themselves, who were bidding to bring the World Cup to England in 2006 and had Sir Bobby Charlton as the figurehead of their campaign. In the event Germany and Franz Beckenbauer were to win the Fifa vote, but United’s dilemma was genuine.

  However, the benefits to United of a mid-winter break in sunny Rio de Janeiro (they did not seem to take the tournament over-seriously, even though David Beckham was sent off in a match against the Mexican club Necaxa) must have been taken into account. They would certainly have been discernible to Ferguson, who wanted his players as fresh as possible for the closing stages of both the domestic championship and the Champions League.

  It was a bigger than ever Champions League. Indeed, it seemed to go on for ever as Uefa’s clubs all but killed the goose that laid the golden egg. There were two rounds of the group stage, which meant that successful teams would have played eight matches before Christmas – and even then been only a third of the way through the second group stage, with quarter-finals, semis and the final perhaps to come.

  United, back from Brazil, topped their group but, after drawing scorelessly with Real Madrid in the Bernabéu, were knocked out at Old Trafford by the eventual winners.

  After Roy Keane had sliced a cross past his own goalkeeper, Raimond van der Gouw, Raul scored twice, assisted by a piece of sorcery from Fernando Redondo that even United fans were moved to applaud. It was over. Beckham scored a dazzling solo goal and Paul Scholes put away a late penalty. The two further goals that were required in as many minutes proved beyond the powers of even Sheringham and Solskjær, whom Ferguson had sent on with the score 0-3. The holders were out. And it would take Ferguson another eight seasons to return to Europe’s summit.

  Threatening to Quit

  The next season, 2000/2001, saw United again win the domestic League and fall in the Champions League quarter-finals. Again they had to plough through twelve group matches before the competition acquired an edge, but immediately Hitzfeld and Bayern Munich wreaked a measure of revenge for 1999, beating United home and away. Leeds United went one better, losing in the semi-finals to Valencia.

  Barthez contributed a mixture of excellence and eccentricity in goal, Wes Brown continued to impress at the back and up front Sheringham and Solskjær outscored Yorke and Cole. The FA Cup, from which United were removed by a Paolo di Canio goal for West Ham at Old Trafford, and the League Cup both went to Liverpool, who completed a hat-trick by beating the Spanish club Alaves in the Uefa Cup final.

  Ferguson had much – in the form of Cantona – for which to thank Liverpool’s French manager and his relationship with Houllier remained excellent. If there were any mind games involved in their team’s collisions, Houllier never noticed them. ‘I think he had liked it when I defended David Beckham – I couldn’t understand why English fans were booing him [Beckham’s popularity had been affected by his red card against Argentina in the 1998 World Cup] – and another time when I praised the passion for United shown by Gary Neville. Phil Thompson, who was my assistant at Liverpool, wondered if I’d gone a bit too far there!

  ‘So Alex and I always got on well. He even told me he was gutted that I didn’t get Manager of the Year in that season when we won the trophies [the award went to George Burley, whose Ipswich Town finished fifth in the League].’

  That season Houllier’s team beat Ferguson’s home and away in the League. Wenger’s Arsenal were the only other team to beat United until the closing stages of the season, when the title was won and Ferguson made a surprising declaration that his future might lie with another club.

  He had been busy in the build-up to the concluding match, against Tottenham at White Hart Lane. On the Thursday he had attended a Labour election rally in Manchester alongside his friend Mick Hucknall, of Simply Red, and the veteran actor Sir John Mills. On the Friday he had raised football’s eyebrows by announcing that he would sever his connections with United on the expiry of his contract in the summer of 2002, a year hence. The intention had been to hand over the managership then and take an ‘ambassadorial’ role, but discussions between the club and his son Jason, who was now acting as his agent, had broken down.

  This led some newspapers to bill the Saturday match as his last in charge of United. For a solid thirty minutes of the first half, which he spent in the directors’ box, the travelling fans chanted his praises. As a follower of politics, he might have noted with satisfaction that even Michael Heseltine had never received that long an ovatio
n from the Tory blue-rinses. In the second half, which Ferguson spent in the dugout, Spurs scored twice and United lost 3–1. But they did keep their manager.

  It would, Ferguson said afterwards, be for one year only. He was open to suggestions about what to do thereafter. If another club wanted him as their manager, let them say so.

  In the meantime, he would approach the next season at United with relish: ‘I want to go out with my head held high, knowing I’ve enjoyed the sixteen years I’ll have completed with the club. That’s something worth remembering.’

  As he spoke, Ferguson-watchers had to suppress pull-the-other-one smiles.

  We remembered the leaks from him at around the same stage of the title-retrieval season of 1995/6, when he had been demanding a six-year contract to take him to the age of sixty. We suspected we were watching just another, albeit particularly dramatic, piece of negotiation – and so it proved – but my report for the Sunday Telegraph did add: ‘He has always been determined to avoid the fate of the other great long-serving managers, notably the Scots with whom he most closely identifies: Jock Stein, who left Celtic after being offered the ridiculously inappropriate post of lottery manager; Bill Shankly, who said he wanted a clean break with Liverpool and became embittered after it happened; and of course Sir Matt Busby, whose continuing presence at Old Trafford was blamed for the failure of two successors, even if Ferguson, who came to the club much later, often expressed gratitude for the old man’s advice.’

  The further example of Scot Symon, whom Rangers so callously dismissed soon after he had signed Ferguson, I overlooked amid the urgency of the moment, but this had undoubtedly left a deep and lasting impression on him. Ferguson had developed a theory that management had become an increasingly complicated task, not least because of the proliferation of the media and the activity of agents, and that he could alleviate the burden of his successor as team manager by remaining at the club.