Football – Bloody Hell!

by Patrick Barclay

  He spoke so fondly of Rooney and the selfless adaptability that had enabled the manager to include Hargreaves in Moscow: ‘I just felt that, with Chelsea so strong in midfield, I had to give myself the option of Hargreaves [initially on the right] in case we needed to bring him into the central area at some point, which we did because of their dominance in the second half. They created a couple of chances. But bringing Hargreaves in stopped the rot.

  ‘In order to do that, we put Rooney wide right and I know it’s not his best position.’

  Ferguson dwelt on Rooney’s selflessness: ‘He’s not a selfish player, not a selfish boy. He’s a committed winner and this leads him to make sacrifices to the detriment of his individual performance. As a team player, he is absolutely fantastic. He tells me things like “I can play centre-half – I played there for my school, you know.” And I have to tell him, “Wayne, but we’re playing Drogba today.” The attitude he’s got is a terrific asset to this club.’ And, quite clearly, to the manager. Rooney had taken the exemplar role, following in the line of Cantona and Keane.

  When someone mentioned Rooney’s wife, Coleen, the response from Ferguson was interesting: ‘Clever girl. Down-to-earth. Good.’ For some reason an image of Victoria Beckham came to mind and you sensed that Alex Ferguson had seldom been happier in his work than now. As Ryan Giggs had said of his own elastic career: ‘When you’re young, you think it’s never going to end. When you get older you get an appreciation of the finishing line. You want to enjoy every game . . . savour every moment.’

  Not that Ferguson was relieved of life’s little problems. Such as the necessity, once more, to find a new assistant. Early in the spring Queiroz had been courted by Benfica and Ferguson, reluctant to lose him again, mentioned the Old Trafford succession. Then the Portuguese national team, with whom Queiroz had a history – he had supervised the development of the so-called ‘golden generation’ of Luís Figo, Rui Costa and others – asked him to be their guide to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, where he had also worked, as national team manager. He had to accept, and went with Ferguson’s best wishes.

  Queiroz, an affable man whose love of the game ran deep, told me that Ferguson, when first hiring him, had summarised the job by mentioning the renowned Jaguar marque of sports car and saying: ‘Manchester United is one of those. Make sure it is ready to drive.’ Queiroz had done more than this. He had come to do too much for the taste of an ageing Keane, who moaned about his tactical ideas, and other players thought him gifted but obsessive, but Ferguson, into whose ear he was never slow to whisper advice, had such a regard for Queiroz that he frequently recommended him as his own successor.

  Ferguson had developed a habit of tipping people for this elusive job (McClaren, for example) who would be likely to show gratitude by keeping him on as a valued confidant. But three League titles and a Champions League in his five seasons marked Queiroz out as a particularly high-class assistant. In Europe especially, Ferguson’s reputation had benefited from his acumen.

  His role went to Ferguson’s old utility player Michael Phelan, who, though not as convincing as the urbane Queiroz in post-match interviews in front of the Match of the Day cameras (Ferguson still would not do those), shared in a third consecutive title celebration.

  An extraordinarily eventful season, even by Ferguson’s standards, began with a scoreless Community Shield match against Portsmouth, who had won the FA Cup under his old friend Harry Redknapp. It involved a mid-season trip to Japan during which United became world champions, then a Carling Cup final in which he surrounded Ronaldo with reserves and yet still beat Redknapp’s Tottenham on penalties, then an FA Cup semi-final in which the reserves lost on penalties to Everton. There was a Premier League title triumph despite the best challenge yet from Liverpool under Rafa Benítez, who launched an attack on Ferguson’s dirty tricks, and finally a Champions League final defeat by Barcelona.

  Ferguson also found time to blood an entire outfield team of youngsters, farm others out on loan and sell a couple, raising more than £6 million from Sunderland and Burnley for the striker Fraizer Campbell and defender Richard Eckersley, as if to prove that the income stream from United rejects still flowed.

  Three of the youngsters – Rafael and Fabio da Silva and Rodrigo Possebon – came from Brazil. Kiko Macheda was from Italy (and you could still hear the howls of complaint from Lazio). Zoran Tšsić was from Serbia, Ritchie de Laet from Belgium. Jonny Evans, a central defender from Northern Ireland, had been impressive on loan at Sunderland and was ‘a Manchester United player’, swore Ferguson. So was another Irishman, the midfielder Darron Gibson, a calm player with a ferocious shot.

  A couple of them looked the part, it was true, but we remembered how Ferguson had sung the praises of, among others, a winger called Luke Chadwick who was supposed to offer a more direct and challenging alternative to Beckham but who ended up in the lower divisions. So, when he tipped the English striker Danny Welbeck to make Fabio Capello’s squad for the 2010 World Cup, we reached for the salt cellar. In order to give them the best chance of making it, he had to keep their heads up. And, if it didn’t work out and they had to be sold, it would be the price that stayed up.

  Rafa’s Rant

  Ronaldo’s final season at United began in his absence. The previous season had been a long one for him, with the European Championship, and he returned to the side as a substitute in the fourth League match, a bruising 1-1 draw at Chelsea. He then started scoring as if he had never been away: eight in as many League matches. He was sent off in a 1-0 win at Manchester City, and quite bizarrely, after he had seemed instinctively to handle a corner in the City penalty area. But United gathered pace in December. They were just behind Liverpool when the statement that came to be known as ‘Rafa’s Rant’ was issued by the Anfield manager on 9 January.

  Benítez was responding to a series of apparently crafty complaints Ferguson had made. About, for instance, fixtures being arranged in a way that put United at a supposed disadvantage. Benítez tried sarcasm: ‘There is another option – that Mr Ferguson organises the fixtures in his office and sends it to us and everyone will know and cannot complain . . .’

  On referees, he mentioned an FA campaign and asked: ‘How can you talk of Respect and criticise the referees every week?’ Not just criticise them: ‘We know what happens every time we go to Old Trafford and the United staff. They are always going man-to-man with the referees, especially at half-time when they walk close to the referees and they are talking and talking.’ In the manner David Elleray had noted when he was a leading referee.

  As for the mind games, it had got to the stage where Ferguson’s very existence was polluting the atmosphere. All he had to do was break wind and the press would portray it as an insult to a rival manager or club. At the start of the season, he had mentioned that Chelsea’s average age was higher than United’s and been accused of making mischief when all he had done was make a reasonable observation. That was hardly his fault. But his claim that the League fixtures were intended to hamper United by giving them difficult away matches in the first half of the season was nonsense and, as Benítez noted, any advantage in the second half of the season – which any manager would prefer – would go to United.

  What Ferguson said might have been vaguely self-parodic – but it wasn’t funny because it seemed casually to insult a game which most of us believed to have honest referees and, for that matter, fixture compilers. Moreover, it exposed for the umpteenth time the element of hypocrisy involved in railing against supposed trouble-making in the media while remaining such an arch-exponent of the black art himself.

  The response from Benítez ran to several hundred words, including: ‘I am surprised that United are starting the mind games so early. Maybe it is because we are top of the table.’ Three weeks later, after draws with Stoke, Everton and Wigan, they were second.

  United never relinquished the leadership, despite Liverpool’s staggering 4-1 triumph at Old Trafford in March. Fernando Torres
utterly dominated Nemanja Vidić, who was sent off, as he had been in a 2–1 defeat at Anfield early in the season. At Fulham, where United lost 2-0, Wayne Rooney’s frustrations with fellow players seemed to impel him to hurl the ball too near the referee, Phil Dowd, who showed him a second yellow card.

  The match after won them the title, for they were losing at home to Aston Villa, one of the best away sides in the League, when Ronaldo equalised with his second majestic goal of the match and then the young substitute Macheda, having lost his marker with a deft flick, curled the ball round Brad Friedel’s dive for a stunning winner two minutes into stoppage time. It was all so reminiscent of the Steve Bruce double against Sheffield Wednesday in the run-in to Ferguson’s first title in 1993.

  And that was it. Benítez’s Liverpool, though the only points they dropped in their last eleven matches were in a 4-4 draw in which Andrei Arshavin scored all of Arsenal’s goals from their only four attempts, could not catch Ferguson’s United. Had the points dropped after Rafa’s Rant made the real difference? Here the Machiavellians had a better case than in 1996, with Kevin Keegan. But who knows? Ferguson was just doing what came naturally.

  Beaten by Barca

  The 2008/9 title triumph was all the more praiseworthy because being European champions brought United extra commitments: the European Super Cup match in Monaco at the end of the summer, which they lost to Zenit St Petersburg without anyone taking much notice, and Fifa’s Club World Championship. This was the tournament which the club had helped to launch in Brazil nine years earlier. It now took place in Japan. United, beating Gamba Osaka 5–3 and the Ecuadorian club Liga de Quito 1–0, won it, again evoking little reaction from the folks back home.

  Defending the Champions League did matter and, after negotiating a group containing Celtic, Villarreal and Aalborg, Ferguson took on his friend Mourinho; Inter were no match for United, who were given more trouble by Porto, qualifying for the semi-finals through a stunning free-kick by Ronaldo at the Dragão. And so they met Arsenal, whose progress had been uncharacteristically dogged. United, however, swept Arsène Wenger’s team aside. Although their goalkeeper, Manuel Almunia, restricted United to a John O’Shea goal at Old Trafford, the second leg proved electrifyingly one-sided.

  Here was Ronaldo at his very best. Ferguson used him at centre-forward, flanked by Ji-Sung Park and Wayne Rooney with a tight trio of Darren Fletcher (by now one of Ferguson’s big-match men), Michael Carrick and Anderson behind them. After seven minutes Ronaldo pulled the ball back and, after the young Arsenal full-back Kieran Gibbs had slipped on the turf, Park scored. Three minutes later a Ronaldo free-kick beat Almunia for pace at his near post. So it was all over long before United struck again on the hour with a devastating counter-attack. Ronaldo began it with a backheel and, after Park had found Rooney on the left, rounded it off from the Englishman’s fine pass.

  There was still time for a regret: as Cesc Fàbregas ran through on Edwin van der Sar, Fletcher snaked out a leg, but his tackle was deemed foul and a red card ruled him out of the final. Ferguson watched with a mixture of incredulity and contempt for the Italian referee, Roberto Rosetti, but it had been a reckless challenge given the state of the match. Robin van Persie’s conversion of the penalty was incidental.

  From Park’s point of the view, the night was to end more happily. As usual, the post-match gathering of press featured a little group of South Koreans. Park had scored, they pointed out – but would he once again be disappointed when the team was picked for the final? ‘I don’t think he’ll be disappointed this time,’ said Ferguson, all but promising Park a place, just as he had done with Paul Scholes the year before.

  And Park duly trotted out in Rome. The team shape was unchanged from the Emirates Stadium, with Ryan Giggs coming in for Fletcher. As for Barcelona, an unkind combination of injury and suspension had obliged Pep Guardiola, at the end of his first, extremely promising, season in charge, to recast the defence with Yaya Touré, normally a holding midfielder, next to Gerard Pique, once of United, in the middle. Both Andrés Iniesta, whose last-minute goal had won a roller-coaster semi-final against Chelsea, and Thierry Henry played with injuries that would have kept them out of a less important match.

  In the first minute, Ronaldo struck a free-kick with such power that Víctor Valdés could only parry; Park tried to pounce but was thwarted by Pique. ‘But for what Gerard did at that moment,’ said Henry, ‘it could have been a different match.’ For another nine minutes, Barcelona were embarrassingly nervous. Unforced errors sent the ball out of play; Touré and Carles Puyol ran into each other.

  ‘It was the narrow escape from the free-kick,’ said Henry. ‘We just couldn’t settle. There was a corner kick straight after, and then a couple of crosses. You realise you’re lucky not to be behind and you kind of forget who you are for a while. It’s like when a great boxer gets knocked down. It doesn’t mean he won’t win the fight. But for the rest of the three minutes, until he hears the bell, he’s going to struggle. In football, unfortunately, there’s no bell.’

  Yet it began to toll for United as early as the tenth minute. Guardiola had made a significant tactical change in starting with Samuel Eto’o rather than Lionel Messi to the right of the front trio so that Messi could link with Iniesta in the middle. Suddenly Iniesta broke from midfield and fed Eto’o, to whose teasing Nemanja Vidić responded by standing off, an extraordinary decision that the striker punished by squeezing a shot past Van der Sar.

  ‘After that, we believed we would win,’ said Henry. ‘Once we are in front, we seldom lose the game. It suits the way we play. When the opponents come at us, we can get at them. And, as soon as guys like Andrés and Xavi got on the ball, we played our game. That was what the boss had told us to do. “No matter what happens today,” he had said, “I want the world to know, and to appreciate, and to recognise, the way we play.” Those were his words. Okay, he gave us all the tactical stuff as well, but those were his only words of motivation.’

  From Xavi’s cross, bent almost mischievously so that Rio Ferdinand, like Vidić earlier, was put in two minds, little Messi headed a second goal and it was left to Ferguson to congratulate the winners. Henry was talking to Patrice Evra on the pitch when he walked over. ‘Well done,’ he told Henry. ‘You deserved it.’

  He paid further tribute to Guardiola in the press conference, adding: ‘It’s a credit to them that they pursue their football philosophy.’ Barcelona’s passing game had indeed made them popular champions, though Henry stressed: ‘The most important thing is the way everybody works. It’s not just one or two pressing – it’s everybody. If you want to win, you have to do it. Pressure, pressure, pressure. And it’s tiring – I can tell you!’

  Ferguson would have approved of that. But, as the inquest began, he wasted little time in letting it be known that something had gone wrong with United’s preparation: something that could be put right if the sides met again. He did not define it. It was as Mourinho said. He was already playing the next game. In case fate was to bring United and Barcelona together again.

  Ronaldo Goes, the Debt Grows

  By the start of 2010, Manchester United’s debts had grown to more than £700 million and it looked as if much of what would otherwise have been Ferguson’s transfer budget was being diverted by the Glazers to pay their interest bill.

  The Old Trafford crowd seemed to have turned into a vast protest meeting – ‘Love United, Hate Glazers’ was the slogan – and had even changed hue from the familiar red to green and gold, the club’s colours in its original incarnation as Newton Heath, its name from inauguration in 1878 until 1902. Scarves in these colours became prevalent on the steep slopes. Meanwhile, a group of wealthy men known as the Red Knights and led by Jim O’Neill, head of global economic research at Goldman Sachs and a United fan of unquestionable credentials who had briefly served on the board in the mid-1990s, plotted a takeover from the Glazers.

  The odd aspect was that Ferguson maintained a friendship with O’Neill.
For he also maintained strong and boldly audible support for the Glazers. If he felt any sense of shame over the Glazers and the consequences of his having encouraged Magnier and McManus to buy into the club, he hid it under a mountain of praise for the stewardship of the Americans who had in turn bought out the Irish pair.

  His most memorable paean was delivered, with perfect timing, in the wake of the Champions League triumph over Chelsea in Moscow in 2008. Back at Carrington less than thirty-six hours after the final penalty at the Luzhniki Stadium, he dispensed the club’s champagne and lauded the Glazers for having ‘balls’, swearing that they would keep Cristiano Ronaldo out of Real Madrid’s clutches for at least two years and maybe a lot longer, which proved hopelessly optimistic; within one year, a world record offer of £81 million had proved irresistible.

  Now Ferguson’s United, who used to break records as buyers, were sellers and Real, whom Ferguson had come to detest, appeared to be using them almost as a feeder club.

  Ferguson had been able to claim that he wanted to sell Beckham. And that was certainly the view of the episode that Beckham conveyed to me four years on. Having been invited to the David Beckham Academy in the Docklands of east London the morning after England’s removal from the European Championship by Croatia in 2007, I asked if he thought he could have continued at the top level with United. ‘I believe I could still be playing for them now,’ replied the thirty-two-year-old exile, now playing his club football with LA Galaxy, smiling as he added: ‘But I’m not the manager.’

  Nor was he going to leave the subject there. ‘I’ve just read Bobby Charlton’s autobiography,’ Beckham said, ‘and it was interesting to see what he wrote about me leaving United, because he talked about seeing the contract I was offered and the amount of money involved. Well, I didn’t see any contract, let alone the “excellent, generous” offer he was talking about. Whether it was kept back by certain people I don’t know.’ Would he have stayed if such riches had been tendered? Beckham’s look verged on the withering. ‘I’d have played for Manchester United,’ he said, ‘for free.’