Sir Alex Ferguson took time to adjust to the routine of having no routine. For 40 years he has not spent a day unemployed. He spent four decades winning games or planning how to win them.
Turning 80 years old this Friday (31), eight after leaving football, one of the greatest coaches in history remains relevant and busy. Until he gets used to retirement, he confesses to having spent long periods riding his bike and answering letters. No emails or WhatsApp messages. Cards.
These days Sir Alex has so many commitments that it scares even ex-players who have been by his side for years. It’s not easy to find him.
“He always has something to do because he’s still very much sought after by Manchester United and other coaches who need advice,” says Denis Irwin, a full-back who played for the team known as the Red Devils between 1990 and 2002.
Ferguson won 49 titles in a coaching career that began in 1972, at the age of 32, in small East Stirlingshire, then in the last positions of the Scottish third division. In one of his autobiographies, “Managing My Life”, published in 2000, he says that the club had no money and the managers were reluctant to make the effort to hire players.
“We didn’t have a goalkeeper in the squad. I told the president that to win games, having a goalkeeper would help,” he told leaf in 2015 when he released, in Glasgow, “Leading”, his last book.
He retired in 2013 after winning the Premier League for the 13th time with United, where he stayed for 27 years and only left by choice. He decided he needed to spend more time with his wife, Cathy. It is unthinkable in today’s football for someone to stay on the same team for so long.
The nearly three decades at Old Trafford, when he turned the team into a world force, was not his only feat that was difficult to repeat. Upon arriving in Manchester, he aimed to unseat Liverpool as the country’s main power. The phrase “I’m going to get you out of that p… p… of pedestal and you can publish it”, told to a journalist, entered the folklore.
In 1990, Anfield’s team held 18 English titles, compared to seven for United. When Ferguson retired, the score had turned: 20 to 18.
He had, before that, broken with Aberdeen the hegemony of the Celtic and Rangers duo in Scotland. He was European Cup champion, beating Real Madrid in the final in 1983. Another result very unlikely to be repeated.
“Sir Alex has an aura. It’s even difficult to explain. If you’re in a room and he walks in, you’ll notice he’s there without having to see him. The authority he exudes is something impressive,” adds Irwin.
In addition to being a constant presence at Manchester United games, Ferguson is still sought after by coaches who want to hear his opinions. It has become a kind of football oracle. In other sports it is also required. Before the 2014 Ryder Cup, it was the Scot who harangued the European team that would face the United States in golf. It worked out.
FIFA asked what he thought about calendar changes. Other professionals who have faced him in the past, such as José Mourinho, Steve Bruce and Sam Allardyce, call him “boss”.
When the possibility arose of Cristiano Ronaldo moving to Manchester City this year, Sir Alex entered the circuit and took him back to Old Trafford.
“He is the best coach I’ve ever had,” said the Portuguese.
Manchester United have not won any Premier Leagues or Champions Leagues since 2013. Every time a player behaves like a diva, the image of control Ferguson exerted is remembered.
Realizing, before the 2000 FA Super Cup against Chelsea, that David Beckham had had a mohawk cut, the coach warned him that with that hair he was out. Would not play. Minutes before taking the field, the midfielder shaved his head in the Wembley locker room.
“The most important person at a club is the coach. Anyone who doesn’t respect that is lost,” he used to say. It referred to itself. He ran everything at United, with the authority of someone who had transformed the team’s history.
Sir Alex fulfilled a function close to being extinct in football: the manager. Someone who runs the professional cast, oversees the base, reads reports, delegates roles and, when necessary, negotiates transfers.
As soon as he saw the impasse in signing Robin van Persie, then at Arsenal, in 2012, Ferguson stepped in. He telephoned Frenchman Arséne Wenger, his colleague and rival on the London team, and resolved the matter within 15 minutes.
“A football coach is like a banker. All the time he manages millions that are not his and he needs to make decisions based on that. In the last ten years, players are more fragile physically and mentally. The coach needs to notice the changes and manage people. It is essential to know how to observe. More than ever, you have to have a high level of stubbornness,” he noted to the leaf in 2015.
The obsession with winning and the search for advantages, even invisible at first, made him innovate. Manchester United were one of the first teams in Europe to hire a full-time nutritionist. This happened in 1991.
After a 3-1 loss to Southampton in 1996, the players complained that the gray uniform was hard to see on the field and caused passing errors. A few days later an ophthalmologist sent him a letter to explain the difficulty in distinguishing certain colors in the speed of departure. She was hired by the club.
“One of the wonders of being in football is meeting people like him. When I see him at Old Trafford it’s a joy,” Pep Guardiola told the BBC in 2018, months after Ferguson suffered a brain hemorrhage that led to hastily operated on .
He would later say that, for fear of dying, he wrote farewell letters to his children and his wife. But his biggest fear was not remembering who he had been.
After three years and cured, he knows who he is. The football world too.
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