I couldn’t talk for 10 DAYS after brain haemorrhage says Sir Alex
Legend’s trauma as he admits: I was terrif ied of losing my memories of family and football
SIR Alex Ferguson has revealed for the first time how a brain haemorrhage robbed him of the power to speak – and left him terrified that he would not regain his voice.
The Glaswegian football legend, manager of Manchester United for 26 years, suffered a bleed on the brain nearly three years ago and had to have emergency surgery.
In a new documentary about his life, the 79-year-old, one of the world’s most successful football bosses before retiring in 2013, reveals his anguish at being unable to talk as he lay in hospital recovering from surgery to relieve the pressure on his brain.
After the operation, doctors told his family there was an 80 per cent chance he would not survive and the next 24 hours were crucial.
Sir Alex said: ‘I couldn’t get a word out and that was absolutely terrifying. You’re trying to force it out but you can’t. When the doctors came in, I was crying because I felt helpless.
‘In football, I had always been in control of the situation but with my health I suddenly had no control. I remember falling and after that I don’t remember a thing.’
‘I was also afraid of losing my memories. I’ve had a great memory all my life, so everything was going through my mind – “Is my memory going to be bad? Am I ever going to speak again?”.
‘It would’ve been a terrible burden on the family, having me sitting in the house and I don’t know who I am or who they are.
‘Two of the doctors came in and said, “Right, we want you to write your name, your family’s names, your football team’s name, your players’ names and I just kept writing and writing. Looking back at the notebook, it’s impossible to read it now. I’d just kept repeating the word, “Remember”.
‘Eventually, after about ten days, my voice came back and I realised then that my memory was fine. I found out later that on the day I was admitted they had dealt with five brain haemorrhages and three had died, so I was very lucky.’
The feature-length film, which premiered last night at the Glasgow Film Festival, follows the football legend from the heartstopping moment he collapsed at home to his fight for life in hospital, followed by his recovery from surgery.
In one of the most harrowing scenes, his son Jason, 49, who directed the documentary, can be heard calling 999 and making an emotional plea to the emergency services to come quickly.
With previously unseen archive footage and testimonies from his wife, Cathy, and his three sons, Sir Alex Ferguson: Never Give In also charts key moments in his life − growing up in Govan, Glasgow, and his career as a player, before celebrating his triumphs in management at Aberdeen FC and, later, Old Trafford, where his teams won 38 trophies, including two Champions Leagues and 13 Premier League titles.
Former colleagues and players, such as Eric Cantona, Ryan Giggs,
Gordon Strachan and his managerial number two, Archie Knox, also make appearances in the film.
The project is the result of hours of recorded conversations between Sir Alex and his son, which began in 2016. After the premiere last night, in a Q&A session with Scots TV and radio presenter Edith Bowman, Sir Alex said: ‘It was important for me to do an open and honest, no-holds-barred account of my life.’
Sir Alex fell ill at his home in Wilmslow, Cheshire, on May 5, 2018, and was rushed to Salford Royal Hospital. His son said: ‘I got a call from Mum to say Dad had fallen, and that was the brain haemorrhage. It became one of the key moments of his life, so it became one of the key moments of the film.’
At the time, doctors said Sir Alex was ‘extremely lucky’ to be alive − and he said that seeing the entire documentary for the first time was a ‘powerful moment’.
Many would imagine that Sir Alex’s proudest moments would be related to football. But he says one of the highlights of his life was leading the engineering apprentice strikes in Glasgow in the early 1960s, when he used his firebrand temperament as a shop steward to negotiate a higher wage for his colleagues, who were on £4 a week.
The documentary features rare footage of Sir Alex, who served a five-year apprenticeship as a toolmaker in the US-owned Remington Rand typewriter factory in Hillington, Glasgow, on a protest march.
He said: ‘There are moments in life when you feel you did something worthwhile. I was a part-time footballer and earning £14 a week, so I was better off than them. We were out for weeks and it became a national strike. It was one of my proudest moments, getting them a pay rise.’
The film is released in cinemas on May 27 and on Amazon Prime Video on May 29.
The Glasgow Film Festival is online at glasgowfilm.org/festival.
‘I was crying because I couldn’t get a word out’