FERGIE IS KINGOF THE PREMIER LEAGUE
Sorry Roman, sorry Jose sorry Mr Murdoch, but...
SIR Alex Ferguson has been the most influential person in the history of the Premier League. That is the outcome of a Sports
mail study which considered the impact of the 50 most important figures from players to managers, executives, agents, owners and officials since England’s top division was revamped in 1992.
Manchester United’s former boss is the most successful British manager of all time and won 13 English titles with United — all of them em in the Premier League era.
The Scot came top only partly because of silverware, however;ever; the study attempted to produce duce rankings based on a wider der influence than just trophies, es, including the extent to which h the League and its biggestt clubs developed and thrived d on the efforts of particular individuals.
Here are the top 10 figures with the remainder listed below:
1 SIR ALEX FERGUSON
Aged 73, born in Govan, n, Glasgow, raised in a tenementent by a shipyard worker. A decentcent player who became a pub landlord dlord — and then the greatest manager nager in British football history by whatever criteria you wish to pick. . Ferguson — THE dominant t Premier League force for more than 20 years, imposed his will over thousands of players at Manchester United and other clubs, on hundreds of managers, dozens of referees, his club’s owners and sponsors, the FA, the PL, every part of the media, millions of fans. Admired for his work ethic, imagination, steel, loyalty to some and abrasive bullying to others. He was the most influential of all.
2 RUPERT MURDOCH
AGED 84, born in Melbourne but an American citizen who is worth $ 13.4billion. Long ago media tycoon Murdoch stated premium sport would be the ‘battering ram’ of pay TV — in other words that the best way to hook subscribers into pay TV (and later phone, internet, mobile) was to sell them live top-level sport.
The Premier League was Sky’s battering ram. You can argue it remains so. The enduring need for Sky to have live PL games was never clearer than in the recent £5bn auction of live UK rights for 2016-19. Without Sky’s cash we can easily make the case that the PL would be an entirely different, and probably lesser, beast today.
3 ERIC CANTONA
ONE of the most polarising figures ever to take to a pitch, he is the single most influential footballer of the era. If the PL has become anything, it is a non-stop soap opera of characters, weekly dramas, controversy, thrills, spills and bellyaching, money and power, and global appeal via being a melting pot of talent.
All this was embodied in Cantona, the catalyst according to Ferguson for United’s first English title in 26 years. That sparked the reassertion of authority at the world’s biggest club and drove every other to challenge and copy them — from buying Frenchmen to monetising their images to winning. As the old Nike advert once said: ’66 was a great year for English football. Eric was born.
4 ARSENE WENGER THE cerebral Frenchman was coach at Nagoya Grampus Eight when the then Arsenal vice-chairman David Dein persuaded him to succeed Bruce Rioch at Highbury.
It is almost impossible now to overstate the chasm 20 years ago between the monolithic English football culture and Wenger’s erudite philosophy, not just about how the game should be played but on the application of sports science, nutrition, technical development, physiological monitoring and psychological improvement.
What Wenger brought to these shores was nothing short of a football revolution, embodied by his players from Patrick Vieira to Dennis Bergkamp to Thierry Henry to all his Double winners, Invincibles and beyond.
5 RICHARD SCUDAMORE WHEN he arrived as PL CEO in 1999, the four-year TV deals then in place (from 1997-2001) were collectively worth £212million a year.
Scudamore has juggled some testing tasks, from shepherding dozens of clubs with their own agendas to a perceived foreignplayer overload.
He is a remarkable strategist — especially in the TV deals which underpin the PL — bringing in soaring domestic and overseas rights income. The £212m-a-year total TV pot of 2001 will be close on £3BILLION a year from 2016.
Money talks in football. Scudamore delivered it.
6 JEAN-MARC BOSMAN BOSMAN never played a minute of football anywhere in England but legal action by the Belgian midfielder against his club Liege, the Belgian FA and UEFA had a profound effect. He wanted to leave Liege when his contract expired in 1990 but Dunkerque in France would not meet Liege’s price and, under rules then in place, Bosman was stuck there.
He sued for restraint of trade and eventually won freedom of movement for himself and every out-of-contract player in Europe. The Bosman ruling created an open borders workplace of 500 million people.
At the start of the 1990s, there were a couple of dozen foreign players across all PL squads combined. A decade later, almost 1,000 more had passed through.
7 DAVID BECKHAM (AND POSH SPICE)
BECKHAM joined Instagram last month and already has approaching 8m followers. Another 51.6m like his Facebook page.
His wife Victoria has more than 8.5m followers on Twitter. The 2015 Sunday Times Rich List puts their combined wealth at £240m and together they are among the world’s most famous people.
His halfway-line goal in 1996 was followed by the couple meeting in 1997, the World Cup and burned effigy in 1998, then Manchester United’s Treble and marriage in 1999. Thereafter, non- stop adulation from Madrid to LA to Milan to Paris to all parts of Asia.
8 ROMAN ABRAMOVICH
ON July 1, 2003 as news broke that Ken Bates had sold Chelsea, initial reports said the buyer was ‘Roman Abramovicha, a Russian businessman’. Within 24 hours, thousands of articles globally were profiling the billionaire oligarch.
A month later the 36-year- old had spent £111m on the biggest transfer splurge by one football club in one summer, anywhere, ever — changing the PL utterly, and arguably European football.
Abramovich’s wealth was spent on players that broke the Manchester United-Arsenal duopoly of the PL and has since funded 12 years of Stamford Bridge glories.
9 JOSE MOURINHO
STILL only 52, the Portuguese self-styled Special One is already one of the world’s greatest ever managers with major trophies at Porto, Chelsea (in two spells), Inter Milan and Real Madrid.
Between 2003-2012 he won two Trebles, three Doubles, seven league crowns (now eight) and three European trophies, including the Champions League twice.
Thus for Mourinho — obsessive, demanding, aggressive, charming, mean (and generous), egotistical, gobby, meticulous, and above all ‘box office’ — to have opted to work in the PL not once but twice is a statement. Mourinho is what most fans crave: a serial winner.
10 DAVID DEIN (AND GANG)
THE former vice- chairman of Arsenal was a significant force at one of the major clubs of the PL era. He was one of the all-important ‘Gang of Five’ who were among the architects of the PL.
The other four were Manchester United’s Martin Edwards, Liverpool’s Noel White, Everton’s Philip Carter and Tottenham’s Irving Scholar.
The PL duly began for the 1992-93 season.
AND THE REST...
11 Sheik Mansour, 12 Alan Shearer, 13 Kenny Dalglish,
14 Thierry Henry, 15 Lord Taylor (former Lord Chief Justice behind the Taylor report into football safety), 16 Jack Walker,
17= Patrick Vieira, 17= Roy Keane, 19 Sacha Gaydamak (former Portsmouth owner), 20 Harry Redknapp, 21 Ryan Giggs, 22 Ken Bates, 23 Wayne Rooney, 24 Bobby Robson, 25 Peter Kenyon, 26 Juninho, 27 Peter Schmeichel, 28 Gordon Taylor,
29 Gianfranco Zola, 30 Jorge Mendes, 31 Andy Melvin (Sky TV executive), 32 Dennis Bergkamp,
33 Gary Neville, 34 the Glazer family, 35 George Graham,
36 Frank Lampard, 37 Cristiano Ronaldo, 38 Paul Hawkins (goal-line technology innovator),
39= Rio Ferdinand, 39= John Terry, 41 Kevin Keegan, 42 Rune Hauge (controversial football agent), 43 Carlos Tevez, 44 Gary Lineker, 45 Sol Campbell,
46 Philip Don (first professional referees chief), 47 Karren Brady,
48 Didier Drogba, 49 Peter Ridsdale, 50 Steven Gerrard.