Coe: I was so close to getting Sir Alex to manage the Olympic football team
LORD COE has only two notable regrets about the Olympics he delivered to London 10 years ago today — one is that school sport became neglected and the other is how close he came to recruiting Sir Alex Ferguson to lead the British football team.
It is loosely known that Coe attempted to lure the former Manchester United manager to Team GB, but he reveals on this milestone anniversary of the Games that Ferguson had gone as far as accepting the post.
Those efforts were eventually muffled by the United hierarchy, with Stuart Pearce coaching the British side to the quarter-finals, and Coe, who was the head of the 2012 organising committee, continues to live with the thought of the one that got away.
In discussing that summer of sport, he said: ‘What am I disappointed about? That school sport became a political football. We could have done more off the back of the Games.’
Expanding on the near miss with Sir Alex, Coe added: ‘We got very close. I came up with the idea because we were having a bit of fragility around our Celtic cousins. It suddenly occurred to me the one unifying influence in all that would be having a not necessarily English coach.
‘I didn’t speak to a soul about it but I rang up Bob Charlton and said, “Am I out to lunch here?” He said, “No, I’ll tell Alex to give you a call”.
‘Weeks went by. I was in a Tesco in Cobham on a Friday night and I got a call. It was a no ID and I was at the butter and fats counter and he said, “Seb, it’s Alex here”.
‘I threw a load of cash at one of my daughters to keep filling the trolley and I said, “This is the stuff for a long conversation, I’m in the supermarket”. ‘I took him through the idea and he said, “Well, I don’t know”. Then there was a gap and he went, “Oh Jesus, I’m already picking the team in my head”.
‘I later went to the BBC review of the year and Alex was there. Alex looked at me and said the answer’s yes. I said fine.’
The plans ultimately came up short, with Ferguson having said in 2011 that he would have been too busy with his United commitments. Coe added: ‘I’ve always laughed with Alex afterwards. He often wonders whether he missed out on a really good experience.’ With today marking a decade since the London Games, the debate has resurfaced over whether a tangible legacy was delivered for the £9billion price tag. Coe said: ‘The thing I was most proud about was the transformation of East London.
‘If you looked at the league table of deprivation in the UK then Newham and many of those Olympic boroughs sat pretty much at the top of that. There’s been massive development.
‘ London was also seen as creative, competent, multicultural and reaching out to the world, proud of our history and protective of our heritage. That was a really strong legacy.
‘I do look back with affection and some nostalgia to the way the nation came together in such a profound way, and not just over the three weeks of the Games. It was a period where people were more at ease with each other.’