Portrait of a true legend
SIR ALEX FERGUSON: NEVER GIVE IN Cert 12 ★★★
In cinemas on Thursday and Friday, on Amazon Prime from Saturday
Sir Alex Ferguson has never been a fan of journalists, banning reporters from press conferences and boycotting BBC interviews for more than seven years.
As his son Jason directs and conducts the interviews in this compelling documentary, Fergie probably knew he wasn’t to get the “hairdryer treatment” he famously unleashed on his disobedient young players. But Jason still manages to show us a fresh side to his belligerent father. Shot shortly after his near-fatal brain haemorrhage in 2018 and crammed with archive footage stretching back to his early days in Glasgow, this beautifully edited film finds English football’s most successful manager at a moment of great vulnerability. He has no recollection of his stroke but he is eager to record the memories that define his identity.
The story begins with Ferguson growing up in the shadow of the Clyde shipyards, playing part time at St Johnstone while working as an apprentice toolmaker and shop steward.
Later, he’ll attribute the success of his young Manchester United side to his socialist ideals of “unity” and “standing up for yourself ”.
For the most part, this is a hugely sympathetic portrait, but Jason manages to slip in a few testing questions, getting his father to admit to resentment towards Rangers for the Protestant club’s hostility towards his wife Cathy’s Catholicism.
The centrepiece is the 1999 Champions League final, where the camera stays on the dugout as Teddy Sheringham knocks in the injury time equaliser.
“It was as if fate had come along and said, ‘It’s your turn, Alex,’ he recalls. That was Ferguson’s Manchester United – a closely knit team built on the ego of one extraordinary individual.
His son Jason directs the film showing us a fresh side to Fergie’s belligerence