WORLD PRAYS FOR SIR ALEX
Messages of hope and goodwill flood in from around the globe after football icon has surgery
SIR ALEX FERGUSON is a colossus who has dominated the lives of so many of us who love football for the past 30 years. In many ways, he still dominates our game five years after he retired as manager of Manchester United. He is still the yardstick against whom every other manager is judged. And, inevitably, every other manager falls short.
When he presented Arsene Wenger with a silver vase at Old Trafford last week, it was impossible not to compare the two and think that for all the great things Wenger achieved at Arsenal, Ferguson outdid him in longevity and dwarfed him with the number of trophies he won.
A succession of managers have tried to step into his giant shoes at United and have struggled in his shadow. David Moyes and Louis van Gaal found it hard to cope when they tried to lift the club back to the heights Sir Alex, 76, had scaled.
Even a manager with the astounding record and coaching reputation of Jose Mourinho is struggling to drag the club back to anywhere near the level it reached under Sir Alex. United is so big it can overawe some managers. It never did that to Ferguson. So it was only natural that news he had undergone emergency surgery for a brain haemorrhage at a Manchester hospital yesterday should send shockwaves around the football world. It spread great alarm and concern among those who feel they owe him a debt they can never repay for enriching their lives through the conquests of his football team.
Wishes and prayers for Sir Alex flooded in from around the globe. And just as tellingly, they came from clubs across England, too.
Clubs, in many cases, who are bitter rivals of Manchester United but who appreciate all too keenly that Sir Alex long ago became someone who transcended club rivalries and is an ambassador for both the English and Scottish game.
And from United fans came one overriding message, a great outpouring of love and support.
‘Every single one us loves Alex Ferguson,’ began to spread on social media as a sign of solidarity with him and his family as he fights to recover from the operation.
Footage, which seems especially moving now, of United fans singing it at his last game in charge of the club at The Hawthorns in May 2013, was widely disseminated. Some expressed their emotions by saying that Ferguson is the best manager the sporting world has ever seen. Well, hyperbole is natural at a time like this but it is hard to disagree. His record stands up to the best of the best.
Who else would be in his category. Vince Lombardi, perhaps, the legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers. Phil Jackson, too, the man who coached Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls and Kobe Bryant’s LA Lakers. Bob Paisley, who won three European Cups and six league titles with Liverpool. The baseball coaches, Casey Stengel and Joe McCarthy, who enjoyed great success at the New York Yankees.
Everyone will have their favourites but Sir Alex has got to be a big part of any conversation about the greatest. Not just for the success that he had at United, winning 13 league titles and two European Cups, but for the way he built the modern United and became synonymous with it and with managerial excellence.
He was bigger than any of the players he managed, too. It was about him, not them. He was lucky to work with some great talents but there was never any question that he was the glue which held it all together. He was the man upon whom everything rested. History has already taught us that no one was more irreplaceable than him.
Part of Ferguson’s genius is that he always managed to stay ahead of the curve. He did not build just one great team at United. He built four. He managed to be old school as well as a great innovator and moderniser. He managed foreign players as well as he managed homegrown players. He was a master of man-management.
What set him apart from Wenger, his greatest domestic rival, was that he adapted as the years passed. He evolved when Wenger could not. He understood that his tactics and his management of players had to change as players grew more powerful but he never lost his own power to control them. He did it by the force of his personality as much as anything else.
Most of those who he managed, particularly the players now often known collectively as the Class of 92 — young, mainly local players who came up through the youth ranks — feel an unconditional loyalty to Ferguson and deep gratitude for what he did for them.
The bond between them is still strong. Less than a year ago, Ferguson opened the renovated Peninsula Stadium of Salford City, the club owned by Gary Neville, Phil Neville, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt. The speech he gave that day reminded everyone what an inspirational mentor he had been to each of those players.
When he was a manager, he was both a champion of young bosses rising through the ranks and an implacable foe to his rivals. He was a manager who would never, ever give up, which is one of the reasons why so many were seeking solace in his character traits as they prayed for his recovery last night.
As a journalist, United’s Treble in 1998-99 was the greatest football story I’ve ever covered.
It would only be correct to point out, too, that I once wrote an entire book based on the idea that he had carried on too long at United. That worked out well. In fact, it was a spectacular misjudgment. The book came out in 2006. He won a second Champions League and a clutch of league titles after that.
I can also say that interviewing him in his office at United’s old training ground at The Cliff in the late Nineties, where his famous Hacumfigovan sign was near his desk, was one of the great privileges of my career. When he was not berating journalists, Ferguson was the most erudite and intelligent of managers. His intellect stretched way beyond the narrow confines of the football pitch and he was a fascinating interviewee.
It is hard to imagine the game without him. It is hard to imagine United without him. After everything that he contributed to English football, after the joy that he brought to so many for so long, all those who have any feeling for the game will hope fervently that he is soon well enough to return to Old Trafford and stadiums around the country to continue enjoying his retirement, allowing us all to wallow in the memories of the great teams he built.