Ferguson, Alex - Alex Ferguson My Autobiography

Avram Grant is a nice man. My fear was always that he might not be strong enough for that group of Chelsea players. Their behaviour in the final was terrible, dragging themselves out for the second half one at a time, giving the referee stick on the way into the dressing room. A team goes out together, they don’t amble out one by one. The referee had been urging them to get a move on, but they just ignored him. At the interval they tried every trick in the book. That might have played on the referee’s mind when Drogba was sent off.

The red card for Drogba followed a clash with Carlos Tévez, which brought Vidić over to support his team-mate. Up went Drogba’s hand to flick Vida’s face. If you lift your hands, you’ve no chance. My understanding was that the referee asked the linesman who the offender had been. And boomph, Drogba was off. By then we had already restored our hold on the game. Drogba’s dismissal was not the turning point. Giggs had a shot cleared off the line. We created chances in extra time and should have killed them off. Chelsea, in my view, played for the draw and gambled on winning the shoot-out.

Though he was removed from the fray that night, Drogba was always a handful for us. He was a powerful, big lad, but what marked him out in my book was a talent for spectacular goals, say, on the turn, from 30 yards. I was surprised to see him missing from the team-sheet against us in a game during Carlo Ancelotti’s finals weeks in charge. Torres started, but Drogba came on to score and force Chelsea back into the match.

From that Chelsea team, which we found it difficult to play against, the goalkeeper, Petr Ĉech, was outstanding. I should have signed him at 19 when I had my chance. Instead, Chelsea took him that summer for £8 million.

John Terry was always an influence in their team. Ashley Cole always gave them energy going forward. And Frank Lampard was incredibly reliable and consistent from box to box. He avoided defensive work a bit in his prime, but he was end to end and hardly missed a game. With Drogba, they were the core, the central five. They were a powerful presence in the dressing room.

At no point before the game did I accept that Chelsea would be under more pressure than us by virtue of Abramovich’s Moscow background, though he was there in the stands, gazing down on his vast investment. I didn’t see that as a factor in the game itself. Security was my main concern. Moscow is a city of great mysteries. I’ve read books on the Russian Revolution and on Stalin, who was worse than the czars, killing his own people to collectivise agriculture. We took two chefs with us, and the food was mostly fine, unlike in Rome, where it was a joke, a disgrace.

What a season Ronaldo had in that European Cup winning campaign. Forty-two goals for a winger? In some games he played centre-forward, but he was essentially a wide man in our system. In every game he would create three chances for himself. I watched him one night at Real Madrid and he had about 40 shots on goal.

Moscow was a relief, above all, because I always said Manchester United ought to be achieving more in Europe. It was our third European Cup victory and took us closer to Liverpool’s five. I always felt we would match Liverpool’s total within a reasonable stretch of time, even after the two defeats to Barcelona in 2009 and 2011, because we had earned extra respect in Europe. With a win in either of those Barcelona finals, we would have been on four, equal with Bayern Munich at the time, and with Ajax.

In our moment of triumph there was no champagne to be found at the Luzhniki Stadium. In the absence of the real stuff, staff were dispatched to a bar to buy some kind of fizzy liquid. Heaven knows what it was. ‘I can’t even offer you a glass of champagne,’ I apologised to Andy Roxburgh, who came into our dressing room to congratulate us. Whatever was in those bottles, we shook it about and made a fuss. There was a lot of hilarity and nonsense, with the players giving each other stick. You’re pleased and proud of them. I was soaked to the skin from the rain, and forced to change into my tracksuit. There was no sign of Abramovich and I don’t recall any Chelsea players coming in.

The 1999 final in Barcelona, when we beat Bayern Munich, fell on the late Sir Matt Busby’s birthday. Sometimes you hope the gods are with you, or that old Matt is looking down. I’m not a great believer in coincidences, but there is such a thing as fate, and I wondered whether it played a hand in both victories. Matt had taken our club into Europe when the English League was firmly set against it. Matt was shown to be right because English football has had some glorious nights in Europe.

With a major trophy in your possession, you should always buy players to refresh the squad and avoid the risk of stagnation. It was in the weeks after Moscow that we added Dimitar Berbatov to our squad. Berbatov had been on our target list before he moved to Spurs. He had talent in abundance: good balance, composure on the ball and a fine scoring record. He was a good age, tall, athletic. I felt we needed a bit more composure in the last third of the field, the attacking third.

But it ended up as a scrap with Daniel Levy, the Tottenham chairman, which left us reluctant to return to Spurs for players. This was our second trip on the Big Dipper following our move for Michael Carrick. You come off dizzy. You can’t discuss both sides of the issue with Daniel. It’s about him, and Tottenham, nothing more, which is no bad thing from his club’s perspective.

eighteen

FIRST of all, you must tell them the truth. There is nothing wrong with presenting the hard facts to a player who has lost his form. And what I would say to anyone whose confidence was wavering is that we were Manchester United and we simply could not allow ourselves to drop to the level of other teams.

Faced with the need to confront a player who had performed below our expectation, I might have said: ‘That was rubbish, that.’ But then I would follow it up with, ‘For a player of your ability.’ That was for picking them back up from the initial blow. Criticise but balance it out with encouragement. ‘Why are you doing that? You’re better than that.’

Endless praise sounds false. They see through it. A central component of the manager–player relationship is that you have to make them take responsibility for their own actions, their own mistakes, their performance level, and finally the result. We were all in the results industry. Sometimes a scabby win would mean more to us than a 6–0 victory with a goal featuring 25 passes. The bottom line was always that Manchester United had to be victorious. That winning culture could be maintained only if I told a player what I thought about his performance in a climate of honesty. And yes, sometimes I would be forceful and aggressive. I would tell a player what the club demanded of them.

I tell young managers now: don’t seek confrontation. Don’t look for it, because you can bet your life it will come your way. If you seek a clash, the player is placed in a counter-attacking role, which gives him an advantage. When the former Aberdeen, United and Scotland captain Martin Buchan went to manage Burnley, he punched the captain on the first Saturday. ‘That was a good start, Martin,’ I told him.

He was a very principled guy, Martin Buchan. In his playing days, he moved to Oldham and was given a £40,000 signing-on fee, which was a lot of money back then. Struggling for form, he handed the £40,000 back to the board. He couldn’t bring himself to keep money he felt he had not earned. Imagine that happening today.