Ferguson, Alex - Alex Ferguson My Autobiography

In February the Suárez–Evra affair blew up again when Suárez refused to shake Patrice’s hand in a game at Old Trafford. I brought the players together on the Tuesday of the game and told them, ‘I think you need to be big.’ They were not inclined to be nice about it. I stuck to my theme: you need to be bigger than them. Gradually they changed their minds and came round to the idea of a handshake. Ferdinand, the most experienced player, also had the incident with John Terry and Anton Ferdinand in his thoughts. By the Friday they were fine with it. There would be a handshake from Evra’s side.

I’ve watched the footage several times. Suárez seemed to quicken as he passed Patrice. Perhaps he thought no one would notice that. As Suárez passed him, Evra was annoyed and said something to him. It was all over very quickly, but the repercussions lingered.

When Kenny Dalglish gave his initial pre-match TV interview, he gave the impression that Suárez had agreed to shake Evra’s hand. A club of Liverpool’s stature should have done something about that, but he played in the game all the same. I called Suárez a ‘disgrace to Liverpool’ and said they would be wise to ‘get rid’ of him. I also reprimanded Patrice for celebrating too close to Suárez as the players walked off the pitch.

The whole saga had started at Anfield with Patrice sitting in the corner looking aggrieved. ‘What’s happened?’ I asked.

‘He called me a black —,’ Patrice said.

I told him he would first have to report it to the referee. I went into the referee’s room with Patrice and told the match official, ‘Look, Patrice Evra says he’s been racially abused.’

Phil Dowd, the fourth official, began writing everything down. The referee, Andre Marriner, told me he thought something had happened, but had no idea what it might have been. Patrice said it happened several times. Then they called in Kenny Dalglish. Later, when we were having a drink, John Henry also came in. He was introduced to me but didn’t say much. Steve Clarke’s son was pouring the drinks. One or two from the old school came in to join us.

But nothing more was said. Then it exploded in the papers. Later, Liverpool wore those T-shirts supporting Suárez, which I thought was the most ridiculous thing for a club of Liverpool’s stature. I felt we handled it well, mainly because we knew we were in the right. The FA asked us severaltime not to discuss it, but Liverpool could not leave the subject alone. David Gill would not have allowed any manager to handle it that way. Nor would Bobby Charlton. They are experienced people who know about life. There seemed nobody at Liverpool willing to pull Kenny’s horns in.

Suárez came to the hearing and said he had called Evra ‘ Negrito ’. The specialist said yes, you can call your friend Negrito , but you can’t call a stranger that, in an argument. Then it becomes racist.

I left Evra out of the Europa League game at Ajax five days after the non-handshake at Old Trafford because it was a trying time for him and he needed a break. He’s a strong wee guy. I checked on his state of mind regularly and he would say: ‘I’m fine, I have nothing to be ashamed of, I feel I’ve done the right thing. It’s disgraceful what he said to me.’

He also said he was doing it purely for himself, on a point of principle, and was not trying to fight a larger political battle on behalf of black players.

I think Kenny was falling back on the old chip on the shoulder. The problem, I felt, was that there was no Peter Robinson at Anfield. Peter Robinson would never have allowed the Suárez situation to be handled the way it was. The young directors there idolised Kenny and there was no one to say, ‘Hey, behave yourself, this is out of order, this is Liverpool Football Club.’ Equally, no one could ever overstate Kenny’s dignified and statesmanlike handling of the Hillsborough tragedy, which earned him a level of respect that no later political difficulty could nullify.

After the grandstand unveiling of the statue, another great honour was the FIFA Presidential Award for 2011. At the ceremony I was sitting beside Pep Guardiola and right in front of Messi, Xavi and Iniesta. The three musketeers. I felt privileged to be in that company. As I sat there on my own, the three made their way towards me to shake my hand. Xavi said: ‘How’s Scholes?’ In his own victory speech, Messi said his Ballon d’Or award should go to Xavi and Iniesta. ‘They made me,’ he said. Messi is such a humble lad.

It was a really pleasurable night. Sepp Blatter, the FIFA president, had been very kind with his words and there were video messages from Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, José Mourinho, Eric Cantona, Ronaldo and David Beckham. The point of the award was to recognise my 25 years at Manchester United. I said it was an honour in the ‘twilight of my life’. If you could have seen me at the end of that season, you’d have thought I was right.

I didn’t use mind games with City because I felt we were in control. Patrick Vieira, however, did claim it was a sign of weakness for us to bring Scholes back from retirement in January 2012. In that campaign we had great momentum until we were beaten at Wigan, where we really didn’t play well. The one that killed us was the home fixture against Everton on 22 April. With seven minutes to go, we’re winning 4–2, Patrice Evra hits the post and Everton go and score. Instead of 5–2, it becomes 4–3. When we drew that game 4–4, I felt we had lost the League. City won comfortably at Wolves to reduce our lead to three points, with the Manchester derby at City’s ground to come. It was self-destruction. I knew the City game away was bound to be tough and I thought they would play to kill the game, slow the pace down, give fouls away in our half and move the ball to Nasri and Silva to dribble with. By then, City were versed in such clever tactics.

At the Etihad Stadium we wanted the two wide players to come in all the time to support Rooney, on his own, and play Ji-Sung Park in Yaya Touré’s area to work him all the time. There was nobody better at that than Park. Physically he was not in the same league as Touré, who was in outstanding form, but I needed to try and negate the threat he posed on those marauding runs of his. But I made a mistake. Nani was terrible that night. We brought Valencia on, who did a lot better, but City went 1–0 up and killed the game. Smalling was caught out by a David Silva corner for the Vincent Kompany header just before half-time. It was hard to take.

For the first 20 minutes we were fine. Our possession of the ball was good and we had a couple of half-chances. What we decided to do was keep the channels tight. Zabaleta kept getting to the by-line and winning corner kicks. Nothing came from Clichy’s side. It was all Zabaleta. And it was a corner kick that did for us.

If we had made it to half-time at 0–0 we would have won the game. We had a plan for the second half, a way to play, that involved Welbeck coming on for Park. But Nigel de Jong did him straight away through the back, and that was Danny out for the rest of the season until he played for England. De Jong was only booked for the tackle down Welbeck’s ankle.

Roberto Mancini was badgering the fourth official through the whole game: it was Mike Jones, who I feel is not one of the stronger officials. When De Jong landed that tackle on Welbeck, Mancini came rushing out to protect his player. I told Mancini where to go. That’s what our little clash was about. Roberto tried to dominate the fourth official and I had seen enough. He wanted the referee to come over to him and speak to him so he could get the home crowd going. Andre Marriner left it to Mike Jones to sort out. Yaya Touré was the one who made the difference, no doubt about that. He was the best player against us in the 1–0 game. He was brilliant.