Alex Ferguson My Autobiography (20 page)

I could have signed him earlier. I was ready to make the bid when he was at Celtic but Dermot Desmond, Celtic’s majority shareholder, rang me and said, ‘You’ve let me down, Alex, you’ve got tons of players, we need him.’

A month after Henrik went back to Sweden, we registered one of our greatest European victories: the 7–1 win over Roma on 10 April, our highest Champions League score. There were two goals each for Michael Carrick and Ronaldo, one from Rooney, Alan Smith and even Patrice Evra, who scored for the first time in Europe.

Top games of football are generally won by eight players. Three players can be carried if they’re having an off night and work their socks off, or are playing a purely tactical role for the team in order to secure the result. But half a dozen times in your career you achieve perfection where all 11 are on song.

Everything we did that night came off. For the second goal we produced a six-man move of one-touch passing. Alan Smith scored from a Ryan Giggs pass between the two centre-backs. First time – bang, in the net. Brilliant goal. So you have these moments when you say: we could not have improved on that.

I remember taking a team to Nottingham Forest in 1999 and winning 8–1. It could have been 20. Roma were a bloody good side too. They had Daniele De Rossi, Cristian Chivu and Francesco Totti, and we absolutely slaughtered them. We had been beaten 2–1 in Rome, where Scholes had been sent off for a suicidal tackle right on the touchline. The boy was practically off the pitch when Paul arrived with his challenge. So we were under some pressure in the return leg. Until the goals started flying in.

Wimbledon away in the FA Cup in February 1994 was another classic. In a 3–0 win we scored one goal with 38 passes. People talk of the best Man United goal being Ryan Giggs’ in that FA Cup semi-final against Arsenal, or Rooney’s overhead kick against Manchester City, but for me that goal at Wimbledon was sublime. Every player in the team touched the ball. In the first minute of the game, Vinnie Jones tried to do Cantona. Crack. Down went Eric. All our players ran towards Jones, but Cantona said, ‘Leave him alone,’ because he was a fellow ex-Leeds player, and may have felt a kinship. Then he patted Jones on the back as if to say, ‘You can kick me if you like but you won’t stop me.’ Cantona was marvellous that day and scored our first goal with a beautiful volley that he teed up for himself with his right foot.

People always said Wimbledon couldn’t play. That’s not true. The quality of the service to their front players was high, especially the crosses. Their set-piece delivery was terrific. They were not devoid of talent. What they did was use those talents as a weapon against weaker people. If you didn’t head the ball, you were dead. If you couldn’t handle set pieces you were dead. If you wanted to get into a 50–50 with them – no chance. They were hard to play against. So that 3–0 win in their ground was special to us.

Two big wins over Arsenal also stand out. In a 6–2 win at Highbury in the League Cup in 1990, Lee Sharpe scored a hat-trick. On another occasion, in February 2001, we beat them 6–1 at Old Trafford. An Irish family had bought an auction prize to see us play at Liverpool in December 2000, but were fog-bound and unable to travel. We lost 1–0 to Liverpool in a horrible game. They rang me and asked, ‘What are we going to do?’ I told them, ‘We’ve got Arsenal at home soon.’ And they saw a 6–1 massacre. What a difference. It was 5–1 at half-time. Yorkie tore them apart.

Despite our 7–1 win over Roma, our Champions League campaign was ended by a 3–0 defeat in Milan on 2 May. We had been forced to field a full team on the previous Saturday in order to beat Everton 4–2 at Goodison Park, while Milan had rested nine players for their game against us, which was on the Tuesday. We were simply not as well prepared as our Italian opponents. We conceded twice in 15 minutes, it bucketed with rain, and we just couldn’t break out of our own half. We simply weren’t ready for it. Winning on the Saturday had been a mammoth task because we had been 2–0 down against Everton, yet we won the game to move five points clear in the League.

Along with Tévez and Larsson, other global talents joined us. Carlos, through his Portuguese connections, told us there was a young boy at Porto from Brazil called Anderson. He was 16 or 17. We kept an eye on him. He was in and out of the team. A game here, an appearance from the bench there. Then he played against us in the Amsterdam tournament and I resolved to act, but the following week he broke his leg.

When his recovery was complete, I sent Martin over to watch him in every game for four or five weeks. Martin said: ‘Alex, he’s better than Rooney.’

‘For Christ’s sake, don’t say that,’ I told him. ‘He’ll need to be good to be better than Rooney.’ Martin was adamant. At that stage, Anderson was playing off the striker. At the end of the tournament we moved to buy both him and Nani, who I went to see for myself. What attracted me to Nani was his pace, strength and aerial ability. He had two fine feet. All the individual attributes were there, which brought us round to the old question: what type of boy was he? Answer: a good one, quiet, could speak English reasonably well, never caused any problems at Sporting Lisbon, and was an excellent trainer. My word he’s a fit boy. Gymnastic, too. His athletic read-outs were always first-class. So the foundations were there. Carlos went over with David Gill: called into Sporting Lisbon to sign Nani and then drove up to Porto to capture Anderson. All in one day.

Two years on, we were able to say that the reasons for signing them were correct. There were complications with Anderson in the winter of 2009–10. He wasn’t playing as much as he would have liked to and wanted to return home. He was Brazilian, and the complication, as ever, was the World Cup, which he was desperate to play in. His scheme was to go to Vasco Da Gama for the rest of the season so he could play in the South Africa World Cup of 2010. ‘You’re not leaving here. We’re not investing millions of pounds in a player so he can shoot off to Brazil,’ I told him. Lovely personality, Anderson.

I have always respected Brazilian footballers. Name a Brazilian player who doesn’t excel in big games? They were born for the big occasion. They have a special quality: deep pride in themselves. Great belief. There is a myth that Brazilians regard training as an onerous interruption to a life of pleasure. Not true. They train conscientiously. The notion that they hate the cold is another fallacy. The two Da Silva brothers for example: no tracksuit bottoms, no gloves – out they go. No country can apply the rich mix of ingredients you gain from a top Brazilian player. Argentines are deeply patriotic but I found they lack the expressive personalities of Brazilians.

With Nani we were buying pure raw material. He was immature, inconsistent, but with a wonderful instinct for football. He could control the ball with either foot, head the ball and he bristled with physical strength. He could cross, shoot. When you buy a player with all those talents, the trick is to put them in order. He was a bit disorganised and needed to be more consistent. It was inevitable that he would work in Ronaldo’s shadow because he was a winger from Portugal with some of the same attributes. Had he been from Serbia, no one would have made the comparison. But both Ronaldo and Nani had come through Sporting Lisbon, so they were always being studied side by side.

Ronaldo was blessed with outrageous talent, and was brave, with two great feet and a wonderful leap. It was perhaps daunting for Nani to assert himself as a Man United starter against that backdrop. To be up against Ronaldo in team selection was a problem in itself. In his first year he was on the bench a lot. Nani picked up the language quickly but Anderson took longer. Because he’s Brazilian, though, he brought incredible self-belief to the job. Brazilians think they can play against anybody.

I would say to Anderson: ‘Have you seen this Neymar in Brazil?’

‘Oh, great player. Fantastic.’

‘Have you seen Robinho?’

‘Wonderful. Incredible player.’

Every Brazilian name I mentioned would elicit this response. He thought everyone back home was world class. When Brazil battered Portugal in a friendly, Anderson told Ronaldo: ‘Next time we’ll play our fifth team to give you a chance.’ Ronaldo was not amused. That’s the kind of country Brazil is. I love that story about the competition in Rio to unearth new No. 10s and thousands turning up. One boy travelled for 22 hours on a bus. It’s a massive country, with talent everywhere.

I look back less fondly on our move for Owen Hargreaves, who was phenomenal in the summer of 2006 and was just the type of player we needed to fill the gap left by Keane. We started to put together a bid for him. But I studied his playing record and felt a tinge of doubt. I didn’t feel a strong vibe about him. David Gill worked hard on the deal with Bayern. I met Owen’s agent at the World Cup final in Berlin. Nice man, a lawyer. I told him we could develop Hargreaves at United. It turned out to be a disaster.

Owen had no confidence in himself whatsoever. He didn’t show nearly enough determination to overcome his physical difficulties, for my liking. I saw him opt for the easy choice too often in terms of training. He was one of the most disappointing signings of my career.

He went everywhere in search of cures for his various injuries: Germany, America, Canada. I felt he lacked the confidence to overcome his injuries. It went from bad to worse. He was away in America for the best part of a year. He saw Hans Müller-Wohlfahrt, the club doctor at Bayern Munich, for his calf. In the games he did actually play, I had no qualms about his contribution. He was lightning quick and a great set-piece deliverer. He could play right-back, wide right or central midfield. I played him wide right in the 2008 final against Chelsea, and when we started to struggle against their midfield three, I put him in the middle of the park with Rooney wide right and it worked. He had definite value. But it was all lost in the fog of his lack of games. Yet Hargreaves was fantastic for England at the 2006 World Cup, plugging gaps, racing to the ball.

In September 2011, we took a blast from Hargreaves about how he had been supposedly let down by our medical staff in his time with us. He claimed we had used him like ‘a guinea pig’ for treatments for his tendonitis and various knee problems. We took legal advice and could have proceeded against him, but the doctor was not sufficiently offended to seek legal redress. We did the best for that lad. No matter what the staff did for him, he created his own agenda.

I would say to him, ‘How are you this morning?’

‘Great, boss,’ he would reply. ‘But I think I’ll do something on my own. I’m feeling it a bit.’

One of his allegations was that we picked him for the Wolves game in early November 2010 when he had asked not to be selected. Rubbish. Three weeks before that fixture, he had advised us that he would be ready for such and such a date, which happened to be a European tie. I was reluctant to bring him back in a European game after he had been out for so long. There was a reserve game that week, which he was meant to play in, but he withdrew.

In the week of the Wolves game, to my knowledge, he said nothing to our staff to indicate he had a problem. My concern, which I expressed to Mick Phelan, was that he would pick up an injury in the warm-up. My understanding was that he told one of the players he was feeling his hamstring a bit. When he came in from the warm-up, I specifically asked him: ‘Are you all right?’ I said it to reassure him. My message was: enjoy it. Well, he lasted five minutes. His hamstring went. But it was no surprise.

When I signed him, there was something about him I didn’t like. The thing every good leader should have is an instinct. Mine said to me: ‘I don’t fancy this.’ When he came over to Old Trafford for the medical, I still had some indefinable doubt. He was very hail-fellow-well-met. Almost too nice. Kléberson also left me with doubts, but only because he was so timid, and could barely look you in the eye. He had good ability, Kléberson, but he paid too much attention to what his father-in-law and wife wanted.

I read later that the FA were going to fast-track Hargreaves into coaching. That’s one of the things that’s wrong with our game. That wouldn’t happen in France or Germany or Holland, where you would spend three years earning your stripes.

Bébé is the only player I ever signed without first seeing him in action. We have a good scout in Portugal who had flagged him up. This boy had been playing homeless football and became a triallist for a second division team. He did really well. Our scout told us, ‘We need to watch him.’ Then Real Madrid were on his tail. I know that’s true because José Mourinho told me Real were ready to sign him and that United had jumped in front of them. We took a wee gamble on it, for about 7 million euros.

Bébé came with limitations but there was a talent there. He had fantastic feet. He struck the ball with venom, off either foot, with no drawback. He was not the complete player, but we were coaching him to be better. We farmed him out to Turkey and he injured his cruciate knee ligament after two weeks. We brought him home and put him on remedial work, then in the reserves. He did all right. He trained well in the short games, eight v. eight, goal to goal. On the big pitch his concept of team play needed work. With feet like his he was capable of scoring 20 goals a season. He was a quiet boy, spoke reasonable English, and had obviously had a hard upbringing wandering the streets of Lisbon.

With so many players coming in, I was proud of the work we did on those who were to end up with other clubs. In the spring of 2010, for instance, there were 72 players throughout Scotland, Europe and England who had been through an apprenticeship at Man Utd. Seventy-two.

Fabio Capello told a good friend of mine that if you put gowns and masks on Man Utd players, he could spot them a mile away, which was quite a compliment. Their behaviour and training stand out. We had three in Denmark, one in Germany, two in Belgium, and others all over the place in England. We had seven goalkeepers out there, none of whom had made the first team: Kevin Pilkington, Michael Pollitt, Ben Williams and Luke Steele among them.