Alex Ferguson – the man who’s done it all

Despite enjoying an illustrious career as a player and management in football spanning over 50 years, he’s still bitter about the 3 shillings a sixpence that he paid for a cup final ticket that he didn’t get paid for back in the day.

On the 6^th of November, Sir Alex celebrated 25 years managing Manchester United.  Over the 25 years that Alex Ferguson has spent there, chewing gum sales in Manchester have rocketed, they have won numerous titles and he is now nurturing the third generation of youngsters to come through the Manchester ranks.  When talking about the club’s youth policy, Ferguson says “we have a nucleus of young players aged around the 20-21 mark who can be the nucleus of what we regarded as the Giggs, Scholes, Neville, Beckham era.”

Ferguson now boasts that he can build towards the future as he knows that his position is highly unlikely to be in any danger any time soon. But the history of the club could have been so different if reports about Ferguson being on the verge of the sack after a disappointing 1988-89 league campaign were true. Ferguson held onto his job and hasn’t looked back since winning 12 premier league titles, 2 European cups, 9 domestics cups and this includes the famous treble win in 1999. This should perhaps send a message to football club owners to avoid modern day managerial sackings to managers who simply aren’t given enough time to develop a squad, like Sir Alex Ferguson has done at Manchester United.

Losing is something that doesn’t come naturally to Sir Alex, although in recent years since he has got a bit older he says he has “mellowed” and he acknowledges he has a “short fuse” but says “it goes away quicker now”. After a Manchester United loss or a bad performance, everyone always wonders are they going to get the hairdryer treatment.  But Ferguson claims this is just a myth. He says “it’s completely exaggerated, but I don’t like people arguing back with me”.

When Sir Alex turns 70 in December, the obvious question is about retirement. In 2005 Ferguson said “Obviously I’m not going to be here in 10 years, I don’t think I’ll be here in four years”.  3 years later he then said he could retire in 2011. But now we are fast approaching 2012 and the Scot more recently in 2011 said “I just don’t think about retirement anymore”. So it seems that the eventual successor to Sir Alex’s throne will have to wait a little longer.

Sir Alex credits a lot of his success to the continuity of his backroom staff. Many of his current back room staff used to play for Manchester United and a lot of his ex-United players join his backroom staff once their careers are over, such as Mike Phelan and Brian McClair are currently part of the staff at United along with one of the newest members, recently retired Paul Scholes. It seems that not only is “Fergie” shaping the future of England footballing talents but also there managerial talents with several ex-United players making decent career’s out of management, none yet as successful as his.

Calum Steel @CalumSteel