Leading: Learning from Life and My Years at Manchester United Read online

  The relentless perseverance of these men was matched by some players on the pitch. Three for whom I developed great admiration were Tony Adams of Arsenal, Gianfranco Zola when he played for Chelsea and Jamie Carragher of Liverpool. I always thought Adams was a United player in the wrong shirt. Alcohol has ruined the careers and lives of many footballers, and at United the sad legacy of George Best will always loom large in our collective memories, so Tony’s brave confrontation with his demons at the end of the 1990s was, in itself, extraordinary. But it was what he made himself on the field that captured my attention. What he lacked in talent and pace, he more than compensated for in attitude. He was an average player who transformed himself into an outstanding leader through sheer hard work and application. He always had a winning attitude, and handsomely repaid both George Graham’s and Arsène Wenger’s faith in him.

  I thought Zola was a fantastic example of workmanship. He always gave us trouble but he just never gave up. Even though he is a small man, he could more than hold his own with defenders who were eight or ten inches taller and far stronger. He was full of guile, inordinately creative and completely relentless. His approach to the game dovetailed with mine.

  Jamie Carragher trained with United as a youngster. When he was with us he was a midfielder and a mundane, run-of-the-mill player. After he signed for Liverpool, he somehow transformed himself into the heart and soul of the team and its controlling force. In my last season he came on as a substitute in a game that we controlled and I whispered to him, ‘Just a wee word, stop kicking our boys.’ He responded, ‘I’m going to kick every one of them.’ I have spent some time with him since I retired and have been really impressed. I wouldn’t be surprised if he becomes Liverpool’s manager at some point in the future, but first he has to decide if he wants to leave the TV studio and get back into a more challenging role in football.

  At United we have been blessed with many players who have this sort of winning attitude. When winning becomes a way of life, true winners are relentless. Corny though it sounds, the very best footballers were competing against themselves to become as good as they could be. It was no accident that players like Ronaldo, Beckham, the Neville brothers, Cantona, Scholes, Giggs and Rooney would all have to be dragged off the training ground. They all just had a built-in desire to excel and improve. Gary Neville, for example, pushed himself harder because he knew that he did not possess the natural talent of some of his team-mates. I never used to worry about what he was up to on a Friday night because, certainly in his younger years, he would always be in bed by 9.30 p.m.

  David Beckham was also extraordinary. When he came to us he lived in digs, and would not just train in the mornings and afternoons, but would then show up in the evening to train with the schoolboys. When, at the start of the season, we gave players what in England is called the ‘bleep test’, to get a sense of their level of aerobic fitness, Beckham would always be off the scales. The same goes for Ronaldo. He had this desire to become the greatest player in the world and was determined to do so. He also paid tremendous attention to nutrition, which pre-dated his move to England. These days he is religious about taking ice baths after every game so that he can continue to play at the level he demands of himself. He does not touch alcohol, and keeps himself at about three kilograms below his natural weight because, now in his thirties, he has found this helps him maintain his pace.

  In a perfect world I would have filled every team-sheet with 11 men who had as much determination as talent. But life is not like that, and if I had to choose between someone who had great talent but was short on grit and desire, and another player who was good but had great determination and drive, I would always prefer the latter. The former might work well for a brief period, but they never have the staying power that gives a great club stability and consistency.

  The work ethic I have just described of a handful of managers and players is true of the very best athletes in any sport. They have a formidable appetite for work and extraordinary self-discipline. Look at A. P. McCoy, the jockey who won more than 4,000 races and who, over the course of his career, broke every single rib and numerous other bones. His natural weight is about 75 kg, but for about 25 years he has kept himself at about 63 kg. When he announced his retirement, his wife said she would finally have to learn how to cook potatoes. Novak Djokovic, the tennis champion who is a friend of United’s long-time defender, Nemanja Vidić, has a similar intensity. You can only marvel when you hear about his fitness routine and dietary regimen.

  The world’s best footballers are just as disciplined, even though the occasional photograph of them sunning themselves in Dubai or at a nightclub with a young lady may suggest otherwise. They need to work relentlessly, not just because that’s what is required to get to the top, but because there is always someone eager to take their place in the squad. It also explains why almost all football players have working-class roots.

  Understandably, middle-class parents want to make sure their boys go to college or acquire skills which means football never gets as much attention in those households. Around the world, football attracts boys for whom further education is unlikely and who have no choice but to work very hard on acquiring and improving their footballing skills as the path towards a better life. Today the phrase ‘working class’ does not carry the same connotations as it did decades ago, but most of United’s players came from what nowadays are called ‘lower-income households’. I don’t want to sound like an old fogey, but the overall rise in the standard of living means that today’s players grew up with hot water, television, telephones, computers, cars and budget airlines, and in physical surroundings that are far more comfortable than those in which I grew up. I’ve long had a soft spot for people from a working-class background, because I think it prepares them for the hardness of life.

  For almost all the British players who played for me, football was their ticket out of miserable circumstances. Ryan Giggs had a tough start. He was born in Cardiff to a mother who was just 17 and, because his paternal grandfather was from Sierra Leone, Ryan had to deal with racial taunts as a child. As a small boy he was uprooted from Wales when his father, Danny Wilson, left rugby union to become a professional rugby league player in the north of England. His father left the family home, and Ryan was raised by his mother, who was born Lynne Giggs, in Salford, where he developed his footballing touch. Lynne worked two jobs–as a barmaid and auxiliary nurse–though as a single mother never had enough money to be able to afford to buy the best boots for Ryan; but she instilled in him the capacity for hard work. She is a real saint, and Ryan paid perpetual tribute to her when he changed his surname from Wilson.

  David Beckham came from a small house in East London and his father worked as a heating engineer. Paul Scholes grew up in a council house in Langley and Nicky Butt hailed from Gorton–both places where you won’t see a Bentley parked in the drive. Wayne Rooney comes from a hard neighbourhood in Liverpool and gave serious thought to becoming a professional boxer. Danny Welbeck and Wes Brown both grew up in Longsight, a Manchester neighbourhood known for gang violence. Bryan Robson’s dad was a lorry driver. Rio Ferdinand grew up in Peckham, one of the poorest areas of London. The list is endless.

  Over the years I became better at judging the influence of background on a British player, because we would know the family backgrounds and the schools that the boys attended. It was more difficult to judge those sorts of nuances, and the character of a player, when we started recruiting from South America or Eastern Europe. Until around the mid-1990s, the youngsters would also understand their place in the pecking order at the club. They would be responsible for removing mud from boots, cleaning the dressing room and doing ‘balls and bibs’–collecting the balls and shirt bibs that the players had scattered and dropped on the training ground. The boys would understand that the first-team dressing room was strictly out of bounds. Those sorts of rituals probably just made them yearn for success all the more.

  In my last decade as a
manager, I often found the traits I had previously found in British players visible in boys who had grown up overseas. Cristiano Ronaldo certainly knew what it was like to struggle. He grew up in a village in Madeira in a family that had very little money and was brought up by his mother. Tim Howard, who made 77 appearances in goal for United, was raised in New Jersey by a single mother who had emigrated to the United States from Hungary, and held down two jobs after Tim’s father left the scene. The Da Silva twins were another case. They had grown up in Petrópolis in Brazil, and had an astonishing work ethic. Rafael would show up to our training sessions on the coldest of Manchester days wearing a short-sleeved shirt and shorts, while everyone else, including me, was wrapped in layers. At the end of one season I told the pair of them to make sure they got a good rest over the summer, and discovered that their father built a full-size pitch in their hometown so that they could play every day with their mates.

  The majority of the foreign players also made football their ticket to the future. The very best have a deeply ingrained capacity for industry, and intuitively grasp that if you can connect talent and work, you can achieve so much. I came from an era when my father made my Christmas toys, and I suspect some of the foreign players empathise with that. Many of the players we signed came from circumstances every bit as grim, perhaps grimmer, than their British team-mates. Adnan Januzaj, who we signed as a 16 year old in March 2011 was born in Belgium, after his parents fled the brutality of the former Yugoslavia. The Ecudorian Antonio Valencia comes from a very poor background, as did the Brazilian, Anderson. Andrei Kanchelskis, who played for us in the 1990s, grew up in the Soviet Union. Carlos Tévez came from the drug-ridden desolation of the ‘Fort Apache’ neighbourhood in Buenos Aires. Quinton Fortune was reared in a township in apartheid South Africa.

  Sadly, there are examples of players who have similar backgrounds to Giggs or Cristiano Ronaldo, who, despite enormous natural talent, just aren’t emotionally or mentally strong enough to overcome the hurts of their childhood and their inner demons. Ravel Morrison might be the saddest case. He possessed as much natural talent as any youngster we ever signed, but kept getting into trouble. It was very painful to sell him to West Ham in 2012 because he could have been a fantastic player. But, over a period of years, the problems off the pitch continued to escalate and we had little option but to cut the cord. There has been little evidence that Ravel has matured and his contract was cancelled by West Ham in 2015.

  I have an abiding belief about the virtues of tapping the hunger and drive that can be found in people who have had tough upbringings. Whenever we had a setback at United and everyone needed a bit of a boost, I’d always end team talks before a game by reminding the players that they all came from working-class backgrounds where people didn’t have much. I would tell them that it’s almost certain that their grandparents or someone in their family used to be working class and worked hard every day just to survive whereas all they had to do was work hard for 90 minutes while getting paid a lot of money. In retrospect the phrase ‘working class’ might not have meant much to some, especially the foreign players, but I think they all knew people who had been through tough times. We all felt ourselves to be outsiders in some ways, and people who feel like outsiders do one of two things: they either feel rejected, carry a chip on their shoulder and complain that life is unfair, or they use that sense of isolation to push themselves and work like Trojans. I always used to tell the players, ‘The minute that we don’t work harder than the other team, we’ll not be Manchester United.’

  Drive

  For years I’ve tried to fathom out why some people possess greater drive than others. I’m not sure I am any closer to solving that riddle today than I was 30 years ago, but I did learn how to harness that power and as I said, I do know that if I had to pick drive or talent as the most potent fuel, it would be the former. For me drive means a combination of a willingness to work hard, emotional fortitude, enormous powers of concentration and a refusal to admit defeat.

  At United, there were many players who epitomised the drive required to become successful. At the forefront were the likes of Bryan Robson, Roy Keane, Steve Bruce, Mark Hughes, Brian McClair and Patrice Evra. One player’s drive can have an enormous effect on a team–a winning drive is like a magical potion that can spread from one person to another. Bryan Robson was a foreigner to danger. He came from Chester-le-Street, County Durham, a coal-mining area in the north of England, and would plough right into situations that others would avoid. It resulted in him spending a lot of time on the injury list, but it also made him an invaluable leader. Despite dislocating his shoulder several times during his career, he would regularly engage in a daily regime of one thousand press-ups. I used to show players a photograph of Robson defending a corner. His eyes were almost glazed over; he had shut out the rest of the world, and the only thing he was concentrating on was how to make sure that the corner kick was defended properly.

  Roy Keane’s relentless drive was inspirational. Steve Bruce played 414 games in the centre of our defence, was fearless and a great organiser, but he didn’t quite have enough pace. However, like Tony Adams, he made up for his shortcomings with a deeply rooted will to win that was infectious.

  David Beckham had a great thirst for victory, as did Nicky Butt, who made 387 appearances for United and was a local lad. The two Neville brothers who came from Bury (just outside Manchester), and Denis Irwin who, like Roy Keane, came from Cork, all had a distinctive drive. They shared similar characteristics: they were entirely dedicated to the club; all were absolutely reliable players who could be counted on to play in 80 per cent of our games; and all could infect others in the team with their will. None of these players relished the sour taste of defeat. Fortunately, as the years went by, we were able to have more players with this sort of edge in the first team.

  By singling out these players I don’t mean to detract from the others I managed. The reason I mention them is because they did not possess the innate talents of players like Hughes, Cole, Cantona, Verón, Scholes, Giggs and Ronaldo. I use them as examples of drive because, by the application of sheer willpower, undiluted courage and determination, they more than overcame any shortcomings.

  Sometimes the drive got out of control and I had to step in. There was an occasion when we played Middlesbrough that a group of players went after the referee like a pack of dogs and I went off my head with them. But I also wanted to be careful that I didn’t inadvertently demotivate them. The minute you start intruding too far, you take the drive out of the man. Believe me, it is far easier to do that than to put the drive into someone to whom it does not come naturally. You usually cannot instil an edge in a player if somehow or other he didn’t acquire it before he was a teenager. Every now and again there is an example that gives you hope. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer comes to mind. He grew up in a small, quiet Norwegian fishing village, and when he arrived at Old Trafford in 1996 at the age of 23, he looked like a 14-year-old choirboy; there was a certain softness about him. United offered him his first real taste of what victory could be like. He gradually acquired a taste for this and, as a result, became much more aggressive as a player and developed real conviction.

  Conviction

  Most people don’t have inner conviction. Their confidence is easily shaken, they blow with the wind and can be plagued with doubts. I cannot imagine how anyone, without firm convictions and deep inner beliefs, can be an effective leader. As a player my confidence was shaken when Rangers dropped me and wanted me to agree to a transfer as a part-exchange for another player. But I was determined that I wouldn’t let them beat me, and before training I used to go and play nine holes of golf to clear my head and get ready to attack the day. I just resolved not to give in and, when they sold me to Falkirk in 1969, it was on my own terms.

  When I did waver, or at least was not being true to myself, it sometimes took another person to shake me out of my stupor. There was an occasion during my early time at United in 1991 when Jock W
allace, the former manager of Rangers, phoned me and said he was coming to watch us play Southampton. Jock was suffering from Parkinson’s but he was as shrewd as ever and, after the game, we went out for dinner and he said, ‘That’s not an Alex Ferguson team. Once you get an Alex Ferguson team, you’ll be all right.’ It was a wonderful piece of advice because I hadn’t been entirely true to my own beliefs. I knew some of the players weren’t good enough but, instead of selling them, I’d been trying to turn them into something they weren’t capable of becoming. John Lyall, the West Ham manager, told me something very similar. He said, ‘Make sure you see Alex Ferguson in your team.’ Both Jock and John were implicitly telling me to be true to my own beliefs and convictions. Today, I use the same line with other managers I am trying to encourage.

  I don’t remember many periods of self-doubt, particularly after I left Aberdeen. I had worked hard and served a footballing apprenticeship that, from the time I started playing to the time I left Scotland, had lasted more than 29 years, and I had achieved considerable success at Aberdeen. These experiences helped harden my inner beliefs and strengthened my confidence in my own conviction. When I was offered the United job, I was very proud and felt confident in my own judgement and abilities. But after I arrived at Old Trafford, and I saw what I had to contend with regarding the drinking culture, I got a bit rattled. I wondered, ‘What have I got myself into?’ There was a time in 1989 and the start of 1990 when things just weren’t going right with United. Of our opening 24 League games we had only managed to win six, and from the end of November 1989 until early February 1990, it was bleak. We won none of our 11 League games. In fact, after we beat Nottingham Forest on 12 November 1989, we did not win another home game until we played Luton Town on 3 March 1990. The fans were getting restless and the media were sharpening their knives. Compared to the consistent level of success I had experienced at Aberdeen, it was a shock to find myself in that situation. My son Jason, who was in his teens at the time, remembers sitting in the kitchen in tears during this drought, asking whether we could just move back to Aberdeen. He tells me now that I said, ‘No. We’re going to crack on. It’s going to work.’