Football – Bloody Hell! (18 page)

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Authors: Patrick Barclay

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In a friendly against Yugoslavia at Hampden Park, Scotland won 6-1 with outstanding performances from Kenny Dalglish and Graeme Souness, who a year earlier, in their Liverpool shirts, had been instrumental in the disposal from the European Cup of Ferguson’s Aberdeen. Ferguson was impressed by a close view of Souness, whose professionalism amended the image that may have been conveyed by those popping champagne corks in the Liverpool hotel.
There was so much talent available to Scotland at the time that Stein could afford to choose between the two young scamps, Charlie Nicholas and Mo Johnston, who, as Ferguson put it in his autobiography, graced as it was by the collaboration of Hugh McIlvanney, ‘sometimes took the view that their quarters were inadequately furnished if they did not have a little female company’. The World Cup qualification began with a 3-0 home victory over Iceland in which Nicholas scored and continued with the 3-1 dispatch of Spain in which Johnston scored twice.
Early in 1985, however, the Scots lost the return match with Spain in Seville and also at home to Wales, a disappointment preceded by tension in the camp when Stein and Ferguson, seeking hints on how to combat the dangerous front pair of Ian Rush and Mark Hughes, met reticence from Rush’s Liverpool clubmates Souness, Dalglish and Alan Hansen. Manchester United’s Arthur Albiston obliged the management by discussing Hughes in detail, but still the Liverpool trio observed an
omerta
. Later Souness alone recognised his responsibilities by helping Stein and Ferguson in private. But the episode cannot have helped the spirit of the squad and may help to explain why only Souness went to Mexico with Ferguson for the tournament.
First, though, Scotland had to qualify. The loss to Wales meant that, even though they proceeded to win in Reykjavik through a goal from the midfielder Jim Bett, whom Ferguson was to bring back from Belgium to Aberdeen, survival depended on the securing of a point in the concluding group match against the Welsh in Cardiff.
It was a long and anxious summer for all Scots with a love of football. A victory in the then customary match against England had emphasised that this squad had the talent to compete at a high level. It would go to waste if the Welsh obtained revenge for the knockout at the Scots’ hands eight years earlier that had been completed by a Dalglish header at Anfield after Don Masson’s conversion of a dubious penalty for handling.
At least a point was needed to earn a play-off against Australia. Souness was to miss the match through suspension and Hansen because he cried off with an injury the day before. Stein muttered to Ferguson that the elegant defender had thereby blown his chances of going to Mexico if Scotland qualified. But, tragically, that was not to be a decision for Stein.
He looked as if he had a cold and Ferguson remembers his taking pills in his hotel room on the day of the match. It was 10 September 1985.
Things went badly for Scotland in the early stages. Hughes had put Wales in front, and deservedly so, at half-time, during which Stein berated Strachan. Strachan was upset and Ferguson tried to encourage him to lift his game and thus dissuade Stein from replacing him with the Rangers winger Davie Cooper. But it was another familiar face that more acutely dismayed Ferguson: that of Jim Leighton, who had been shaky in goal and, it transpired, had just told Stein he had lost a contact lens. Stein eyed Ferguson, who swore he had no idea Leighton even used contact lenses. He later found that even the Aberdeen physiotherapist had been kept in ignorance by Leighton, on whose behalf a spare pair of lenses were henceforth taken to matches.
Suddenly, Stein having decided to send on Alan Rough in place of Leighton, the time for a team talk was over. The tension on the bench was severe and Ferguson asked the doctor, Stuart Hillis, to check on Stein, who by now was grey-faced and perspiring.
Stein went ahead with the envisaged change, Cooper replacing Strachan. At last Scotland were on top, but the possibility that an equaliser might elude them recurred in the mind of the manager, who kept emphasising to Ferguson the importance of maintaining their dignity, whatever the outcome. It was as if he knew he would not be around to see it.
With about ten minutes left, the ball bounced up and hit David Phillips on an arm and Scotland were awarded a penalty. It was a dubious decision by the Dutch referee and Neville Southall, Wales’s excellent goalkeeper, nearly saved Cooper’s kick, but it squeezed in. Stein impassively surveyed the vindication of his team adjustment.
As the seconds ticked slowly away, an intrepid photographer lay on the grass a few feet from Stein’s bulky and hunched figure, directing his lens up at a portrait of stress. Stein rose from the bench, seized the photographer by the feet and, staggering, dragged him away. He sat down again, wordlessly. Then the referee blew for a free-kick and Stein, mistaking this for the final whistle, got up again to shake hands with his Welsh counterpart, Mike England. He stumbled and had to be supported by Ferguson and others until medical help arrived.
When the players returned to the dressing room, they knew of Stein’s heart attack and were subdued. Ferguson left and encountered Souness by the closed door of the medical room. Souness was crying. Stein was dead.
The secretary of the Scottish FA, Ernie Walker, asked Ferguson to ring Stein’s wife, Jean. She had gone to play bingo. She returned home to be told by her daughter Ray about the heart attack. But neither knew Stein’s condition. In vain, Ray begged Ferguson not to tell them he was dead.
Next he went to address the players and staff. As they filed on to the bus outside Ninian Park, he kept remembering Stein’s plea for dignity, and it was observed. Although thousands of supporters waited outside the ground, there was near-silence.
Aberdeen, Itchy Feet and Scotland
F
erguson assumed responsibility for the job of completing Scotland’s qualification for the World Cup – he remained part-time, on the understanding that he and the Scottish FA would review the position after the finals, if Scotland duly got to them – and they succeeded, beating Australia 2-0 at Hampden Park with goals from Cooper and Frank McAvennie in the first leg of the play-off and then drawing 0-0 in Melbourne.
That was in early December. The 1985/6 season, the last Ferguson was to complete in Scotland, was not quite halfway through, but already Aberdeen had a trophy on the sideboard: the League Cup, oddly their first under Ferguson. Two of the goals in a 3-0 triumph over Hibs in the final came from Eric Black. They were also to win the Scottish Cup, rounding matters off with a 3-0 victory, this time over Hearts, as the national squad prepared to head for Mexico, but by now Black was missing.
Rumours that he had been privately negotiating with overseas clubs had proved true; he had told Ferguson near the end of the season that he was joining Metz in France. Ferguson’s reaction was to banish him from the squad and Billy Stark recalled coming in one afternoon for treatment: ‘There was Eric sitting in the dressing room having done a full day’s training while the rest of the players were away preparing for the final. He was doing his penance for having gone behind the manager’s back.’
Ferguson later began to review his behaviour – he had been no gentler towards Black than Davie White had been towards him at Rangers – in the light of a realisation that his feet, too, had been getting itchier from the moment he joined Stein and started working with the likes of Souness and Dalglish. For the players, he recognised, it was mostly a question of money (none got as much as him). ‘Looking back,’ he said, ‘the thing that changed things for Aberdeen was winning the Cup-Winners’ Cup. Because the players got restless – Strachan, McGhee, Rougvie and then Black – and although at the time I was angry with them for wanting to leave the ship, so to speak, in fairness to them they weren’t being paid what they were worth. Aberdeen couldn’t afford it.’ When he had accompanied Archibald to Tottenham in 1980, he had been shocked to discover that the player would receive nearly £100,000 a year.
Yet in that 1985/6 season Aberdeen remained a match for most. The defensive triangle of Leighton, McLeish and Miller seemed eternal, Stark and Weir remained on the flanks, MacDougall still scored goals and the midfield had been lent class by the third of Ferguson’s favourite Pittodrie signings, Jim Bett.
Ferguson, who still clung to the belief that he could emulate Stein by bringing the European Cup back to Scotland, had seen his team dispatch Akranes, their old friends from Iceland, and Servette of Switzerland to reach the quarter-finals, in which they drew IFK Gothenburg. Ferguson had made his first European appearance as a player in Gothenburg – and won his first European trophy as a manager there. ‘I really did believe we could go on and take the big one,’ he said. ‘But, when we were 2–1 up in the first leg at home, Willie Miller, of all people, decided to beat men going up the pitch and lost the ball. It ended 2–2 and after a 0–0 over there we went out on away goals. We even hit a post in the last five minutes.’ IFK went on to secure a 3–0 advantage over Barcelona in the semi-finals, only to lose it at Camp Nou and go out on penalties.
It’s Barcelona or United
B
arcelona were managed by Terry Venables and, at the Englishman’s suggestion, joined a disparate list of clubs which had taken an interest in Ferguson. Around this time, when it was assumed that Venables would be moving on at the end of the season, officials of the Catalan club came to London to interview Ferguson along with Bobby Robson, by then in charge of England, and Howard Kendall, who had guided Everton to the first of two English titles in three years. In the event, Venables opted to stay at Camp Nou and his decision was accepted despite Barcelona’s massive disappointment in that European Cup final, played on the familiar ground of Seville: a team featuring Steve Archibald, whom Venables had brought from Tottenham, lost on penalties to Steaua Bucharest.
Aberdeen were left with their two domestic Cups. Although they had been top of the League when Ferguson, Leighton, McLeish and Miller returned from Melbourne, they finished fourth after winning only eight of twenty matches. Before the start of the next season, he decided he needed a more assertive assistant than Willie Garner. He brought Knox back from Dundee and, in recognition of the status acquired there, made him ‘joint manager’.
Despite this, Aberdeen had slipped to fifth by the time Ferguson left for Manchester United three months into the season, taking Knox with him. They had also succumbed to an instant knockout from the Cup-Winners’ Cup by Sion, their first victims on the road to Gothenburg in 1982/3. The first home match after Ferguson’s departure was against St Mirren. The ground was half empty and there were no goals.
For two years he had been in a deepening rut. But the requests for his services had been coming in for longer than that. In 1981 he was offered £40,000 a year by Sheffield United, who had just been relegated to the Fourth Division. He took more seriously the advances of Wolves, partly because of their history – they had been champions three times in the post-war period and taken part in memorable, pioneering contests with top European clubs. They had also shown signs of renewed ambition after John Barnwell’s arrival as manager. Barnwell had not only broken the British transfer record in signing Andy Gray from Aston Villa for £1.175 million but kept the true cost to (he gleefully calculated) a mere £25,000 by selling the relatively mundane midfield player Steve Daley to Manchester City.
Barnwell, though he nearly lost his life in a crash during which the rear-view mirror of his car became embedded in his skull, had recovered bravely enough to lead Wolves to victory over Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest in the League Cup final of 1979/80, Gray scoring the only goal. But he could not keep the club from the jaws of relegation and was obliged, in early 1982, to resign. He cleared his desk and went home and within a day had taken a telephone call from an erstwhile assistant who said that Alex Ferguson was in the stadium. Ferguson was not, however, being impressed either by what he saw at Molineux or the directors he met.
He had warned Dick Donald that he was going to talk to them – £50,000 a year was on offer – but flew back to Aberdeen more appreciative of his surroundings than ever. ‘The secretary had picked me up at Birmingham Airport,’ he said, ‘and told me I was going to meet the board. I asked why. He said they wanted to interview me. “I’m not here for an interview,” I said. “You’ve offered me the job.” He said they just wanted me to answer a few questions. So I went. But the questions were unbelievable.’
Ferguson smiled at the recollection of how he was told a true story of a young player who had gone to a bank in Wolverhampton, borrowed several thousands of pounds using the club’s name and gambled it away. ‘They asked me how I’d deal with it! I said they should be asking themselves how something like that could happen.’
The final straw greeted him at the stadium. ‘It was an afternoon and there was only one person working there – Jack Taylor, the former referee [a distinguished one, who handled the 1974 World Cup final in which West Germany beat the Netherlands], who was on the commercial side. The place was like a ghost town. I couldn’t get on the plane quick enough.’
His second rejection of Rangers left him on £60,000 a year and he had little difficulty, a couple of months later, in turning down an opportunity to succeed Terry Neill at Arsenal, much though he admired the grandeur of that club. He then engaged in a more prolonged flirtation with their north London rivals, Tottenham Hotspur, whose chairman, Irving Scholar, he found all the more engaging for a passion for football trivia and quiz questions which Ferguson, of course, enthusiastically shared. Once again, however, he found it impossible to leave Dick Donald and a happy partnership in which one would address the other as ‘Mr Chairman’ and be accorded the mock-courtesy of ‘Mr Ferguson’ in return.

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