Football – Bloody Hell! (40 page)

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Authors: Patrick Barclay

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In addition there was the obvious threat of Mourinho for Ferguson to worry about as he pondered his team’s poor start to the 2004/5 season; in nine matches they had won only twice.
And so Arsenal came to Old Trafford. Still they led the League, still they were unbeaten; indeed, they needed only to draw at Old Trafford to complete half a century of League matches without defeat. Ferguson’s United responded ruthlessly, the Neville brothers appearing to target José Antonio Reyes, a Spanish attacker reckoned to be susceptible to roughing-up.
Arsenal might have been able to survive this but for two decisions by the referee, Mike Riley, that went against them. In the first half, Freddie Ljungberg was bowled over by Rio Ferdinand when going for goal, but no red card was shown. In the second, Wayne Rooney was awarded a penalty despite a suspicion that he had dived over a challenge by Sol Campbell. United won 2–0 and afterwards the tunnel resounded to cries of ‘fucking cheats’ as players faced up to each other.
Who appropriated the slice of pizza from the Arsenal dressing room has always been a matter of conjecture, although Cesc Fàbregas has attracted fingers of suspicion since Ashley Cole’s assurance in his autobiography,
My Defence
, that the culprit was neither English nor French (even though players from Germany and Sweden also played that day). At any rate, United’s observance of the custom that food should be provided for opponents rebounded messily on Ferguson, as Cole chronicled: ‘This slice of pizza came flying over my head and hit Fergie straight in the mush. The slap echoed down the tunnel and everything stopped – the fighting, the yelling, everything. All eyes turned . . . to see this pizza slip off that famous puce face and roll down his nice black suit.’
Again, Ferguson showed restraint. Thierry Henry, having just left the pitch, would have seen the first example of it when Wenger offered to ‘sort out’ their differences ‘here and now’ (the choice between verbal and physical weapons seemed to be Ferguson’s) but not the second. Henry had requested a rerun of the penalty incident and accepted an invitation from Geoff Shreeves, Sky’s man on the touchline, to see it in a room near the tunnel. ‘After that,’ said Henry, ‘I could hear some people making a noise.
‘I came back and remember being unable to get back into our dressing room at first because of the security guards. I know what had happened but it’s difficult for me to talk about it because – and I know this is an Arsène type of thing to say! – I didn’t see it.’
Henry was talking at a distance, in Barcelona, where he was able to reflect warmly on battles that had appeared as bitter as any in the English game. ‘It was a good rivalry,’ he said. ‘I always compare it to a boxing fight. You have two guys trading insults and, at the end, they embrace and say how much they respect each other. It’s the same when two teams are at the top. The respect was mutual, even though people thought we hated each other and were surprised we could shake hands or exchange shirts.’
He agreed that Ferguson and Wenger were, in many ways, from the same mould. Indeed, later that evening he told a story that illustrated it. Wenger, in training at London Colney, had introduced to the Arsenal first-team squad a young defender from the Ivory Coast called Kolo Touré who was on trial with a view to signing. The idea was that he would start by playing in a small-sided practice match, with Wenger watching. Henry took the ball up to Touré and, not expecting the visitor to know his tricks, tried one. Touré was taking no chances. His tackle hit Henry like a blast from a scattergun. ‘He took ball, man, everything. The ball soared into the air and was falling just out of play when Arsène trotted after it and snaked out a leg to control it. But Kolo was still running furiously and, as the boss trapped the ball, hit him as hard as he’d hit me. Arsène went head over heels. We all stopped and gaped. Then Arsène got up. He had this great big grin on his face.
‘“Yes,” he said. “I think we can go to war with this one.” And Kolo joined us.’ It could just as well have been a former United player talking about Ferguson.
Wenger and Ferguson had even become friendly in the latter years of their relationship. ‘It reminds me of my relationship with my brother,’ said Henry. ‘When we were young, we always used to argue. I used to think my brother didn’t like me and always wanted to show him that I could do better than him. And then suddenly we became the best friends in the world. But even now, when we play a game – when there is a competitive element – I will argue.’
The sibling rivalry between Ferguson and Wenger became less intense when Arsenal stopped winning trophies. Maybe that was coincidence. Ferguson, after all, never fell out with Mourinho when the Portuguese was top dog.
Fighting Back
B
ack in that first season of Mourinho’s, their friendship did not constrain the Chelsea manager from accusing Ferguson of influencing the referee during the goalless first leg of a League Cup semi-final in the January. But Chelsea won the second leg 2–1 at Old Trafford and proceeded to collect Mourinho’s first trophy in England by overcoming Liverpool at the Millennium Stadium.
Their fourth and final meeting of the season came almost at its end. Chelsea had won the title with three matches to spare, and the second of those was at Old Trafford. Ferguson arranged that his men should applaud them on the field and some, notably Roy Keane, did so with more grace than others; Gary Neville clapped sarcastically.
Chelsea, such a consistent side that the only League match they lost had been at Manchester City in October, gave one of their more flamboyant performances, with Eidur Gudjohnsen outstanding in a 3–1 victory.
Long before the final whistle – and even though it was United’s last home match and an opportunity to send them to Cardiff for the FA Cup final with a bit of encouragement – the crowd had begun to drift away. More than half of the initial 68,000 had gone when the players did their trudge of honour, joined by Ferguson, who was limping. It would have been a cruel picture that showed him next to the relatively young and extremely handsome Mourinho and naturally we wondered if the new man, with all the wealth of Abramovich behind him, would be the death of Ferguson’s career.
Ferguson was fortunate in one way. He was able to rue a series of embarrassing errors in the transfer market – Kléberson, Eric Djemba Djemba, Liam Miller, the young French flier David Bellion – while bedding in the classy pair who were going to feature in his, and United’s, renaissance.
Cristiano Ronaldo had already spent a season with him when England went out of the European Championship in Lisbon in 2004, beaten on penalties after leading when the eighteen-year-old Wayne Rooney broke a bone in his foot. And Ferguson had booked Rooney for the next season. He would just have to wait for the foot to heal.
In just twenty-nine League appearances, five as substitute, Rooney was to get eleven goals, which made him United’s leading scorer in a lean season by their standards (they finished third). With a further three in the FA Cup, he helped them to the scoreless final, in which they performed well but lost to an undeserving Arsenal because, although Rooney and others put their penalties away, Paul Scholes had his saved by the outstanding Jens Lehmann.
Again United had fallen in the first knockout round of the Champions League: to Milan, whom Liverpool, now under Rafa Benítez, were to beat on penalties in the Istanbul final after extraordinarily clawing back a three-goal deficit.
Meet the Glazers
S
o there was no trophy to celebrate at Old Trafford – but the fans still gathered there. Not so many as usual, and in a radically different frame of mind, for there was anger when, in May 2005, news broke that John Magnier and J. P. McManus had sold their 29 per cent stake in United to the Glazers.
As the Americans had built up their shareholding, the head of the family had replaced Magnier as Public Enemy No. 1. In Florida, Malcolm Glazer might have been known to Tampa Bay Buccaneers fans as ‘The Leprechaun’ because he was short with a ginger beard, but perceptions of him had come to play so badly across the Atlantic that, when shares sold by the United director Maurice Watkins were later bought by the Glazers, his car was daubed by militant supporters. When the purchase of the Irish shares gave them control, an effigy of the old man was burned at Old Trafford.
The stadium was no longer guarded, incidentally, by Ned Kelly, the former head of security, and his lieutenants. In 2002 he had been the victim of a sting by a newspaper which accused him of ‘touting’ tickets. He had been heartened by a telephone call from Ferguson, who said he had spoken to David Gill and been assured that a rap on the knuckles would suffice: ‘Keep your nose clean, Ned. You’ll be okay. Trust me.’ Four days later, Gill sacked him and, Kelly recalled, he rang Ferguson, from whom there was an embarrassed silence, broken by a nervously mumbled ‘Keep in touch, Ned’ and the click of a receiver being replaced.
Security became more of an issue than ever once the Glazers’ takeover had been completed in June 2005 – eight years after Ferguson had been introduced to Magnier and McManus, beginning the final stage of the process through which United turned from a footballing institution into a commodity. Malcolm Glazer’s sons Joel, Avi and Bryan joined the board and the company went private again.
Magnier and McManus had taken £240 million for their 29 per cent, which gave them a profit estimated at £130 million.
United, once a model of prudence, had a debt of £650 million and this was what concerned well-wishers. While Magnier and McManus laughed all the way to Barbados and the Glazers worked out how best to manage their investment, the club had to pay interest to its new owners’ banks and other lenders, including hedge funds.
The Winter of Keane
T
he 2005/6 season, with Van Nistelrooy and Rooney finding the net regularly and Ronaldo chipping in ominously, brought a trophy – Wigan were beaten 4-0 in the League Cup final – and a rise to second place in the League, which Chelsea won again. But that Portugal had become an unhappy hunting ground for results (if not players) was emphasised when United lost to Benfica in Lisbon, meekly departing the Champions League at the group stage.
They were coming to terms with the end of an era. It would be wrong to say that United were missing Roy Keane, for the leader had become one long winter of discontent; you could hardly hear his bones creaking for the grumbles: about fellow players, most notably Rio Ferdinand, that caused Ferguson to sanction the scrapping of an interview for MUTV; about the training facilities on a trip to Portugal – he fell out with Ferguson on that one; and, of course, about the kind of fans he imagined munching prawn sandwiches.
When Ferguson spoke of his fondness for strong-willed players – ‘I’m happy seeing myself’ – the man you envisaged was Keane. He was the Ferguson trade-off writ large. The unnecessary and unprofessional acts, the suspensions from big matches and the near-inhumanity of his utterings about Alfie Haaland after he went over the top at Maine Road were outweighed, to Ferguson’s mind and those of the overwhelming majority of United fans, by inspirational performances. Even many Ireland fans forgave his rant at Mick McCarthy which caused him to be sent home from the 2002 World Cup before it had started.
And, to give Keane his due, a recognition that he was his own only true enemy seemed to lead to his finest form in his late twenties and early thirties. While remaining tough – a tunnel warning to his arch-foe, Arsenal’s Patrick Vieira, not to pick on Gary Neville made unforgettable television – he played with more than enough discipline and intelligence to cement a place among the great United players of all time.
At thirty-four, however, he had lost his edge and in November 2005 Ferguson let him join Celtic, the club he had supported as a boy. He lasted six months before retiring and became a manager, initially with great success, at Sunderland.
Among those with the unenviable task of covering the ground Keane had vacated was Darren Fletcher, not an instant crowd favourite yet a midfield player who was to prove one of the most impressive graduates from United’s youth ranks since the Beckham era. If ever Ferguson’s faith in a footballer was vindicated, Fletcher was the example; a few years on, in 2009, when he was suspended from the Champions League final in Barcelona after being shown a late yellow card at Arsenal, almost as much dismay was expressed as when Keane and Scholes had missed out in 1999.
In 2005, just before the Champions League exit in Lisbon, the young Scot helped to set the tone for an improved League campaign with a home winner against Chelsea. But Mourinho’s team more than avenged this with a sumptuous display in clinching the title with a 3-0 victory over United at Stamford Bridge and Mourinho believed that, but for the gradual breakdown in relations between himself and Abramovich and henchmen in his third season, Ferguson might not have got it back in 2006/7. Who knows? Mourinho’s fourth season started badly and his job went to Avram Grant.
José and the Boss
J
osé Mourinho was always going to have a choice of destinations. He chose Italy and it was there late in 2009, when he was striving to win a second successive Serie A title with Internazionale, that he reflected on his contests with Ferguson: ‘Professionally, the easiest for me was in the Champions League with Porto. It was different when Chelsea and Manchester were the two big powers. People often say it is harder to coach a smaller club. But it is easier. With a big club you have to win every trophy, every game. That is why to have been at the top for more than thirty years is proof of how strong Alex is. Life at the top can make people very tired. The old man who wants to win every game can only be admired. He deserves a statue at Old Trafford.’

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