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Sir Alex Ferguson
| Category: | Manager |
| Year Inducted: | 2002 |
Profile by Robert Galvin, the author of The Football Hall of Fame, the official book of the National Football Museum Hall of Fame:
Alex Ferguson, the first manager to win the championship title three seasons in a row, bore a heavy burden of expectation at Old Trafford before restoring Manchester United to the pinnacle of domestic and European football.
‘It’s no good building a side that can win just one title,’ Ferguson once said, referring to the scale of the challenge facing him. ‘You have to build a dynasty.’
Three times within a decade Ferguson led his side to the Double of league title and FA Cup, a unique feat for a manager in England. In the triumphant 1998‑99 season, the Champions League trophy was added to complete an unprecedented Treble.
In 2008, Sir Alex, by now the longest serving manager in the game, guided his side to a second Champions League triumph, this time at the expense of domestic rivals, Chelsea - a victory that was all the more poignant given that it fell on the 50th anniversary of the Munich air crash. ‘This success means everything to me,’ Ferguson said afterwards.
The list of English domestic honours amassed by Ferguson over the years reads: 10 Premier League titles, five FA Cups and two League Cups. Add to that a European Cup-winners’ Cup success in 1991. ‘Alex has been successful, while maintaining a great tradition for attacking football at the club,’ said Bobby Charlton, who was instrumental in bringing Ferguson to Old Trafford.
When Ferguson headed south from Aberdeen in 1986, he took charge of a club weighed down by history. More than a quarter of a century had passed since the last championship success, dating back to the days of Matt Busby. United were languishing just above relegation zone and morale was low.
Ferguson built from the back: Viv Anderson, Steve Bruce and Gary Pallister came into the defence, in front of Peter Schmeichel (‘The buy of the century,’ according to Ferguson) in goal. Then, finally, came the inspired signing of Eric Cantona from Leeds United ‘on a hunch’, as the manager put it.
In 1992-93, the inaugural season of the Premiership, the club finally broke through. Twenty-six years of ‘collective cursing and frustration’, as he put it, were at an end. In order to consolidate that success, Ferguson signed Roy Keane from under the nose of a furious Kenny Dalglish at Blackburn. In his first season, United won the double for the first time in their history.
Unrelenting in his demands, Ferguson loathed complacency. Several former players have spoken of the ‘hairdryer treatment’, a torrent of ‘in-your-face’ criticism directed at any player failing to show the level of commitment he demanded.
‘Decision-making is not done for me, and not done for you, it’s done for the club,’ he repeatedly told his players. ‘Loyalty,’ he once wrote, ‘has been the anchor of my life’.
‘I will do everything I can for the players off the field, but when it comes to selecting the team I have always had a ruthless streak,’ he said. ‘The team always comes first.’
From the start, Ferguson has put the emphasis on developing talent. Manchester United reached the FA Youth Cup final two seasons in succession in the early 1990s, a throwback to the run of success in the competition enjoyed by the club four decades earlier, the era of the famed ‘Busby Babes’.
The treble-winning side had a solid core of youngsters, often local lads, brought up through the ranks: Paul Scholes, Gary Neville, David Beckham and Nicky Butt.
Ryan Giggs, the first and most celebrated product of that system, said: ‘Tactically, he has the gift of seeing problems or advantages in a game very quickly and he knows how to change it right away.’
‘Youngsters want to come here because they know that the manager’s philosophy is that if they are good enough then they will get a game irrespective of age,’ Bobby Charlton, a club director, said.
‘He has a photographic memory, an encyclopaedic memory for individuals and games,’ Craig Brown, the Scotland manager said. ‘Alex understands psychology and he knows how to assert himself. There’s no side to him. He’s never two-faced. He’s right out with what he thinks.’
Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, asked once how he would have run Manchester United had BskyB’s proposed takeover in 1998 succeeded, replied: ‘You would have left Alex Ferguson there and prayed he lived forever.’