Sir Alex Ferguson has spoken about the fear he felt on his return to Old Trafford, four months after suffering a brain haemorrhage in May 2018.
The former Manchester United manager was 76 and had been retired for five years when he was taken ill. His comeback match was a Premier League fixture against Wolves, watched from the directors’ box, and he admits he was unsure how supporters would react. “I was terrified,” he told BBC Breakfast. “I wish I could say I was comfortable. I wasn’t.”
He need not have worried. Ferguson and his wife Cathy were given a standing ovation as they took their seats before kick-off. “My wife was with me, and she was nearly crying,” he said. “When we sat down, she said ‘that’s fantastic’.”
Speaking as he approaches his 85th birthday, with a new book coming out, Ferguson said of his health: “I’m feeling quite good despite small injuries.” He also revisited the aftermath of his surgery, when he lost the ability to speak. “I had lost my voice; I couldn’t speak,” he said. “That was a frightening moment. I remember my grandsons coming to see me and I had lost my voice.” A therapist helped him recover by asking him to write down the names of birds, animals and rivers. “That way my voice came back.”
The book, Games of My Life, tells the stories of 21 defining matches in his playing and managerial career, tracing his journey from working-class Glasgow to dominating English football and Europe with United. Ferguson took charge of 1,500 United games between 1986 and 2013 and won 38 trophies in 26 years at the club, including 13 Premier League titles and two Champions League crowns, as well as five FA Cups, four League Cups, the Club World Cup, the European Super Cup, the European Cup Winners’ Cup and the Intercontinental Cup.
The earliest game featured is the cup final he won playing for Govan High School in Glasgow in 1955, at the age of 13. Holding the medal he received that day, 71 years ago, he said: “That was my starting point. I played for Glasgow Schools, Scotland Schools and the Scotland youth team. The starting point of my career was there and I can look back with great satisfaction.”
Ferguson describes growing up in Govan as “the making of me”. He credits his mother, Elizabeth, with giving him his inner confidence and his father, Alexander, who worked in the Govan shipyards on the River Clyde, with instilling a drive to succeed. “He was so proud of me and my brother,” Ferguson said, recalling his father as a hard taskmaster who offered tough constructive criticism however many goals his son had scored.
After making his debut as a 16-year-old striker for Queen’s Park, Ferguson ended up at St Johnstone, where a frustrating spell in the reserves left him close to quitting football for a new life in Canada. He filled out the forms and phoned an aunt in Canada, who he needed as a sponsor, without telling his parents. The following day, with St Johnstone decimated by a flu bug, the 21-year-old was promoted to the starting XI at Ibrox against Rangers and scored a hat-trick — a performance in 1963 that revived his playing career and set him on the path to becoming one of football’s greatest managers. “I would say this to young people – don’t miss the biggest opportunity in your life,” he said. “It’s recognising it.”
Among the items laid out for the interview was the Scotland cap Ferguson was finally presented with in 2021, 54 years after he appeared for his country. He received it at Hampden Park on the night Scott McTominay, then a United player, scored a dramatic stoppage-time winner in a 3-2 World Cup qualifying victory over Israel. “I remember signing McTominay at seven years of age,” Ferguson said.
Also on the table was a collection of letters from disgruntled United supporters, written amid speculation that Ferguson was about to sell midfielder Paul Ince to Inter Milan in the summer of 1995. “Don’t sell Incey to Inter – or you’ll regret it”, read one. “Every Red is disgusted with you”, read another. Ferguson was unmoved. “Paul was a tremendous footballer, there’s no doubt about that,” he said. “He had incredible ability, but I just had that feeling that he just got carried away a bit at the time.” With an offer on the table and Paul Scholes emerging, he weighed one thing against the other and sanctioned the sale once Inter’s bid rose from £7m to £7.5m. “That’s what your job is as a manager,” he said. “You have to make hard decisions, and some decisions don’t suit everyone.”
A notebook on the table contained words Ferguson used when addressing his players, among them Second World War general Bernard “Monty” Montgomery, former prime minister Winston Churchill and Ince — a name he noticed only during the interview. “I didn’t notice that before. I couldn’t escape him,” he laughed. Ferguson once described Ince as a “big-time Charlie”, a remark he later said he regretted. The pair have since reconciled, and Ince is, in Ferguson’s words, “a good friend of mine. He used to come over and play snooker with me. He texted me not so long ago.”
The book also revisits the season that followed the departures of Ince, 27, and forward Mark Hughes, 31, to Inter and Chelsea respectively, and the emergence of Ryan Giggs, 21, Gary Neville, 20, Scholes, 20, and David Beckham, 20. When a youthful United side lost 3-1 at Aston Villa in August 1995, former Liverpool and Scotland defender Alan Hansen declared: “You can’t win anything with kids.” Ferguson’s side responded by winning the Premier League and FA Cup double. “We’d worked really hard getting youth into the club again and this bunch of young lads became the spirit of Manchester United,” he said. “They added something. Apart from the great abilities they had, they had desire.”
He recalled sending Beckham on loan to Preston in March 1995, a decision the player interpreted as an attempt to get rid of him. “Which was not true,” Ferguson said. “David was the last to really develop because of his physique. Although he grew to 6ft, he was small and thin as a young kid.” Asked whether he ever feared the policy could backfire, Ferguson pointed to his time in charge at St Mirren and Aberdeen. “I had belief in young people because if you give them an opportunity there are two things that happen – they become real stars and they can remain loyal to you as a manager.”
The interview was conducted before the Premier League announced that Manchester City had been found guilty of all charges relating to breaches of financial regulations between 2009-10 and 2017-18.