Sir Alex Ferguson: Courage to build an empire
The heir to the thrilling attacking tradition forged by Sir Matt Busby is a man of passionate honesty - and ferocious temper. But James Lawton believes he also has an innocent love of the game.

Even now, 20 years after he arrived at Manchester United, dressed in a blazer and an attitude that explained all over again the reason for Hadrian's Wall, the theory of some is that Sir Alex Ferguson has yet to provide a truly defining image of himself, a flash of revelation to carry us beyond all the anger and the joy, the obsession and the stored-up vengeance. They hold that the mystery of his competitive will is hidden somewhere between a still boyish love of battle and the angst of the ageing general who looks into the skull's head of his past and wonders if he will ever see another great victory.

The theorists are wrong, however, and anyone who was in the Nou Camp for the European Cup final of 1999, when his team became the running embodiment of his belief that defeat is not so much a thief in the night as an outrageous impostor, can say so with a special edge of conviction.

When Ferguson's eyes swivelled from the gut-wrenching sight of the colours of Bayern Munich being pinned to the trophy which had become his version of the Holy Grail to that of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer conjuring a winning goal something happened to him, at the age of 57, that you see in young boys when they leap ecstatically into the arms of their fathers.

What happened was the wonderment that comes only to those who still harbour in their gnarled old lives, and souls, a little corner of innocence. Seven years on, the force of that moment, its need to be reproduced, remains the magnet drawing out a career that is reaching beyond all precedent.

Innocence in the man who at times has seemed to wish for nothing more than the imposition of a rule of terror on all of English football? A man for whom loyalty has never been fashioned by sentiment but need - ask Roy Keane, ask Gordon Strachan, ask Jaap Stam, and, supremely, a David Beckham who thought he had reached the stage when he could operate at Old Trafford on his own terms? A man who could cry conspiracy at the mere run of the ball? A man who once confessed to not feeling an ounce of compassion when a sworn enemy was diagnosed with cancer because to do so would compromise his idea of his own honesty?A man for whom ferocious partisanship has been not a tendency but a deeply ingrained way of life?

Yes, it is the innocence that all of the great football men have always had and expressed in their belief that they could find an answer to a football problem, that potential would again flower gloriously - all wrapped in a passion that will not die and which one recent night persuaded Ferguson, just a few months short of his 65th birthday - an age at which the men he admired so much in his youth, Jock Stein, Bill Shankly and Sir Matt Busby, had long withdrawn from the front line of the battle - to go to the touchline in the rain and wind of a tricky night at Crewe.

When the moment of glory was ebbing in the Nou Camp, when the sight of him dancing down the touchline with his eyes glistening and his arms outstretched was already frozen in the memory of all who saw it, Ferguson was still stunned. He sat shaking his head and murmuring, "I can't believe it. I can't believe it." And then, a small phrase that radiated from the core of his existence, "Football - bloody hell." If they called Busby, who would have been 90 on the day Ferguson delivered United's second European Cup 31 years after the first, the father of United - and maybe even all of football - how could they describe the man who had picked up his tradition and given it a new and amazingly consistent dimension?

You couldn't call Fergie the father of anything except his burning desire to push back the barriers of his own ambition. He cleared out talented players like Norman Whiteside and Paul McGrath not because he didn't recognise their ability but because he questioned too deeply their will. They might have been money lenders in the temple.

He made mistakes, some of his signings were indifferent at best, but always there were moves that were as bold as they were inspired: Keane and Cantona were not exactly model citizens, but they were the catalysts of change that required the hardest of nerve; when the generation of Scholes, Giggs, Beckham and the Neville boys replaced a winning team, Alan Hansen, drawing on his Liverpool experience, announced that you couldn't win with kids. But you could, as Busby had proved 40 years earlier, if they were the right ones.

When Ferguson made a rare and fundamental mistake in the organisation of his life and his career, and prematurely announced his retirement, it was his wife and sons who saw most clearly that for him an honoured retirement would not be a prize but a sentence.

They wanted the vintage wine-drinking, horse-fancying maker of football empires to stay on the front line because they knew any alternative would be a shell of the man whose intensity - and furies - had shaped their lives. They knew that in the case of Sir Alexander Chapman Ferguson there was an unswerving obligation ... you took the best of the zealot and you lived, however turbulent the ride, with the rest.

The conventional path would have been to walk away, as some part of him said, with the glory piled so high: 17 major titles for United, including the unprecedented treble of Premiership, FA Cup and European Cup, and nine for Aberdeen.

But walk away to what? To a sudden hush. Better, he decided, to hear the boos that greeted him, for the first time, when United lost to Blackburn at Old Trafford a few years ago; better still to be cut and to bleed than to have everything settling into place, never again to be disturbed by the irreplaceable surges that come when you are on the line between winning and losing.

We do not yet know the outcome of his decision to walk back - whether it will be seen ultimately as an act of folly, an old man's wish to reinvent himself and the most thrilling days of his life - or a sensationally vindicated belief that there is still more than a little good wine left in the glass.

There is, however, an interim verdict to be delivered. It is that if Ferguson has yet to return to the mountain top of English or European football, he has already achieved something that seemed to be beyond anyone's power with the arrival of Roman Abramovich and Jose Mourinho at Chelsea.

He has brought a degree of suspense, and one that was brilliantly augmented last weekend when Bolton Wanderers, the anti-football specialists who pride themselves on delivering hammer blows to such aristocrats as United and Arsenal with football as spontaneous as an old May Day march past in Moscow, were played off their own park. Wayne Rooney, who some saw as the old gambler's last throw, re-emerged with a thunderous hat-trick. It meant Ferguson, with his arch-rival Arsène Wenger, could still be seen as an investor in a game that was about more than unabashed cynicism and spite.

Here, in the manner of United's open-hearted and flowing play, was another large hint of the innocence - and the courage behind a face that for some has long been seen as ruthlessly self-serving; a willingness to believe that the great prizes can still be won in a certain, thrilling way, and that he might still be the author of success which made no compromises with the meaning of football.

Sir Bobby Charlton saw it clearly enough when, as a United director, he elected himself to the job of finding a man who would not be dwarfed by the weight of Busby's legacy, a task that had been beyond such formidable football men as Frank O'Farrell, Tommy Docherty, Dave Sexton and Ron Atkinson.

"I saw what Alex had done with Aberdeen, " says Charlton. " I saw somebody who had the nerve and the belief to go out and get what he wanted; somebody who would never be overawed by any situation. Somebody who would give the job everything that was required - and someone who also saw it as the biggest challenge in football. I have never doubted any of this since the day of his appointment, and my confidence was not harmed by the fact that I saw the old man [Busby] felt the same way."

Such faith has, of course, been tested. Ferguson's war with the Irish horsemen plutocrats John Magnier and J P McManus was always going to be perilous in the shadow of the Glazer takeover. But Ferguson's imperatives in the matter of Rock Of Gibraltar, the horse he believed he partly owned, were similar to those in so much of the rest of his life. They were dictated by the values of his native Govan, where the tough shipbuilders and stevedores taught him that no time was too soon to fight for your rights.

Ferguson swears that he learnt more in Govan than in any of his football assignments. From his first games with Queen's Park and his hard-won success and subsequent angst with Rangers, his managerial survival ordeals with East Stirlingshire and St Mirren, and then his glory at Aberdeen and at Old Trafford, he carried the tough wharfside with him.

It proved a dimension that was probably best expressed in the wake of a 5-1 defeat by Manchester City, devastation that came when Old Trafford had still did not decided whether Ferguson was a messiah or just another lamb at the altar of a squandered dream. Ferguson felt he had let down every United supporter. He felt like a criminal, a betrayer.

This was a bleakness which still comes to him with every defeat. But then when United win, and when he is redeemed, there is the overwhelming desire to run like a boy. In the often jaded world of big-time football no one has done it for so long and with such competitive courage. For so many talented football men one bad season can feel like a lifetime.

The measure of Sir Alex Ferguson, still, is that so often he makes 20 years, with all the good and some of the bad, seem like a single heartbeat.



Source:- independent

Manchester United crush Portsmouth to stay top
(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-11-05 11:42

LONDON - Manchester United celebrated 20 years under Alex Ferguson's command with an emphatic 3-0 victory over Portsmouth to stay top of the Premier League on Saturday.

The points were effectively in the bag after 10 minutes at Old Trafford thanks to a Louis Saha penalty and a dazzling free kick from Cristiano Ronaldo. Nemanja Vidic headed the third midway through the second half.

With champions Chelsea not in action until Sunday, United forged three points clear with 28 from 11 games. Chelsea have 25 while third-placed Bolton Wanderers (20) lost ground after a 1-0 defeat at home to Wigan Athletic.

At the other end of the table draw specialists Watford notched their first win of the season, moving out of the bottom three with a 2-0 win over Middlesbrough, while Charlton Athletic briefly climbed off the bottom by beating Manchester City 1-0.

The south London side were back there later though after Sheffield United won 1-0 at Newcastle United for their first away win -- and first away goal in the league -- this season. Danny Webber headed the winner in the 68th minute.

That result left Newcastle one off the bottom in 19th place -- with the boos of the home fans ringing in their ears after defeat at St James' Park left them without a league win for seven matches.

Charlton, Newcastle and West Ham all have eight points with just goal difference separating them although the Hammers have yet to play their weekend match on Sunday at home to Arsenal, who can move up to third with a win at Upton Park.

MISSED CHANCE

Everton missed a chance to rise into the top four when they went down 1-0 against Fulham at Craven Cottage where they have not scored a league goal since 1967.

Improving Liverpool joined them on 17 points thanks to a Dirk Kuyt double in a comfortable 2-0 home win against Reading.

Manchester United seemed determined to make up for the blip of a 1-0 Champoions League defeat by FC Copenhagen in midweek, tearing into fourth-placed Portsmouth from the first whistle.

It took less than two minutes for Saha to beat David James from the penalty spot after Wayne Rooney's burst into the penalty area was curtailed by Dejan Stefanovic.

Saha was causing mayhem in the Pompey defence and when he was fouled after 10 minutes Cristiano Ronaldo stepped up to send a superb free kick past James.

The Portsmouth keeper stood firm against a rampant United, denying Gary Neville on two occasions before halftime and once more after the break.

INSPIRED JAMES

Saha also found James in inspired form but the former England stopper was finally beaten again when Vidic headed in powerfully from Neville's cross.

Portsmouth, the surprise package of the first quarter of the season, rarely threatened, although Croatia international Niko Kranjcar did slice wastefully wide when the score was 2-0.

"In the main I'm very pleased, very good forward play and we could have scored a few goals," Ferguson told Sky Sports.

Liverpool climbed to seventh and took their goal tally to 12 in four games as Dutchman Kuyt scored in each half.

He put the Reds ahead after 14 minutes when a Peter Crouch header fell into his path and then wrapped up the points with 20 minutes remaining after Reading keeper Marcus Hahnemann failed to hold another Crouch header.

Watford, who had drawn six of their opening 10 games after promotion back to the top flight, were full value for their first three-point haul of the season.

DEFLECTED SHOT

Hameur Bouazza's shot deflected in off Boro defender Jonathan Woodgate after five minutes to give them a dream start and England under-21 striker Ashley Young seized on a poor defensive header to clinch the win after the break.

"We had an opportunity last week (against Tottenham Hotspur) but sooner or later if you keep banging at the door, the door will open," manager Aidy Boothroyd told Sky Sports.

Watford jumped to 16th position, two above the drop zone, with nine points.

Bottom club Charlton won their first league game since August with Darren Bent's first-half header enough to beat Manchester City at the Valley.

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