"God answers my prayers everywhere except on the golf-course."
My Autobiography, Alex Ferguson, London, Hodder and Stoughton, 2013
Return to the book list for this category.
My Autobiography, Alex Ferguson, London, Hodder and Stoughton, 2013
Any book by Alex Ferguson is an event and this one fully lives up to expectations. Immediate press reaction presented it as a book with digs at all sorts of football people. I found it balanced and with criticisms of people fair and justified.
One interesting aspect is the list of individuals who warrant a chapter to themselves: David Beckham, Rio Ferdinand, Cristiano Ronaldo, Roy Keane, Ruud Van Nistelrooy and Wayne Rooney plus managers Mourinho and Wenger.
Of Beckham he writes: “From the moment he first laid boot on ball, David Beckham displayed an unbreakable urge to make the best of himself and his talent [and] I hold no rancour towards David at all. I like him. I think he’s a wonderful boy. But you should never surrender what you’re good at. David was the only player I managed who chose to be famous, who made it his mission to be known outside the game”.
He recounts a game where he criticised Beckham for not tracking back to cover his marker, adding with great insight: “It is possible that he was starting to think he no longer needed to track back and chase, which were the very qualities that had made him what he was”.
Christiano Ronaldo was “the most gifted player I managed”. Roy Keane was “a player of energy, of guts and blood with a fine instinct for the game and its strategies”.
His view that Steven Gerrard was “not a top, top player” was on opinion that made headlines on publication but this opinion is supported by reference to Gerrard’s performances against United.
Ferguson’s man management is well summed up in the comment: “The minute a Manchester United player thought he was bigger than the manager, he had to go”. Another insight was his conversation with Tony Blair on the loneliness of leadership, adding: “I would sit in my office in the afternoon, with my work complete, wanting company. There is a vacuum attached to the job that people don’t want to break into. Tony [Blair] was a young man going into that position”.
The book gives his account of his feud with BBC, the Beckham boot incident and “pizzagate”. More surprisingly perhaps he admits twice to how his mistakes led to failures – the exit from the Champions League in the group stage in 2011-12 and the crucial 0-1 defeat by Manchester City in the same season. Again, “I had some terrible mood-storms after games and was never proud of my outbursts”.
For me perhaps the most interesting part of the book was his honest appraisal of his failures in the transfer market. Owen Hargreaves was, for example, “one of the most disappointing signings of my career”. There is also discussion of players he might have signed and sometime sthe reasons why he decided not to.
The most surprising part of the book is the chapter “Outside interests” which ranges over politics, wine, reading and horse racing. His book case is stocked with tomes on politics and history – including a fascination with JFK.
An excellent book. Well worth reading.