Today marks 10 years since Sir Alex Ferguson confirmed he would be leaving Manchester United and his retirement from management.
Having spent nearly 27 years in the Old Trafford dugout, the legendary Scot had transformed the Red Devils to the dominant force in English football. Knocking Liverpool ‘right off their f**king perch’ in the process, he won 13 Premier League titles, five FA Cups, four League Cups, two Champions Leagues, a European Cup Winners' Cup, a European Super Cup, an Intercontinental Cup and a FIFA Club World Cup during his time with the Manchester club.
As a result, as United mourned his exit, Liverpool and the rest of England’s top clubs were glad to see the back of British football’s most decorated manager.
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In truth, United haven’t really recovered since Ferguson’s exit. Getting through eight managers over the past 10 years, if we include caretakers and interims, Erik ten Hag’s League Cup win in February was only their fourth trophy since the Scot’s retirement and first since 2017. Meanwhile, they have failed to add to their record of 20 league titles and three European Cups over the past decade.
Coinciding with United’s decline, local-rivals Man City have emerged as English football’s new dominant force. If, as expected, they win the Premier League this season, they will have been crowned champions of England in six of the ten seasons since Ferguson retired.
Meanwhile, bitter rivals Liverpool also won the Premier League in 2019/20 as they ended a 30-year drought to be crowned English champions and wrestled back their perch in the process. Also winning the Champions League under Jurgen Klopp the year before, they have won every major honour on offer to them in recent years.
Chelsea have also won the Champions League since Ferguson retired, along with two Premier League titles, while Man City and Tottenham Hotspur have also reached European Cup finals. Liverpool would reach a further two. Then you have Leicester City’s shock Premier League win of 2015/16 to rub further salt into United wounds.
It will have pained Ferguson to see either others, especially his hated rivals, succeed where his beloved club have continued to fall short. But he’d at least handle it with dignity after receiving an unwanted phone call from Klopp following Liverpool’s Premier League win in 2020!
“Jurgen, fantastic. 30 years since winning that league – incredible and thoroughly deserved, the performance level of your team was outstanding,” the Scot said in a message to the Reds boss after he was named LMA Manager of the Year. “Your personality went right through the whole club and it was a marvellous performance.
“I’ll forgive you for waking me up at half past three in the morning to tell me you’d won the league! Thank you! But anyway you thoroughly deserve it, well done.”
Much kinder words from Ferguson than he would have perhaps given if still United manager, still caught up in the heat of such rivalries, having missed out on such silverware himself.
He could, after all, be accused of being a little bitter during his time in the dugout in the name of Manchester United. Blocking Gabriel Heinze’s transfer to Liverpool in 2007, purely because it was the Reds, will perhaps be the most obvious example to Kopites looking back, while he’d infamously belittle Jordan Henderson in his autobiography, released in 2013, when explaining his decision not to sign the midfielder.
Of course, the Liverpool captain wasn’t the only Reds icon Ferguson would be dismissive of in his autobiography. He would make headlines for a rather controversial view of Steven Gerrard too.
"I'm one of the few who felt Gerrard was not a top, top player," the Scot would write in the book which was released shortly after his retirement.
Of course, many would disagree with Ferguson’s claim. The great Zinedine Zidane would label it ‘strange’ and ‘wrong’.
“Alex Ferguson is obviously one of the most successful coaches the game has ever had,” the Frenchman said. “But I did find his comments about Steven Gerrard very strange. To say he is not a top player is wrong.
“For two or three years, Steven Gerrard was the best midfield player in the world. Even now he is playing at a high level for Liverpool and England. Gerrard has been loyal to Liverpool throughout his career, which is great for them.
“But if he had wanted to leave four or five years ago then every top club in Europe would have tried to sign him. And they would have probably had to break the transfer record to do it.”
And as Gerrard himself would point out at the time, Ferguson has twice before tried to sign him.
“Listen, he’s entitled to his opinion,” Gerrard told the Daily Mail at the time. “I’m a fan of his; he is one of the best managers in the world. I won’t lose any sleep over it.
“Throughout my career I have had praise from all types of people - including him - and I am not vain enough to take it all. I have had some unbelievable praise from him and he tried to buy me, certainly on one occasion. Maybe even two.
“For me, the most important thing is what (Liverpool manager) Brendan Rodgers and (England manager) Roy Hodgson are thinking. I think they are really pleased with me and that is all I will worry about.”
However, he would later admit that he had been ‘gutted’ and ‘hurt’ to read the comments from Ferguson.
“In 2004, Ferguson had called me ‘the most influential player in England, bar none’ and suggested that ‘anyone would love to have Gerrard in their team’,” he recalled. “So I was a little hurt and surprised when 13 years later, Ferguson used his autobiography to insist he was one of the few who never thought I was ‘a top, top player’. I wouldn’t lose any sleep but I was slightly taken aback after all his praise."
“I went on trial at Manchester United when I was 13 and had a letter off them wanting to sign me on a seven-year-deal,” he also told BT Sport’s Clare Balding Show later that year. "I’m a huge fan of Alex Ferguson and what he’s done in the game is fantastic, that’s the reason why he’s sold that many copies in the first week.
“I was generally a little bit gutted when I read that, the reaction of the papers, when he said I wasn’t a top, top player. But I won’t lose sleep over it, everyone is entitled to their opinion.
"He tried to sign me in early 2002/03, he tried to sign me again to play for United, I obviously refused, so I can’t really take it to heart too much. But I’m a bit gutted because I’m a big fan of his."
Such interest even led to Gary Neville attempting to ‘tap up’ Gerrard when the pair were away together with England on international duty.
“My agent, Struan Marshall, told me that, under Fergie, United had a decent pop at trying to sign me. Gary Neville would knock at my door during England camps," he wrote in his own autobiography. “He’d come in for a chat and let me know how much United would love me to play for them. Gary told me Fergie had sent him.”
“It was flattering back then because the two best managers around (Ferguson and Jose Mourinho at Chelsea) wanted me to play in their teams,” he would recall of such interest, prior to Ferguson’s autobiography.
“Gary Neville said he [Sir Alex] wanted me. But you understand that playing for Manchester United would have been impossible. I never would have wanted to play for Manchester United. They are a fantastic club but that rivalry is there, and it’s why Gary could not have played for us either.
“Don’t get me wrong. It was flattering that, after everything he has done in the game, Sir Alex Ferguson wanted me to play in his team. But that was an impossible situation.”
“Will I get fined by the FA for this, for an illegal approach?” Neville initially joked when he was asked about the ‘tapping up’ when speaking on Sky Sports last year. “I think it would be something casual, it wouldn’t be like ‘go and poach him’ or anything like that.
“But have a chat with him, see what his plans are, where does he like to eat? What was he like? That type of thing, have a conversation.
“I think there were two or three times it happened with England with me, where I spoke to Alan Shearer during Euro 1996. I had a conversation with him but I was more junior at that time, so I couldn’t have a serious conversation with him.
“Definitely with Wayne Rooney had a little chat, but just again, he’s a younger player so you can’t put too much pressure on him.
“With Stevie, it was a full on assault. Let’s get him out of there. I want him out of there. To be fair, Stevie’s answer was, he said: ‘My family and me would never be able to go back to Liverpool ever again.’
“It was a very short conversation. He was very loyal to Liverpool fans. Not as loyal I think when [Chelsea’s] John Terry went round to his room. I think John Terry got around ten minutes out of him, I got probably around 30 seconds!”
Considering the reception Michael Owen got for his own free transfer to Manchester United, years after his own Liverpool exit and following Newcastle United's relegation, and the prospect of Gerrard moving to Old Trafford would have inevitably been unforgivable.
Meanwhile, when recalling his first decision to snub United as a teenager, Gerrard admitted he has used the Red Devils to put pressure on Liverpool to hand him a contract.
"I wore the red of United in two trial games," Gerrard said in his autobiography. "After doing well in those games United offered me a three-year pro contract.
"I even met their legendary manager. A group of trialists had dinner with Mr Ferguson, as he was then. Michael Owen was meant to be at the meal, but didn't turn up.
"We sat and listened in awe to one of the managerial greats. He had heard about me and desperately wanted me to sign, but I was never going to sign for United. I looked around other clubs partly to pressure Liverpool into giving me a YTS contract."
Considering Ferguson had twice tried to sign Gerrard and had been, according to Neville, desperate to ‘get him out of there (Liverpool)’, it has always been easy to take the Scot’s ‘not a top, top player’ claim with a pinch of salt. After all, it screams bitter United manager, frustrated that he didn’t get his man.
Compare that to his comments on Gerrard in 2004, around the time he was still hoping he could sign him as a long-term replacement for Roy Keane and before the Liverpool legend had reached his peak, lifted the European Cup, and turned the Reds into title-contenders, and the change in tone is most telling.
"If you were looking for the player you would replace Keane with, it's Gerrard, without question," Ferguson told The Sunday Times. "He has become the most influential player in England, bar none.
"Not that Vieira lacks anything, but I think that Gerrard does more for his team than Vieira does. To me, Gerrard is Keane; he is now where Keane was when Roy came to us in 1994. I've watched him quite a lot, and everywhere the ball is, he seems to be there.
"He's got that unbelievable engine, desire, determination. Anyone would take Gerrard. Vieira has done that job for Arsenal for two or three years. But you can see Gerrard rising and rising."
Of course, it is telling that at the time of Ferguson’s controversial Gerrard claim in 2013, even though he was recently-retired, he was still entrenched in that fierce rivalry between his beloved United and Liverpool.
Now ten years on and the relationship between the pair is rather different, with Ferguson even offering counsel to Gerrard when he was taking his first managerial steps with Rangers and describing his achievements at Ibrox as ‘magnificent’.
“It’s very high praise and I’m extremely flattered. He’s an iconic figure in the game,” Gerrard said in May 2021, having enjoyed an ‘Invincible’ season with Rangers and won the Scottish Premiership with 102 points.
“Through no fault of our own we became big, big rivals at Liverpool and Manchester United, the two biggest clubs in British football. We were massive rivals for many years and he’s someone that even though he was a rival I looked up to him immensely because he is such an iconic figure in the game and what he achieved in the game is up there with the very best who have ever lived.
“So I’m really flattered and humbled by his words and I’ll let you into a little secret, I’ve had a couple of conversations with him. Since I’ve retired, we’ve parked our rivalry up and he gave me time on the phone to bounce a few things off him, a few questions to do with the management up here at Rangers.
“He was fantastic in those conversations and at some point moving forward I’d love the chance to sit down with him and have a coffee. He’s agreed to that and that’s fantastic from his point of view because he doesn’t have to give him his time, especially being a rival.
“But I think that goes to show what type of man he is. He’s not just the iconic manager we all know.”
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