Alex Ferguson's party-piece is making a band of millionaires
believe they're working-class heroes.
Season by season, his Manchester United superstars get richer
more detached from the realities of the lives their fans lead.
Yet somehow, the man they call The Govanor keeps creating teams
who leave their bling at home and go out to graft in their
overalls.
Ahead of his 38th season as a manager, Ferguson took time out to
meet up with old pals from his days as a free-scoring striker with
Dunfermline in the mid-1960s, men who learned a trade before
football became their living and who went back to their tools after
hanging up their boots.
None of them would dare forget their roots. The big job for the
man in charge of guys earning £100,000 a week, though, is to make
them feel like they HAVE roots.
Ferguson said: "We were working class, the boys today aren't.
Some of them might think they are, but they're not.
"Their fathers and their grandfathers might have been, but times
have changed.
"What you have to do, though, is make them believe in
working-class principles, to make them think like they're working
class. You have to make them realise the privilege of working.
"I tell them working hard all your life isn't easy, but it's
worth it.
"When I was young, I was playing part-time and working as a
toolmaker until Willie Cunningham took me to Dunfermline and gave
me my big break by offering me full-time football.
"All I knew from then on was that I didn't want to go back to my
tools. Don't get me wrong, there was nothing wrong with being a
toolmaker, but once that chance came I was determined to work as
hard as I could to grab it and stay in the game.
"The same applies at Manchester United today. We have them in
every day, except maybe for the odd Monday off.
"And they know that, whatever the demands are off the park, if
they don't come in and graft and really WANT to be
in that team, they won't be."
Those Dunfermline friends will confirm these attitudes were
moulded a long time ago.
At a gala night, when 1,300 packed the Scottish town's Alhambra
Theatre in aid of current director of football Jim Leishman's
charity foundation, they told of a guy who celebrated five-a-side
goals like cup final winners.
He was someone who'd elbow his granny to get to a loose ball,
who'd argue Sunday was Monday - and who could talk anyone into
anything.
Ferguson added: "Dunfermline was the peak of my playing career,
a really special time.
"We had a great bunch of lads. And we were good - we should have
won the Double in 1965, but I missed a sitter against St Johnstone
in the second last league game when the title could have been ours
and then we lost the cup final 3-2 to Celtic.
"I was left out of that final despite being our top scorer and
the experience taught me a huge lesson for when I became a
manager.
"We were in the dressing room at 2.10pm and when the team was
read out it took me a few seconds to realise my name wasn't in it.
I was devastated - and the one thing I've always made sure of is to
tell the player face-to-face before any announcement's made."
It's clear he has logged away many lessons like these down the
years.
Ferguson said: "If I learned one major lesson in my time at St
Mirren it was that I was maybe too aggressive in my style of
management.
"There were directors I wouldn't allow on the team bus and you
cannot get away with that, it only leads down one road.
"At Aberdeen, I once went on telly straight after we'd beaten
Rangers in the Scottish Cup final and caned the players. That was a
real aberration. We'd beaten Real Madrid in the Cup Winners' Cup
final on the Wednesday and in my elation I expected us to be able
to beat anybody 10-0.
"What I didn't take into account was the players were drained.
They'd gone to extra time in Gothenburg and now they'd done the
same again at Hampden and they'd still ground out the win. I
apologised to them later. I was out of order."
But then, maybe without those emotions he would not be the
success he is today, a man going on 70 but who - as the world saw
when United beat City in the Community Shield last Sunday - still
leaps about like a teenager when his team scores.
There's only one question left to be asked: How long will keep
doing it?
He smiled: "I made the mistake once before of announcing my
retirement and my wife, Cathy, soon put me right on that on.
"So now I look at things and can't see myself out of the game. I
enjoy it, I stay fit, I'm in the office at quarter to seven and if
you want to meet me, you need to get in before nine."
