Loudest voice: But Sir Alex Ferguson commands
respect
When Sir Alex Ferguson sends a young
Manchester
United team out to contest the Carling
Cup final against
Tottenham
at Wembley today, many will imagine that football's most
famous pensioner must have mellowed after so many years of
unprecedented success. But not Rio Ferdinand.
In fact, United's current captain scoffs at the suggestion the
Ferguson 'hairdryer' - the 67-year-old Scot's infamous means of
scaring the living daylights out of anyone who fails to measure up
to his own high expectations - has been consigned to the dustbin of
history as a relic of a bygone era.
For in a wide-ranging interview to be published this week,
Ferdinand confirms that the man who today chases the 41st trophy of
his managerial career is still well capable of employing the sort
of man-management techniques that many assumed had long since gone
out of fashion.
'In the old days, players would expect to get hammered by the
manager,' said Ferdinand. 'But they're not as thick-skinned any
more. These young foreign kids come in and when the manager lets
off, it's like, "Whoah! Where did that come from? That's not
allowed". I've seen them turn pink, and black guys turn white. It's
not pretty, it's unbelievable!
'I got the full force after a Champions League game in Benfica.
At the time, I was exploding because I thought he was being unfair.
But if you talk back to him, he just keeps going louder and louder
until you shut up.
'The worst we've seen is after we have behaved badly on a night
out. Then, the fireworks explode and he goes bananas. Everyone's
heads are on the floor, desperately trying not to catch his eye.
And he's right to do it and we all know that if we do it again,
we'll be out the door.'
Ferguson's enduring intensity and drive are the key to the
continuing dominance of United, who will show a real glimpse into
their future - even a Ferguson-less future - with their starting
team today.
Sir Alex is well on the way to building his fifth great team,
blending homegrown youngsters such as Darron Gibson and Danny
Welbeck with his own signings and the best that the wise old heads
of the dressing room - 30-year-old Ferdinand among them - now have
to offer.
Home-grown talent: Danny Welbeck
'People always ask me what he's really like, but it's
hard to put it into words,' added Ferdinand. 'He's a winner, full
stop. And he's in the know on everything. If you're sneaking off
out to a club, he'll find out. And you think, "How did he know?"
The answer is that a lot of people want to please him by giving him
information on the players.'
Nobody over the past few weeks has wanted to incur the manager's
wrath. All are desperate for the chance to win
United's first proper
piece of silverware this season - they won the lightly-regarded
World Club Championship before Christmas - and that includes
Ferdinand.
'We don't undervalue the Carling Cup,' he said. 'We want to win
it. We all want to know what team the manager is going to put out.
There will be players in it who will be attempting to win their
first trophy and the opportunity to do that does not come too
often.
'Who knows what's going to happen next season? Some of them
might have moved on. I've already been on to him about wanting to
play, but he wasn't giving anything anyway. Anybody who doesn't
play in the match is going to be disappointed, I'm telling you that
much. It's another chance to win a medal and I want as many as I
can. We won the Champions League last season and the League.
Hopefully we can win both again. We want to set ourselves apart
from the rest in the club's history.
'But I don't want to talk about the possibility of winning five
medals. I don't want to look that far ahead. We've got the game on
Sunday, let's get that one out of the way before we start talking
about the next challenge.
SHARP-DRESSED MAN: Rio Ferdinand
'We will treat
Tottenham
with the respect they deserve. They won the trophy last
season and are a talented team. We want to beat them. We want to be
the best, but we still have to prove we can be.'
An added incentive for Ferdinand to get a starting spot, of
course, is that he would be facing Harry Redknapp, his first
manager at
West Ham and the man who helped him develop from the
flash young Peckham kid into England captaincy material.
As a former team-mate and close friend of the late, great Bobby
Moore, Redknapp thought so highly of the teenage Ferdinand that he
deliberately used the image of England's World Cup-winning captain
to inspire him.
For now, Ferdinand is concentrating on winning silverware with
United. And he would rather do that than get paid £500,000 a week
to move across town to moneybags
Manchester City - and not just because they are local
rivals.
'I talked about this with Patrice (Evra) and Wazza (Wayne
Rooney) and we were asking each other what we'd do if City came in
with ridiculous offers,' he said. 'And none of us would go. 'I
wouldn't go to City whatever they offered me because I'm loyal to
United, and because . . . what are they going to win? I couldn't
wake up in the morning and have people say, "He's sold his soul.
For money".
'I didn't go to United just to make more money. I knew I could
win things there that I couldn't at Leeds. I want medals not money.
I want to end my career by looking at my trophy cabinet and
thinking, "I did OK".'
