November 30, 2008
Sir Alex Ferguson insists the cheats will never stop his prolific Portuguese superstar.
Sir Alex Ferguson now knows how he will retire, even if he is no closer to answering the essential question of when. The decision to quit will come to him on a late summer’s day at Carrington. The security barrier will swing upwards, he will start his car down the leafy lane leading to the training ground and he will discover his spirit no longer wants that familiar ride. “I think the time, if you’re going to retire, would be at the end of a summer. I say to players, don’t retire at the end of the season,” Ferguson said.
He cited the example of the former Celtic captain Billy McNeill, a contemporary and friend. “Billy retired at the end of the season and he got through the summer and he found he was ready to go again. You get a break, you are freshened up and you want to go again.
“But if you have your holiday and you come back into training and you’re thinking, ‘Not another training session . . .’ I think that will be the time,” Ferguson said. “When you’re fed up with actually going to training. I love coming into training.”
Talk of life after this giant manager always brings a wan expression to the face of David Gill. Wouldn’t Ferguson want to forewarn his club as much as possible if he was going?
“Oh yeah, absolutely. I would write them a letter, ‘I’ve left, I’ve left’,” he smiled. He was joking, of course but, though he and Gill have a warm relationship and the Manchester United chief executive has a good sense of humour, Gill would struggle to see the funny side of suddenly having to recruit Ferguson’s replacement days before a campaign started. It would be like being given half an hour to come up with a new name for Old Trafford.
What a fixture Ferguson is: a month in which he celebrated 22 years in charge of United and 50 years in professional football ends with his 33rd Manchester derby. Longevity and an unusually retentive brain bring Ferguson a panoramic frame of reference when discussing footballers. The winner of the 2008 Ballon D’Or is announced on Tuesday and Cristiano Ronaldo is a virtual certainty for the prize.
No United star since George Best, in 1968, has been given this most prestigious player honour, known also as European Footballer of the Year, and so the Ferguson era is set to emulate that of Sir Matt Busby in yet another way. Ferguson has no reservations in saying Ronaldo deserves to stand alongside Best and United’s other Ballon D’Or recipients, Sir Bobby Charlton and Denis Law.
“It makes me proud. We are all delighted for the boy,” he said. “Without question, Cristiano deserves it. To score 42 goals [in the 2007-08 campaign] as a winger in our country or any country is phenomenal. He scored in the European Cup final and had a fantastic season and there’s no one who comes near him.”
Ferguson’s reference frame for Ronaldo extends beyond Best, Charlton and Law. Discussing the Portuguese he mentioned, variously, Pele, Diego Maradona, Johan Cruyff - and the soaring Welsh target man of the 1960s and 1970s, Wyn “The Leap” Davies.
Once again Ronaldo and tackling have been on the agenda. Villarreal’s Joan Capdevila was shown a straight red card for a high challenge on Ronaldo on Tuesday and Aston Villa were feisty in their efforts to subdue him last Saturday. After each game Ferguson called for his No 7 to be given more protection by referees and he expressed concerns that Ronaldo may face further rough treatment in the Manchester derby. “I think he will be targeted, not in the sense of bad tackling but what you are finding is supporters are helping teams to get away with what they’re doing. I thought at Villa Park, Villa got away with murder. The crowd got to the referee.” To Ferguson, Ronaldo is part of the line of elite attacking practitioners of the game. Like the gifted in other spheres, they suffer for their art. “All these great players over the years, the Maradonas, Cruyffs, Peles – they all took a kick. It didn’t deter them at all. I remember wee Jimmy Johnstone at Celtic: he’d go straight at the defender who’d just fouled him to let him know he wouldn’t be bullied."
“Cristiano has a similar thing,” Ferguson added. “He had an operation in the summer, which was the result of consistent tackling on him, but he’s naturally brave. I don’t think it [fouling] ever stopped Maradona, I don’t think it stopped Pele. If you’re them, you don’t think of that when you have a ball at your feet, because that’s what you want.
“It won’t stop Cristiano and that’s not getting recognised. He’s always wanting to do something with the ball, yet the fans chant, ‘Cheat!’ Well, who is the cheat? Who’s cheating football? Not Cristiano. It’s stupid - a stupid game.”
Manchester City will play fair with Ronaldo, Mark Hughes promises. “We haven’t got the type of players where we can physically intimidate the opposition,” Hughes said, adding that he has a “huge amount of respect” for Ronaldo. But the man who coined the phrase “hairdryer treatment” risks a fiery gust from his former gaffer after suggesting that opposing fans are within their rights to abuse the Portuguese.
Hughes had diving in mind when he said: “It’s a consequence of his actions in the past. Ronaldo’s a lot better in that respect now. But fans have long memories so it’s going to happen. If our supporters think they can upset a huge talent . . . I saw his reaction at Villa where he didn’t take it too well. Maybe if he is not able to take that much criticism, it’s a side of his game that’s a weakness.”
Ferguson disagrees. “Every time Ronaldo was tackled at Villa, fans were screaming at him but you have to handle that and the boy copes very well. If you go at the pace he goes at and there are two or three bodies around him, clicking at his heels and getting at the side of him, what does he do? At his speed it’s inevitable he’ll lose balance. Villa did it well. They got three or four bodies around him and there was systematic fouling, one player at a time. That’s our country for you, I’m afraid. In Europe the other night, the referee was fantastic. I think he gave 24 fouls against us and Patrice Evra got a soft booking but what that says is, ‘I’m not going to let footballers get kicked out of this game of football’.”
RONALDO has been taking the knocks since he was a little boy. Playing street football in Madeira, older kids sometimes beat him up for embarrassing them with nutmegs and other virtuoso tricks, but he refused to change his game.
The scoring that should secure the Ballon D’Or is an addition to his basic craft: the past 78 league games of his career have produced 56 goals, the first 120 yielded just 21.
Ferguson freely concedes that he did not expect Ronaldo to be so deadly in the air. “You only have to look at his headed goal against Roma last season. When did you last see a header like that? You’d have to go back to Tommy Lawton or Tony Hateley . . . players who excelled at that kind of ability to climb and hang in the air. Wyn Davies was another one. That goal was a throw-back,” said Ferguson.
“His spring is fantastic. I remember when Walter Smith joined us in January [of the player’s first United season]. He said, ‘What about this boy Ronaldo?’ I said, ‘Two great feet, brilliant in the air’. After two games Walter said, ‘I haven’t seen him head the ball yet’. We went down to Birmingham and Cristiano scored a header and Walter turned to me and said, ‘I’m saying no more’. What we saw when he was 16 is what you now see every week, but we weren’t aware of his heading ability.”
Ronaldo has built a trophy room at his Cheshire home to house his growing collection of medals and gongs, which includes a club player of the year award, voted for by teammates and United’s coaching staff.
“The one I like best is the one from the staff. I like being with my teammates,” Ronaldo said. “Rio Ferdinand always said I can do better. He signed a hat-trick ball I won, ‘Not bad’. I had a great last season and am always looking to improve.”
When Sheikh Mansour of Abu Dhabi bought City, Ronaldo’s name was said to feature on their wish-list, a dazzling menu of players for whom the club were allegedly ready to make money-no-object offers. “I think it included me!” Ferguson hooted. “They didn’t know I’d retired.
It included everybody else. It was like a Christmas list that kids write saying they want this and that. In my day you took what you got.”
That statement and other semi-comic barbs concerning City’s Premier League position showed Ferguson still likes shaking a dash of pepper upon the mix when there is a big game on his plate. His palate shows no signs tiring of football’s spice. In May he said he could not imagine being a manager in his 70s but now, with his 67th birthday one month away, he appears less certain.
“I don’t ever think about it any more. It’s all out of my mind. I am not even going to put myself in that situation where I’m saying to myself, ‘Should I retire this year, next year?’ I have completely forgotten about the issue.
“I’m going on what I said in the past: if your health is all right you can continue. I mean, if my health deteriorated then that solves the problem for everyone, you’d get rid of me for good. Secondly, if my team is doing well there’s no pressure on me. And when I say pressure, I mean what comes from you lads, not the supporters,” he said.
There came a smile, then another barb. Both the Villa and Villarreal games were goalless. “If I have another 0-0 draw it will be, ‘Ferguson should have retired three weeks ago’ . . .”
RONALDO JOINS UNITED’S EUROPEAN LEGENDS Cristiano Ronaldo is expected to end Manchester United’s 40-year wait for a European Footballer of the Year when the winner of the Ballon d’Or is announced tomorrow. The last United player to win it was George Best, pictured with his mother, Anne, in 1968. Since then English football has had a thin time. Kevin Keegan won in 1978 and 1979, although he was then with Hamburg. Michael Owen was the last English-based player to win, in 2001
Ronaldo has had an amazing year, scoring 42 goals in 2007-08 as United won the Premier League and Champions League, but he will still have to beat competition from Barcelona’s Lionel Messi, Liverpool’s Fernando Torres and last year’s winner, Kaka of AC Milan.
United players have won the award more than any other English club. Ronaldo would be the fourth Red Devil recipient, following Denis Law (1964), Bobby Charlton (1966) and Best (1968)
He cited the example of the former Celtic captain Billy McNeill, a contemporary and friend. “Billy retired at the end of the season and he got through the summer and he found he was ready to go again. You get a break, you are freshened up and you want to go again.
“But if you have your holiday and you come back into training and you’re thinking, ‘Not another training session . . .’ I think that will be the time,” Ferguson said. “When you’re fed up with actually going to training. I love coming into training.”
Talk of life after this giant manager always brings a wan expression to the face of David Gill. Wouldn’t Ferguson want to forewarn his club as much as possible if he was going?
“Oh yeah, absolutely. I would write them a letter, ‘I’ve left, I’ve left’,” he smiled. He was joking, of course but, though he and Gill have a warm relationship and the Manchester United chief executive has a good sense of humour, Gill would struggle to see the funny side of suddenly having to recruit Ferguson’s replacement days before a campaign started. It would be like being given half an hour to come up with a new name for Old Trafford.
What a fixture Ferguson is: a month in which he celebrated 22 years in charge of United and 50 years in professional football ends with his 33rd Manchester derby. Longevity and an unusually retentive brain bring Ferguson a panoramic frame of reference when discussing footballers. The winner of the 2008 Ballon D’Or is announced on Tuesday and Cristiano Ronaldo is a virtual certainty for the prize.
No United star since George Best, in 1968, has been given this most prestigious player honour, known also as European Footballer of the Year, and so the Ferguson era is set to emulate that of Sir Matt Busby in yet another way. Ferguson has no reservations in saying Ronaldo deserves to stand alongside Best and United’s other Ballon D’Or recipients, Sir Bobby Charlton and Denis Law.
“It makes me proud. We are all delighted for the boy,” he said. “Without question, Cristiano deserves it. To score 42 goals [in the 2007-08 campaign] as a winger in our country or any country is phenomenal. He scored in the European Cup final and had a fantastic season and there’s no one who comes near him.”
Ferguson’s reference frame for Ronaldo extends beyond Best, Charlton and Law. Discussing the Portuguese he mentioned, variously, Pele, Diego Maradona, Johan Cruyff - and the soaring Welsh target man of the 1960s and 1970s, Wyn “The Leap” Davies.
Once again Ronaldo and tackling have been on the agenda. Villarreal’s Joan Capdevila was shown a straight red card for a high challenge on Ronaldo on Tuesday and Aston Villa were feisty in their efforts to subdue him last Saturday. After each game Ferguson called for his No 7 to be given more protection by referees and he expressed concerns that Ronaldo may face further rough treatment in the Manchester derby. “I think he will be targeted, not in the sense of bad tackling but what you are finding is supporters are helping teams to get away with what they’re doing. I thought at Villa Park, Villa got away with murder. The crowd got to the referee.” To Ferguson, Ronaldo is part of the line of elite attacking practitioners of the game. Like the gifted in other spheres, they suffer for their art. “All these great players over the years, the Maradonas, Cruyffs, Peles – they all took a kick. It didn’t deter them at all. I remember wee Jimmy Johnstone at Celtic: he’d go straight at the defender who’d just fouled him to let him know he wouldn’t be bullied."
“Cristiano has a similar thing,” Ferguson added. “He had an operation in the summer, which was the result of consistent tackling on him, but he’s naturally brave. I don’t think it [fouling] ever stopped Maradona, I don’t think it stopped Pele. If you’re them, you don’t think of that when you have a ball at your feet, because that’s what you want.
“It won’t stop Cristiano and that’s not getting recognised. He’s always wanting to do something with the ball, yet the fans chant, ‘Cheat!’ Well, who is the cheat? Who’s cheating football? Not Cristiano. It’s stupid - a stupid game.”
Manchester City will play fair with Ronaldo, Mark Hughes promises. “We haven’t got the type of players where we can physically intimidate the opposition,” Hughes said, adding that he has a “huge amount of respect” for Ronaldo. But the man who coined the phrase “hairdryer treatment” risks a fiery gust from his former gaffer after suggesting that opposing fans are within their rights to abuse the Portuguese.
Hughes had diving in mind when he said: “It’s a consequence of his actions in the past. Ronaldo’s a lot better in that respect now. But fans have long memories so it’s going to happen. If our supporters think they can upset a huge talent . . . I saw his reaction at Villa where he didn’t take it too well. Maybe if he is not able to take that much criticism, it’s a side of his game that’s a weakness.”
Ferguson disagrees. “Every time Ronaldo was tackled at Villa, fans were screaming at him but you have to handle that and the boy copes very well. If you go at the pace he goes at and there are two or three bodies around him, clicking at his heels and getting at the side of him, what does he do? At his speed it’s inevitable he’ll lose balance. Villa did it well. They got three or four bodies around him and there was systematic fouling, one player at a time. That’s our country for you, I’m afraid. In Europe the other night, the referee was fantastic. I think he gave 24 fouls against us and Patrice Evra got a soft booking but what that says is, ‘I’m not going to let footballers get kicked out of this game of football’.”
RONALDO has been taking the knocks since he was a little boy. Playing street football in Madeira, older kids sometimes beat him up for embarrassing them with nutmegs and other virtuoso tricks, but he refused to change his game.
The scoring that should secure the Ballon D’Or is an addition to his basic craft: the past 78 league games of his career have produced 56 goals, the first 120 yielded just 21.
Ferguson freely concedes that he did not expect Ronaldo to be so deadly in the air. “You only have to look at his headed goal against Roma last season. When did you last see a header like that? You’d have to go back to Tommy Lawton or Tony Hateley . . . players who excelled at that kind of ability to climb and hang in the air. Wyn Davies was another one. That goal was a throw-back,” said Ferguson.
“His spring is fantastic. I remember when Walter Smith joined us in January [of the player’s first United season]. He said, ‘What about this boy Ronaldo?’ I said, ‘Two great feet, brilliant in the air’. After two games Walter said, ‘I haven’t seen him head the ball yet’. We went down to Birmingham and Cristiano scored a header and Walter turned to me and said, ‘I’m saying no more’. What we saw when he was 16 is what you now see every week, but we weren’t aware of his heading ability.”
Ronaldo has built a trophy room at his Cheshire home to house his growing collection of medals and gongs, which includes a club player of the year award, voted for by teammates and United’s coaching staff.
“The one I like best is the one from the staff. I like being with my teammates,” Ronaldo said. “Rio Ferdinand always said I can do better. He signed a hat-trick ball I won, ‘Not bad’. I had a great last season and am always looking to improve.”
When Sheikh Mansour of Abu Dhabi bought City, Ronaldo’s name was said to feature on their wish-list, a dazzling menu of players for whom the club were allegedly ready to make money-no-object offers. “I think it included me!” Ferguson hooted. “They didn’t know I’d retired.
It included everybody else. It was like a Christmas list that kids write saying they want this and that. In my day you took what you got.”
That statement and other semi-comic barbs concerning City’s Premier League position showed Ferguson still likes shaking a dash of pepper upon the mix when there is a big game on his plate. His palate shows no signs tiring of football’s spice. In May he said he could not imagine being a manager in his 70s but now, with his 67th birthday one month away, he appears less certain.
“I don’t ever think about it any more. It’s all out of my mind. I am not even going to put myself in that situation where I’m saying to myself, ‘Should I retire this year, next year?’ I have completely forgotten about the issue.
“I’m going on what I said in the past: if your health is all right you can continue. I mean, if my health deteriorated then that solves the problem for everyone, you’d get rid of me for good. Secondly, if my team is doing well there’s no pressure on me. And when I say pressure, I mean what comes from you lads, not the supporters,” he said.
There came a smile, then another barb. Both the Villa and Villarreal games were goalless. “If I have another 0-0 draw it will be, ‘Ferguson should have retired three weeks ago’ . . .”
RONALDO JOINS UNITED’S EUROPEAN LEGENDS Cristiano Ronaldo is expected to end Manchester United’s 40-year wait for a European Footballer of the Year when the winner of the Ballon d’Or is announced tomorrow. The last United player to win it was George Best, pictured with his mother, Anne, in 1968. Since then English football has had a thin time. Kevin Keegan won in 1978 and 1979, although he was then with Hamburg. Michael Owen was the last English-based player to win, in 2001
Ronaldo has had an amazing year, scoring 42 goals in 2007-08 as United won the Premier League and Champions League, but he will still have to beat competition from Barcelona’s Lionel Messi, Liverpool’s Fernando Torres and last year’s winner, Kaka of AC Milan.
United players have won the award more than any other English club. Ronaldo would be the fourth Red Devil recipient, following Denis Law (1964), Bobby Charlton (1966) and Best (1968)
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