Number 19 the key for ‘Freud of football’ Ferguson

 

As the curtain fell on another defining Premier League season for Manchester United in May, Sir Alex Ferguson, the mastermind behind United’s monumental success since the start of the Premier League will undoubtedly have been focusing on the future. That is, the next Premier League title; the Premier League title if you will. Title number nineteen: the one which will define Ferguson’s work and genius with United above all others, propelling United past Liverpool and into the history books as the most successful English team ever.

For whilst United are without question the most successful and dominant team in the modern English game, the fact that Liverpool have always been – until title eighteen ensured domestic parity for United that is – the most successful team in the history of English football, is sure to have perturbed Ferguson.

And particularly so, in mar of the passionate feud which has developed in recent seasons between the Scot and Rafa Benitez – a spat intensified again by Benitez’s refusal to congratulate United on their most recent success. For whilst Ferguson is not a man to be ruled irrationally by his emotions, his seeming distaste for Benitez is not likely to dampen an already wildly ambitious streak that shows no sign of slowing.

And in that lies the greatest worry for the Rafa Benitez, Arsene Wenger et al. Sir Alex Ferguson has already built three great teams within the wildly shifting circumstances of a modern day Premier League defined increasingly by global forces way beyond our shores. The mechanisms of governance required to succeed, survive even; let alone rule within such an empire cannot be underestimated, and only someone with a sphere of expertise as possessed by Ferguson could engineer and maintain a global, yet alone national institution the like of which Manchester United has become.

Needless to say Ferguson is not like other modern day football managers. Neither the tacit brilliance of an Arsene Wenger, nor the brash genius of a Jose Mourinho could compare. Ferguson is the last in breed of the great dynasty managers. Men who controlled every aspect of a club, like Jock Stein, Sir Matt Busby, Bill Shankly, Don Revie and Brian Clough. However, even these men, legendary as they are, cannot compare such is the extent of Ferguson’s command within the modern global game. And it is this which makes him and his achievements truly unique. Freudian even.

For Kevin Garside, Chief Sports Writer of the Telegraph, it is Ferguson’s fluency in the machinations of ego and super ego that have made him an institution in unto himself: it is his comprehension of the stuff beyond football that underpins his success in it; his grasp of personality, of character, of power, of the human dynamic that bolts our behaviour together. Ferguson is the Freud of football, a psychological profiler of uncanny intuition whose gifts would have application in any boardroom in any industry.

In twenty four years as manager of Manchester United football club, Sir Alex Ferguson has demonstrated the type of courage and conviction only truly great leaders display. And yet, as Garside notes, for all his socialist sentiments there is nothing democratic in the Ferguson factory. He is, on balance, a benevolent dictator, working solely in the interests of Manchester United, never himself.

With that said, it may well prove the case that Ferguson has reserved one personal ambition all along – the pursuit of an almost at times unimaginable goal…to bypass the seemingly unsurpassable Reds from Merseyside.

Would you bet against him? I certainly wouldn’t. For I think, just as I would guess some other Premier League managers fear, Sir Alex Ferguson is to once again paraphrase Garside: like a Winston Churchill recurring, a great leader who won’t go away.