Page 111 - Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

final against Arsenal, or Rooney’s overhead kick against Manchester City, but for me that goal at
Wimbledon was sublime. Every player in the team touched the ball. In the first minute of the game,
Vinnie Jones tried to do Cantona. Crack. Down went Eric. All our players ran towards Jones, but
Cantona said, ‘Leave him alone,’ because he was a fellow ex-Leeds player, and may have felt a

kinship. Then he patted Jones on the back as if to say, ‘You can kick me if you like but you won’t stop
me.’ Cantona was marvellous that day and scored our first goal with a beautiful volley that he teed up
for himself with his right foot.
People always said Wimbledon couldn’t play. That’s not true. The quality of the service to their
front players was high, especially the crosses. Their set-piece delivery was terrific. They were not
devoid of talent. What they did was use those talents as a weapon against weaker people. If you
didn’t head the ball, you were dead. If you couldn’t handle set pieces you were dead. If you wanted to

get into a 50–50 with them – no chance. They were hard to play against. So that 3–0 win in their
ground was special to us.
Two big wins over Arsenal also stand out. In a 6–2 win at Highbury in the League Cup in 1990,
Lee Sharpe scored a hat-trick. On another occasion, in February 2001, we beat them 6–1 at Old
Trafford. An Irish family had bought an auction prize to see us play at Liverpool in December 2000,
but were fog-bound and unable to travel. We lost 1–0 to Liverpool in a horrible game. They rang me

and asked, ‘What are we going to do?’ I told them, ‘We’ve got Arsenal at home soon.’ And they saw
a 6–1 massacre. What a difference. It was 5–1 at half-time. Yorkie tore them apart.
Despite our 7–1 win over Roma, our Champions League campaign was ended by a 3–0 defeat in
Milan on 2 May. We had been forced to field a full team on the previous Saturday in order to beat
Everton 4–2 at Goodison Park, while Milan had rested nine players for their game against us, which
was on the Tuesday. We were simply not as well prepared as our Italian opponents. We conceded
twice in 15 minutes, it bucketed with rain, and we just couldn’t break out of our own half. We simply

weren’t ready for it. Winning on the Saturday had been a mammoth task because we had been 2–0
down against Everton, yet we won the game to move five points clear in the League.
Along with Tévez and Larsson, other global talents joined us. Carlos, through his Portuguese
connections, told us there was a young boy at Porto from Brazil called Anderson. He was 16 or 17.
We kept an eye on him. He was in and out of the team. A game here, an appearance from the bench
there. Then he played against us in the Amsterdam tournament and I resolved to act, but the following

week he broke his leg.
When his recovery was complete, I sent Martin over to watch him in every game for four or five
weeks. Martin said: ‘Alex, he’s better than Rooney.’
‘For Christ’s sake, don’t say that,’ I told him. ‘He’ll need to be good to be better than Rooney.’
Martin was adamant. At that stage, Anderson was playing off the striker. At the end of the tournament
we moved to buy both him and Nani, who I went to see for myself. What attracted me to Nani was his
pace, strength and aerial ability. He had two fine feet. All the individual attributes were there, which

brought us round to the old question: what type of boy was he? Answer: a good one, quiet, could
speak English reasonably well, never caused any problems at Sporting Lisbon, and was an excellent
trainer. My word he’s a fit boy. Gymnastic, too. His athletic read-outs were always first-class. So the
foundations were there. Carlos went over with David Gill: called into Sporting Lisbon to sign Nani
and then drove up to Porto to capture Anderson. All in one day.
Two years on, we were able to say that the reasons for signing them were correct. There were

complications with Anderson in the winter of 2009–10. He wasn’t playing as much as he would have
liked to and wanted to return home. He was Brazilian, and the complication, as ever, was the World