Page 118 - Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

left. So when Anelka approached his moment of truth, he must have been the first Chelsea player to
ask himself: ‘I wonder whether he’s going to dive to his right or his left?’ Van der Sar kept pointing to
his left to unnerve the taker. Yes, Anelka’s penalty was poor, but Edwin chose the right way to dive.
Avram Grant is a nice man. My fear was always that he might not be strong enough for that group of

Chelsea players. Their behaviour in the final was terrible, dragging themselves out for the second half
one at a time, giving the referee stick on the way into the dressing room. A team goes out together,
they don’t amble out one by one. The referee had been urging them to get a move on, but they just
ignored him. At the interval they tried every trick in the book. That might have played on the referee’s
mind when Drogba was sent off.
The red card for Drogba followed a clash with Carlos Tévez, which brought Vidić over to support
his team-mate. Up went Drogba’s hand to flick Vida’s face. If you lift your hands, you’ve no chance.

My understanding was that the referee asked the linesman who the offender had been. And boomph,
Drogba was off. By then we had already restored our hold on the game. Drogba’s dismissal was not
the turning point. Giggs had a shot cleared off the line. We created chances in extra time and should
have killed them off. Chelsea, in my view, played for the draw and gambled on winning the shoot-out.
Though he was removed from the fray that night, Drogba was always a handful for us. He was a
powerful, big lad, but what marked him out in my book was a talent for spectacular goals, say, on the

turn, from 30 yards. I was surprised to see him missing from the team-sheet against us in a game
during Carlo Ancelotti’s finals weeks in charge. Torres started, but Drogba came on to score and
force Chelsea back into the match.
From that Chelsea team, which we found it difficult to play against, the goalkeeper, Petr Ĉech, was
outstanding. I should have signed him at 19 when I had my chance. Instead, Chelsea took him that
summer for £8 million.
John Terry was always an influence in their team. Ashley Cole always gave them energy going

forward. And Frank Lampard was incredibly reliable and consistent from box to box. He avoided
defensive work a bit in his prime, but he was end to end and hardly missed a game. With Drogba, they
were the core, the central five. They were a powerful presence in the dressing room.
At no point before the game did I accept that Chelsea would be under more pressure than us by
virtue of Abramovich’s Moscow background, though he was there in the stands, gazing down on his
vast investment. I didn’t see that as a factor in the game itself. Security was my main concern.

Moscow is a city of great mysteries. I’ve read books on the Russian Revolution and on Stalin, who
was worse than the czars, killing his own people to collectivise agriculture. We took two chefs with
us, and the food was mostly fine, unlike in Rome, where it was a joke, a disgrace.
What a season Ronaldo had in that European Cup winning campaign. Forty-two goals for a winger?
In some games he played centre-forward, but he was essentially a wide man in our system. In every
game he would create three chances for himself. I watched him one night at Real Madrid and he had
about 40 shots on goal.

Moscow was a relief, above all, because I always said Manchester United ought to be achieving
more in Europe. It was our third European Cup victory and took us closer to Liverpool’s five. I
always felt we would match Liverpool’s total within a reasonable stretch of time, even after the two
defeats to Barcelona in 2009 and 2011, because we had earned extra respect in Europe. With a win in
either of those Barcelona finals, we would have been on four, equal with Bayern Munich at the time,
and with Ajax.

In our moment of triumph there was no champagne to be found at the Luzhniki Stadium. In the
absence of the real stuff, staff were dispatched to a bar to buy some kind of fizzy liquid. Heaven