Page 127 - Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

We never really attacked their left-back, who had just come back from an illness and hadn’t played
a lot of games. We thought that would be a big plus point for us – either him or Puyol playing there.
Valencia’s form leading up to the final had been excellent. He tortured Ashley Cole two or three
weeks before Wembley and had twisted the blood of the full-back at Schalke. You might be better

going back to your box against Barcelona, but we should have been better at pushing on top of Messi.
Michael Carrick was below his best too.
The first newsflash that night was that I had left Dimitar Berbatov out of the match-day squad.
Instead, Michael Owen took the striker’s seat on the bench. He obviously took it badly and I felt
rotten. Wembley has a coach’s room, nice and private, where I explained the reasons for my decision.
Dimitar had gone off the boil a bit and wasn’t always the ideal substitute. I told him: ‘If we’re going
for a goal in the last minute, in the penalty box, Michael Owen has been very fresh.’ It probably

wasn’t fair but I had to take those decisions and back myself to be right.
I signed Berbatov in the summer of 2008 because he had that lovely balance and composure in the
attacking areas. I thought it would balance out the other players I had in the team, but by doing so I
created an impasse with Tévez, who wasn’t having it. He was sub, playing, then sub again. In fairness
to Tévez, he always made an impact. He would get about the game. Yet it definitely caused that
blockage and gave his camp something to bargain with at other clubs.

Berbatov was surprisingly lacking in self-assurance. He never had the Cantona or Andy Cole
peacock quality, or the confidence of Teddy Sheringham. Hernández also had high confidence: he was
bright and breezy. Berbatov was not short of belief in his ability, but it was based on his way of
playing. Because we functioned at a certain speed, he was not really tuned into it. He was not that
type of quick-reflex player. He wants the game to go slow and to work his way into the box in his
own time. Or he’ll do something outside the area and link the play. His assets were considerable.
Although we had a few inquiries for him in the summer of 2011, I was not prepared to let him go at

that stage. We had spent £30 million on him and I was not willing to write that off just because he had
missed a few big games the previous season. We might as well keep him and use him.
In training he practised getting to the ball faster. But when the play broke down he was inclined to
walk. You couldn’t do that at our place. We had to regroup quickly or we would be too open, with
too many players up the pitch. We needed people to react to us losing the ball so the opposition
would be under pressure quickly. But he was capable of great moments. He also had a huge appetite,

of Nicky Butt proportions. Head down at meal-times, and sometimes with food to take home as well.
Berbatov wouldn’t have featured in the Wembley game, even if he had been on the bench. I had
been forced to take off Fábio and send on Nani, which left me with only two options. I wanted to get
Scholes on because I needed an experienced player to orchestrate our passing, so Paul came on for
Carrick. We had talked about Scholesy’s retirement for many months and I had tried to talk him round,
to entice him with one more season, but his view was that 25 games a season were not enough. He
also admitted his legs tended to be empty in the last 25–30 minutes. He had survived two knee

operations and an eye problem that had kept him out for months at a time, yet he was still playing at
that high level. Phenomenal.
The goal he scored at his testimonial that summer was a beauty. He gave Brad Friedel in goal no
hope. It was a rocket. Eric Cantona, the visiting manager, was applauding. On Talksport later I heard
a presenter say Paul wasn’t in the top four of modern English players. His assertion was that
Gascoigne, Lampard and Gerrard were all better players. Absolute nonsense.

After our second Champions League final defeat to Barcelona, I had to ask: what is the problem
here? Fact No. 1is that some of our players fell below the level they were capable of. A contributing