Page 24 - Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

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ON the sofa that night of Christmas Day 2001, I had nodded off while watching television. In the
kitchen a mutiny was brewing. The traditional assembly room of our family home was the scene for a
discussion that would change each of our lives. The chief rebel came in and kicked my foot to wake
me. In the frame of the door I could pick out three figures: all my sons, lined up for maximum
solidarity.
‘We’ve just had a meeting,’ Cathy said. ‘We’ve decided. You’re not retiring.’ As I weighed this
announcement I felt no urge to resist. ‘One, your health is good. Two, I’m not having you in the house.

And three, you’re too young anyway.’ Cathy did all the early talking. But our sons were right behind
her. The gang was united. ‘You’re being stupid, Dad,’ the boys told me. ‘Don’t do it. You’ve got a lot
to offer. You can build a new team at Manchester United.’ That’ll teach me to nod off for five
minutes. It ended with me working for 11 more years.
One of the reasons I had decided to stand down in the first place was in reaction to a remark Martin
Edwards had made after the 1999 European Cup final in Barcelona. Martin had been asked whether

there would be a role for me after I surrendered the manager’s job and had replied: ‘Well, we don’t
want a Matt Busby situation.’ I wasn’t impressed by that answer. The two periods could not be
compared. In my era, you needed to factor in the added complications brought on by agents, contracts,
the mass media. No sensible person would want to be embroiled in those activities once he had
finished serving his time as manager. There was not the slimmest chance I would want to be involved
in the games themselves or the complexities of the football trade.
What else made me intend to retire in the first place? There was always a sense after that magical

night in Barcelona that I had reached the pinnacle. Previously my teams had fallen short in the
European Cup and I had always chased that end of the rainbow. Once you’ve achieved your life’s
ambition, you ask yourself whether you can achieve such a high again. When Martin Edwards made
his remark about avoiding the Matt Busby syndrome, my first thought was ‘Nonsense’. My second
was: ‘Sixty is a good age to walk away.’

So three factors wormed away in my mind: the disappointment of Martin raising the Matt Busby
spectre, the imponderable of whether I could win a second European Cup, and that number, 60, which
assumed a haunting quality. I had been a manager from 32 years of age.
Reaching 60 can have a profound effect. You think you’re entering another room. At 50, a pivotal
moment has arrived. Half a century. But you don’t feel 50. At 60, you say: ‘Christ, I feel 60. I’m 60!’
You come through that. You realise it’s a notional change, a numerical alteration. I don’t feel that way
now about age. But back then, 60 was a psychological barrier in my head. It was an obstacle to me
feeling young. It changed my sense of my own fitness, my health. Winning the European Cup enabled

me to feel I had completed the set of dreams and could now step away fulfilled. That was the catalyst