Page 58 - Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

couple of times to earn himself a foul, but no more than anyone else. He was granted a penalty kick
against Bolton in 2008 that was never a penalty kick. Equally he hadn’t tried to earn that advantage. It
was just a bad mistake by the referee. The defender stretched to win the ball, intercepted it cleanly
and Ronaldo went over. It was embarrassing, not from Ronaldo’s point of view, but for Rob Styles,

the match official.
Despite everyone saying they could have signed him (Real Madrid and Arsenal made that claim),
we had an alliance with Sporting Lisbon, his first club in Portugal. We were sending coaches over
there and they were dispatching them in the opposite direction. When Carlos joined us in 2002, he
told me, ‘There’s a young boy at Sporting and we need to keep an eye on him.’
‘Which one?’ I asked. Because there were two or three.
‘Ronaldo,’ he said. We knew all about him. At that stage Cristiano had been playing centre-

forward. Carlos said we would need to act because this boy was special, so we sent Jim Ryan to
watch Sporting Lisbon train as part of our reciprocal deal. Jim returned and said, ‘Wow, I’ve seen a
player. I think he’s a winger, but he’s been playing centre-forward in the youth team. I wouldn’t be
waiting too long. At seventeen someone will gamble.’
So we threw the boy wonder’s name into a conversation with Sporting. The response was that they
wanted to keep him for two more years. I suggested a deal that would keep him at Sporting for that

length of time before we took him to England. At this point, though, we had not spoken to the agent or
the player. It was purely a club-to-club discussion.
That summer Carlos left, to coach Real Madrid, and we went to America on tour. Peter Kenyon
left, Juan Sebastián Verón left. Part of our arrangement was that we would play against Sporting
Lisbon in their new stadium, which had been built for the 2004 European Championship.
So over we went. John O’Shea was right-back. People persist in saying Gary Neville was in that
unenviable position. But it was John O’Shea. The first pass Ronaldo took prompted me to howl: ‘For

Christ’s sake, John, get tight to him!’
John shrugged his shoulders. A look of pain and bewilderment was creeping across his face. The
other players in the dug-out were saying: ‘Bloody hell, boss, he’s some player, him.’
I said: ‘It’s all right. I’ve got him sorted.’ As if the deal had been done ten years ago. I told Albert,
our kit man: ‘Get up to that directors’ box and get Kenyon down at half-time.’ I told Peter, ‘We’re not
leaving this ground until we’ve got that boy signed.’

‘Is he that good?’ Kenyon asked.
‘John O’Shea’s ended up with migraine!’ I said. ‘Get him signed.’
Kenyon spoke to the Lisbon people and asked their permission to speak to Cristiano. They warned
us that Real Madrid had offered £8 million for him.
‘Offer them nine, then,’ I said.
Ronaldo was downstairs in a small room, with his agent, where we told him how much we would
love to sign him for Manchester United. In front of Jorge Mendes I said, ‘You won’t play every week,

I’m telling you that now, but you’ll become a first-team player. There’s no doubt in my mind about
that. You’re seventeen years of age, it’ll take time for you to adjust. We’ll look after you.’
A private plane was hired for him, his mother, his sister, Jorge Mendes and his lawyer to come
over the next day. We needed to get that deal done. Speed of action was paramount. I used to scout
myself, on a Saturday morning in Glasgow, and I would always say to the men I employed in that
capacity: ‘It must be great when you can spot someone you know is going to be the business.’

One night I was watching a movie, White Fang, the Jack London book about going down to
Klondike in search of gold. That’s what it must be like for a scout. You’re standing watching a game