Page 60 - Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

confirmed his majesty as a counter-attacker. The ball moved from Park to Rooney to Ronaldo with
devastating speed. I always said to him: ‘When you’re going through on goal, lengthen your stride.’
By lengthening your stride you slow yourself down and your timing is enhanced. When you’re still
sprinting, you have less coordination in your body, but when you slow your mechanics down you give

the brain a better chance. He did that. You watch him.
In the spring before the 2004 FA Cup final in Cardiff, where we beat Millwall 3–0, Walter Smith,
who had joined me as assistant manager in March, asked me about the various talent levels of all our
players.
‘What about Ronaldo,’ he said, ‘is he that good?’
I told him: ‘Oh yes, unbelievable. Even in the air. He’s a magnificent header of the ball.’
Later, Walter said, tentatively: ‘You keep telling me this Ronaldo is a magnificent header of the

ball. I see him heading the ball in training but never in a game.’
That Saturday, against Birmingham, Ronaldo scored with a superb header. I turned to Walter. ‘I
know, I know,’ he said.
I had watched Millwall beat Sunderland in the semi-final and told my staff: ‘That Tim Cahill’s not
bad, you know.’ Good leap for a little lad. No great talent on the ball, but he was a constant nuisance.
A pest. You could have bought him then for a million. He would have scored a lot of goals in a good

team. Dennis Wise was especially combative in that match. But there have been plenty of nasty little
players like him down the years, the sort who prompt you to think: ‘I wish to Christ I was still
playing.’ There will be plenty who would have said that about Dennis Wise. He would never have
survived in the old days, I’m certain of that.
If you’re cute enough in the modern game, you can get away with a kind of underhand physicality.
Wise would be good at leaving his foot in, arriving a fraction late. He played his game well. In the
modern game it is hard to pick out genuinely thuggish players: those who step out to cause hurt. It

hardly mattered, because Ronaldo destroyed Millwall that day.
The one political drama we had with Ronaldo was, of course, the 2006 World Cup, when he
winked at the Portugal bench after Wayne Rooney had stamped on Ricardo Carvalho. This raised the
brief possibility that the two men would fall out to such an extent that they would never be able to
play together again. What saved the day for Ronaldo was Rooney, who was terrific. On holiday, I
texted Rooney and asked him to call me. He suggested the two of them granting an interview together

to show there was no bad blood.
The next day I ran it past Mick Phelan, who thought it might look a bit prompted and artificial. I
decided he was right. But the generosity of Rooney was what impressed Ronaldo, who thought it
might be impossible for him to go back to Manchester. He felt he had burned his boats and that the
press would kill him. Rooney called him a couple of times to reassure him. It wasn’t the first time two
United team-mates had clashed in the international arena. I’ll take you back to Scotland v. England in
1965, and Nobby Stiles’ first game for his country. Denis Law is standing in the Scotland line and

Nobby shuffles over to him and says, ‘All the best, Denis.’ Nobby idolised Denis, who says, ‘Eff off,
you English so-and-so, you.’ So Nobby is left there, stunned.
Yes, Ronaldo did run to the referee to help get Rooney in trouble, which is common in the modern
game. But Ronaldo was thinking only of one thing – winning that game for his country. He wasn’t
thinking about playing for Man United the following season. That was a World Cup game. And he did
regret it. When we visited him it was clear he understood the implications. The wink was

misinterpreted. The manager had told him to stay out of trouble, so the wink was not to convey
pleasure to the bench at his own role in Rooney’s sending-off. I believed him when he told me he was