Let’s get this out of way right off the top.
Alex Ferguson, a former shipyard shop steward and publican whose accomplishments in soccer earned him a knighthood, is the greatest coach in the modern history of sport.
There’s no debate, really. There’s no one else — Phil Jackson probably comes closest — who even deserves to be part of the conversation.
Sunday programming alert: Watch Manchester United v Swansea City live on all Sportsnet channels. Coverage begins at 10:30am ET/7:30am PT. NOTE: This will be Alex Ferguson’s last game as Manchester United manager at Old Trafford before officially retiring.
In ancient times, before the money side of the game became a two-way street, before players won the right to free movement, other coaches in soccer and elsewhere served out long glorious terms dotted with championships.
The truth is, it was easier then. The boss was unequivocally the boss. Even owners — where they existed — rarely interfered.
Dynastic teams could be constructed and maintained in a way that is now nearly impossible, even in leagues without salary caps, even for the richest of the rich. There’s a cycle of boom and bust in which scapegoats are occasionally required, in which players have the luxury to stop listening, in which coaches are by definition hired to be fired.
Not Sir Alex.
He arrived at Old Trafford in 1986 fresh from taking the Scottish club Aberdeen to remarkable heights, winning the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup. Manchester United had a glorious past, but hadn’t won in the highest rung of English football since 1967. Liverpool was the unquestioned giant then.
The sport and the business of the sport were about to change dramatically with the creation of the Premier League in 1992, which resulted in both a financial windfall for the top clubs and an infusion of international talent into the English game. Ferguson’s United won their first title in the first year of the EPL, and went on to win four of the first five, seven of the first nine. He claimed his 13th championship this year to go along with five FA Cups, two Champions League titles, and 38 trophies in all.
During that stretch, Ferguson built (with some overlap) four separate, dominant sides, and survived the club’s tumultuous transition into the hands of American owners, the Glazers, which doomsayers — and hopeful rivals — thought must be the beginning of the end.
No such luck because Ferguson adapted, the way he eventually adapted his managerial skills to the different challenges of European football, the way he adapted to a shifting cast of players and to a series of big-money challengers within the domestic game, all of whom had their moments of glory: Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City.
But the constant was Ferguson’s United.
His teams didn’t always win. He acknowledged mistakes judging talent. He lost two of his best players, David Beckham and Cristiano Ronaldo, at the height of their power. His volcanic temper — resulting in the famous "hairdryer" treatment — sometimes got the best of him.
Yes, he had the luxury of signing high priced talent like Robin van Persie to take the place of departing stars, but in the last decade of Ferguson’s tenure, United were hardly the game’s biggest spenders.
And yes, maybe there were a few calls that went his way because of reputation, maybe there really was "Fergie Time" — that interminable stretch at the end of a match when United were in need of a goal and when the allotted injury minutes seemed to somehow extend just long enough. That’s in part the legacy of success, and that success is a legacy of hard work, of a refusal to dig in, to stand still. That, as much as the silverware, is Ferguson’s hallmark. Though he could have rested on his laurels, though he could have become set in his ways on merit, he didn’t.
If you loathe United, you probably loathe Sir Alex. His personality is in many ways the club’s personality. There’s no doubt he is arrogant bordering on imperious. Sitting in on one of his occasional briefings at the Carrington training ground (unlike North American coaches, Ferguson enjoyed the option of speaking to the media — other than quick post-match television interviews — only when he felt like it, only in group situations, and never when something that had been said or written angered him) was more akin to attending a papal audience than a press conference.
There will be talk, naturally, that Jose Mourinho, the sport’s most glamorous hired gun, is Ferguson’s heir apparent, but other than their shared, sky-high self-regard, they are polar opposites.
Ferguson may have traveled far from his humble roots, with a country mansion named after the Scottish shipyard where his father toiled and a summer place in the south of France, but managing still seemed for him a hands-on job, it still seemed like an honest day’s work, and his loyalty to the club was unquestioned.
For his employers, and for his only real bosses, United’s worldwide supporters, there is certainly no quibbling with the results.