Ferguson: I’m nervous about honouring Munich anniversary

IF THE hand of history has been placed on Alex Ferguson’s shoulder this season, it is not something that the Manchester United manager is entirely comfortable with, as the club’s date with destiny begins to loom on the horizon.

Moscow, May 21, 2008. The Champions League Final. Forty years on from United’s first European Cup triumph and fifty years since Matt Busby’s blossoming young team was wiped out on a snow covered airfield in Munich.

There is a certain symmetry about United’s attempts to be crowned champions of Europe this season, and Ferguson’s new, exciting team, driven on by the peerless talent of Cristiano Ronaldo, may yet earn favourable comparisons with those Busby Babes, whose lives were cut short in the disaster on February 6, 1958, if they emerge as Europe’s best in the Russian capital in four months’ time.

Yet Ferguson and United have been down this road before and the fairytale ending has been reserved for somebody else. Eleven years ago, United were apparently fated to win the Champions League Final in Munich, but defeat to Borussia Dortmund in the semi-finals enabled the German team to claim their own piece of history in Bavaria. The ‘perfect tribute’ of winning in Munich never happened.

And six years ago, wasn’t Ferguson supposed to take United to Glasgow for a ‘dream’ Final against Real Madrid at Hampden Park, and win the European Cup on the doorstep of his Govan roots? Bayer Leverkusen ruined that one, again eliminating United in the last four.

Poignancy and sentimentality are strangers to football once silverware comes into view and Ferguson knows that only too well. So while it will be fitting, emotional and the ultimate tribute to the eight United players killed at Munich if the team marks the 50th anniversary of the tragedy by bringing the European Cup back to Old Trafford, Ferguson admits that the fantasy is becoming a burden He said: “I have to confess that the Munich anniversary makes me a wee bit nervous, but it’s maybe a good thing that the fear of failure is upon us.

“It had to be the 50th anniversary sometime. I was aware of this two or three years ago when we did something with the Munich team and I said then, ‘Two years from now it’s going to be the 50th anniversary.’ It is very, very emotional, a high point in the club’s history really and how we deal with it is not going to be easy.

“I do have a bit of nervousness about this season, but I do think we have the right players to honour those killed by winning the European Cup.

“I think I’ve given them the ammunition for it. Munich may be an incentive — who knows, it may be the biggest handicap of all — but I think the players we have are not afraid of challenges. They can play without nerve and there are too many of them who play without nerve for us to fail miserably.

“I think we have a marvellous chance because this has got the makings of a good team with a good temperament in this situation we find ourselves in.”

Old Trafford is gearing up for an emotional week of tributes to those killed on the way home from a European Cup tie against Red Star Belgrade 50 years ago Wednesday.

For those with a connection and affinity with United, the anniversary is a stark reminder of the team that the club lost, but also of the genesis of the mystique that continues to surround United across the globe.

Munich transformed United into the world’s best supported football club, with people in every corner of the globe choosing to follow the fortunes of a team decimated and then rebuilt by Matt Busby.

But the multinational world of the Premier League has left United with a squad of players far removed from the collection of local boys that formed the bedrock of Busby’s team and Ferguson admits that the club has done everything to educate this team about United’s tragic history.

He said: “I don’t think repeating is a great thing, but the players have to learn the history and earlier this month we put together a video for players. The response was marvellous. You couldn’t hear a pin drop.

“Bobby Charlton talked about the experience of being at the club at the time and the players he played with and David Gill did a presentation.

“It was fantastic. Every one of them picked up the DVD at the end of it and the literature and there’s no question that’s important. It’s not a problem for Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes because they are local boys and they’ve grown up with United, but you don’t know about Anderson and Tevez and those from other countries.

“But they know about the club now and it was a fantastic atmosphere. It was marvellous.”

Since arriving at Old Trafford in 1986, Ferguson has restored United to the summit of English football and placed them on course to dominate Europe again. Another European Cup would see him surpass Busby in one respect, but the United manager admits that his experience of the club simply cannot compare to that of the man that built it.

Ferguson said: “For Sir Matt, it must have been a real task to go back to the game after Munich and I remember reading somewhere that the hardest task he had was to meet with the players who had actually survived.

“He didn’t know how to face them or what to say to them because he felt responsible. Being their manager, he was a father to them, so you can imagine that if he had retired at the time, nobody would have complained.

“Nobody could have said anything, because to go through that and lose half your team is a hell of a thing to happen to anyone. But he had the will to carry on and rebuild the club, which is where the romance still is.

“From the air crash to winning the European Cup in 1968 was an incredible feat. The feat was not just to win a European Cup, but it was how they won it with all the young players they had. I think that’s the romance.”