It won’t be the same without him
In fact, he sets the tone that would define the next 25 years.
“This isn’t just a job to me,” the then 46-year-old proclaimed. “It’s a mission. I am deadly serious about it. Some people would reckon too serious. We will get there, believe me. And when it happens, life will change for Liverpool and everyone else — dramatically.”
The greatest testament to Ferguson’s managerial career is that his success has been so durable and so — yes — dramatic that it’s now almost impossible to register any other reality. Or, to invert that, imagine asking a restless 1988 United fan to envisage the next 25 years? A haul of two European Cups, 13 league titles, five FA Cups, four League Cups and one Cup Winners Cup? Unthinkable — especially when you also consider how much else had to change, right up to Liverpool’s pre-eminent position.
The only way to properly assess Ferguson’s achievements, in fact, is to think how much the exact definition of his career has changed throughout that time — and how many other greats he surpassed.
Consider this sequence: first of all, at Aberdeen, he emulated Brian Clough by lifting a provincial club to unprecedented levels of glory.
Next, he replicated the work of Matt Busby by transforming Manchester United from a faded force into a modern giant. He also directly created many of the resources he would subsequently enjoy.
Finally, he has long since surpassed the likes of Bob Paisley, Giovanni Trapattoni and Helenio Herrera as a thoroughly relentless trophy-winning force.
All of his equivalents and contemporaries either blazed all too briefly or fizzled out long before their eventual retirement. Ferguson, by contrast, has departed the stage having just lifted one of its finest possible prizes.
Quite simply, no-one can match that breadth or depth of success.
There is, however, the peak: the European Cup and that single significant caveat on his CV. Is two trophies in 18 seasons enough? Does it count against his status as the greatest manager ever? In truth, that contrast is usually brought up devoid of proper context.
For one, the exact length of his career has actually posed an untypical number of challenges. On initially entering the Champions League in the mid-90s, Ferguson not only had to overcome England’s significant knowledge gap after the Heysel ban but also lift his side from what was at that point a much lower level of league.
The 1999 treble shouldn’t just have stood out for the unprecedented number of trophies won but also the fact it was so out ahead of step of the Premiership’s results at the time.
Many United players lamented the failure to retain that trophy but no club has managed that since Ferguson entered the competition. The days of racking up rallies are long gone.
And yet, he might still have forged the Champions League’s greatest ever managerial record had it not been for the rise of one of its greatest ever teams. A historically exceptional Barcelona denied him in the 2009 and 2011 finals, bringing to a culmination the type of club cohesion that no one man can hope to replicate. That Pep Guardiola team were the perfect integration of structure, coaching, squad and manager, and ultimately the only established rival that Ferguson has failed to see off.
Otherwise, his career has been characterised by adapting to every challenge: the Old Firm, Kenny Dalglish’s Blackburn Rovers, Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal, Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea and Manchester City’s millions.
He’s also won almost every possible trophy in almost every possible way: with youth, with experience, with adventure, with caution, in plenty of time, in the final seconds.
That durability has proven as important as the drive. Because, for all that the ferocity he displayed in 1988 propelled the club, it was importantly counterbalanced by a capacity to pause and contemplate what required changing to perpetuate. Ferguson made the kind of hard calls that made consistent winning look easy.
There is a certain irony, in fact, that the Barcelona team he could never beat could well have done with the Scot’s ability to rip things up and forge ahead in a different way.
Ultimately, it’s not even that no other manager compares to Ferguson, it’s that his career encompasses the feats of so many of his contemporaries.
He will forever remain unique.
Already, Manchester United feel like a slightly less intimidating prospect, devoid of an intangible magic.
Ferguson made the prospect of so many trophies tangible.
He continuously changed with football; football won’t be the same without him.
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