http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2013/may/17/david-beckham-alex-ferguson-manchester-united
When Sir Alex Ferguson retired last week, the natural inclination was to celebrate his glorious years at Manchester United and Aberdeen. But Ferguson developed his managerial principles long before he won the European trophies that would make him famous.
His discipline and desire to run a club from top to bottom were evident while in charge of St Mirren in his mid-30s. One particular occasion – described fully and with great wit by Fraser Kirkwood in this month's edition of When Saturday Comes magazine – sums up Ferguson's managerial philosophy.
The year was 1977 and St Mirren were celebrating their centenary, so Ferguson invited Liverpool to Love Street. Bob Paisley duly obliged, bringing his European champions north of the border to play to a capacity crowd of 20,000 on a wintry December night.
The St Mirren players expected Paisley to put out a weakened team, but he did nothing of the sort. The Liverpool manager played his best 11, prompting Ferguson to go to work.
The young manager, still only 35 and with a team captained by a 20-year-old, told his players that this was their chance to make their names. They were playing a great team, but they too were great and now they had the opportunity to prove it. Inspired by that thought, Ferguson's men went out and battled their way to a 1-1 draw against the mighty Liverpool. Needless to say, St Mirren's equaliser was a late goal.
Ferguson manipulated his players into throwing everything they had into that friendly, as if a fine performance would fulfil their destinies. His powers of motivation are legendary – the half-time speech he delivered at the 1999 Champions League final is up there with Al Pacino's "game of inches" address in Any Given Sunday – but the bedrock to Ferguson's success has always been discipline.
When the two groups of players met for a meal in a local hotel after the match, only one set tucked into the free booze: the European champions.
Ferguson's players were sworn off alcohol and his prying eyes were always watching over them.
Few managers in the late-1970s would have insisted their players remain teetotal after standing up to the best team in the continent, but Ferguson's standards were extraordinary. Those unwavering demands filtered through all of the teams he managed, no more so than the young squad that won the FA Youth Cup in 1992.
The emergence of Ferguson's so-called Fledglings is often credited to luck, or to the influence of Eric Cantona, but those players succeeded as they threw themselves into the challenge of meeting the standards demanded by their manager and his coaching staff. When David Beckham was asked on Thursday about how he wants to be remembered in his retirement, his answer was telling: "I just want people to see me as a hardworking footballer, someone that's passionate about the game, someone that – every time I stepped on the pitch – I've given everything that I have, because that's how I feel. That's how I look back on it and hope people will see me."
Beckham gave that quote to his old team-mate and Sky pundit Gary Neville, who is no stranger to hard graft. Neville's autobiography, Red, is an ode to the merits of discipline and hard work. He describes an ascetic youth dedicated entirely to the pursuit of footballing excellence. Neville always believed his contemporaries – Beckham, Paul Scholes and his younger brother Phil – were more natural footballers, so he worked harder and cut out anything that could hold him back.
"I was willing to ditch everything in my life apart from football and family," Neville wrote. "So much for my wild teenage years. If there was a game on Saturday, I was in bed by 9.15pm every Thursday and Friday night. I was a robot. I cast off all my mates from school, never saw them again. I decided, ruthlessly, that I was going to make friends with my new team-mates, who shared the same goals as me. As far as I was concerned the lives of athletes and non-athletes were incompatible. Between the ages of 16 and 20, I dropped women completely. They were always going to want to go to a cinema or a bar on a Friday night."
For most of us, this sounds maniacal. How many 19-year-olds deny themselves even the prospect of going on a date because a girl might "want to go to a cinema or a bar on a Friday night"? That's the whole point, Gary. And the later you stay out, the better.
Neville and his mates only thought about one thing: football.
You only need to read the opening paragraph of Paul Scholes's autobiography, My Story to discover the love of his life: "I was always football daft. When I went to junior school, I would leave home half an hour early in the mornings and spend the time before the bell went for the first lesson kicking the ball around the schoolyard. Occasionally some mates would be involved, but often I was on my own and that didn't bother me in the slightest. I was happy as long as I had that ball."
Neither Neville nor Scholes produce exhilarating literature but, as documents on dedication go, they are up there with Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. In his book, Gladwell argues that greatness requires enormous time and drive. He picks out the example of the Beatles, who performed for over 10,000 hours in Hamburg between 1960 to 1964. Eric Harrison, the youth coach who led Neville, Beckham and Scholes to victory in the 1992 Youth Cup would relate to that idea. He never tired of telling his young men that "practice makes players".
Fergie's Fledglings owe as much to Harrison and Brian Kidd as they do to the outgoing United manager. In Andy Mitten's book of interviews with United players from the 1990s, Glory Glory, Nicky Butt explains how demanding Harrison could be on his young players. Butt tells the story of playing his first game for United, as a 15-year-old in the FA Youth Cup against Blackburn. He wanted to make a good impression, but in his enthusiasm he overplayed. Harrison was furious: "Eric gave me a roasting. He told me that I'd never play again. He asked me who the fudge I thought I was. He was right."
By the time Butt had learned his lesson – immediately – the issue was sorted. Harrison was there to instil in the player the discipline he needed to make it, like Ferguson had done with his sober St Mirren players in 1977 and has been doing for the past 39 years.
Ferguson will sit in the dug-out for the last time on Sunday, with Scholes and Beckham also stepping down as league champions. Only Ryan Giggs will remain from the group of boys who beat Crystal Palace in the Youth Cup final 21 years ago. Giggs will carry on influencing the younger players around him, but Ferguson, who has cherry-picked his successor, believes his club is in good hands.
At the Manchester United end-of-season awards earlier this week, Ferguson outlined why David Moyes is the right man for his job: "He's hard working and has integrity. He's got a work ethic about him and he's a serious football man. These are the qualities he's going to need." They were enough for Ferguson and his young players at St Mirren, Aberdeen and Manchester United.
To me there a huge difference between the end of season or christmas party drinking pictures in this thread and the casual between game drinking. One is sanctioned and supposed to be team bonding exercise. The other is opportunism because they have the morning off. The question you have to ask is would Neville, Beckham or Scholes do it? Of course not.
To have a winning team we need players with the right attitude.
And with regard the don't believe the Mirror they're out to get us comments. This wasnt in the sports section, this was in the celebrity section and if the one direction kid wasn't involved .the whole thing wouldnt even be printed. The Mirror celebrity section dont give a brick about 4 tottenham players drinking, they're not out to get us and I cant see them trying to make up brick.
