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Sir Alex’s Manchester United exit: did the Earth move for you?

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sir-alex-ferguson_1409177cEven allowing for the forensic detail with which every event in the football world is scrutinised by today’s panoptic media, rare are the stories which completely transcend the sport.

News of Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement after twenty-six-and-a-half years as manager of Manchester United is one of these.  Rarely can there have been a day in the history of English football which so changed the face of the game as we knew it.

Plenty who have lived through Ferguson’s Old Trafford reign – whether football connoisseurs or otherwise – will have engaged in a little introspection as regards their own mortality when hearing Wednesday morning’s official announcement. The consequent plethora of career obituaries dedicated to Sir Alex, have included among their number, tributes spilling perilously close to what one may expect to read upon the passing of a revered public figure.

The Knight of Old Trafford is thankfully still alive and kicking.  Nevertheless, the absence of Ferguson’s unique footprint bestriding  day to day life, not only at Manchester United, whose exponential growth into a worldwide goliath he has influenced over and above anybody else, but in English football, will take some getting used to.

It is the longevity of the manager – whose all-encompassing command over every minutiae of club business will surely never be afforded to any of his contemporary equivalents – which has been championed most fervently in the wake of his retirement.

Ferguson’s ability to survive in the enduringly formidable environment at Old Trafford was, by extension, borne of his vast array of attributes.  There has been a relentless drive and energy in the Govan man which hasn’t subsided since he arrived in 1986, fresh faced, but already hardened by the experience of usurping the dual Glaswegian might of Celtic and Rangers while in charge at Aberdeen.

Reflecting on Ferguson’s entire career it would be remiss to overlook his remarkable feat of leading a small provincial outfit from the dark north-east of his homeland, to three League Titles, four Scottish Cups, and, by virtue of defeating Real Madrid in the final, the 1983 European Cup Winners’ Cup.

The boundless zeal and unrivaled aptitude for his work was evidenced in the manner in which once impregnable United teams were steadily overhauled and, in the blink of an eye, rapidly re-incarnated into the next greedy, trophy accumulating force.

Ferguson’s knack for instilling that hunger into every collection of men, young and old, under his control is something with which every one of his counterparts would love to be blessed.  Those fellow managers would be comparatively grateful for the perspicacious eye which identifies the precise moment a player’s powers are at their precipice, and the same insight which recognises the individuals capable of seamlessly slipping into his ruthless on-pitch unit.

It is the loss of that potent mix which all concerned with Manchester United will mourn.  With the familiar face of Ferguson at the helm came the fierce confidence that any transient claimants to their club’s pre-eminent status in English football would, to paraphrase the country’s most famous septuagenarian, be equally abruptly ‘knocked off their perch’.

The rest of us will miss the touchline eruptions, more recently given extra gravitas by their relative scarcity, as age has brought the settling of a once febrile character.  Anybody lucky enough to be charged with reporting on all happenings at Old Trafford will lament the loss of an adversary and a raconteur, a man who didn’t utter a word in public without carefully considering its consequences.

That particular trick resulted in countless amateur psychologists attempting to detect the implied message in every Ferguson pronouncement.

As master of his trade, and chief driver of the commercial monster which Manchester United now represents, Ferguson, the man with a stand named after him at his club’s famed home ground, and with his statue lurking within its shadow, has accordingly retained the unwavering belief of the men in the boardroom.

The very final leap of faith in their esteemed manager’s judgement might prove the riskiest flight upon which the Old Trafford hierarchy have embarked. David Moyes anointment as successor to the near irreplaceable 71 year-old has the stamp of the new boss’ predecessor all over it.  Unlike myriad previous Ferguson hunches which his nominal overlords have assuredly backed, the eventual prosperity of this last punt lies outside even the ennobled Scot’s extensive gift.

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