Patrick Barclay

I've been following soccer for a fairly short time, but my years of experience as a sports fan are paying off. I've been absorbing a new sport like a sponge. For those who need to know, Ferguson is the long-time coach of Manchester United, and has been knighted so he is properly Sir Alex Ferguson. Even more properly, Sir Alec as he changed the spelling after moving from Scotland. This particular book was fairly interesting and would have been far more enjoyable if I had a mental database of English and Scottish soccer to round out the information in the book. It's hard to keep your Strachans straight from the McGhees or Bobby Charlton if you have no idea who they were. Like reading a book about Babe Ruth and not knowing at all who Lou Gehrig was.

Still, the book was well written and clear, fairly educational for me but surprisingly long. It covers his upbringing a little but mostly focuses on his coaching career, which followed a so-so playing career in the Scottish League. Other than the general soccer information, the most informative part was from his playing days with Rangers in Glasgow. He was ostracized and eventually sold off because he was married to a Catholic girl and Rangers, the team he had been a fan of growing up in Glasgow, was heavily biased toward the Protestant faith. Celtic in the same town was the other way around, and thus is arguably the most heated intra-city rivalry in all of sports. The book goes on to chronicle his career as a manager in Scotland, his first Scottish Premiere League job with St. Mirren and his feud with their management, his meteoric rise at Aberdeen and eventual move to Manchester. He was first and foremost concerned with building a youth squad everywhere he coached, but at Manchester the budget was available to buy virtually any player that he wanted. Some players were bought for tens of millions of pounds, played for a few years, and then were sold off for more tens of millions, some guys, like current player Ryan Giggs, were signed as teenagers (Giggs in 1987 at age 16) and played there fore year after year. From watching a few games I had gathered Giggs was a crafty, wily old veteran, but I had no idea how crafty or how veteran he really is. Very fun player to watch if you are learning soccer.

I watched Manchester play Marseilles just a few days ago and having read this biography added a new depth to a team that I frankly don't like that much because of their New York Yankee-esque spending of insane amounts of money to buy the best players in the world. From what I have gathered, they have an annual payroll of over 700 million pounds, which is over a billion dollars, and they have hundreds of players under contract loaned out to teams world-wide. When they need a guy, they just bring him back, or sell him off to raise payroll. Also, Marseilles has the first guy who looks like he plays in the NFL. Not could but does. He's a defenseman named Diawara from Senegal. They still couldn't beat Man U in the UEFA Champions League and still no French team has ever sauntered in to Old Trafford in Manchester and won. Anyway...

There was some good stuff about the breakup of Ferguson and uber-star David Beckham, who currently plays for the Los Angeles Galaxy in MLS. They had a long running feud and Ferguson eventually threw a cleated shoe at Beckham, gashing his forehead open (apparently English folk call it a 'boot'). After that it was a sale to Real Madrid, then to Italy somewhere (AC Milan, had to look it up), then LA. Also discussed was Ferguson's support of the hated American owners, the Glazer family who also own the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

There was a major focus at Manchester of not only winning the Premiere League but on winning tournament trophies in Europe, like the above-mentioned UEFA Champions league. So, some years, games were sacrificed by playing younger players in league games to focus on UEFA play and in general there was a push towards a large team with plenty of players who had access to plenty of playing time.

In summary, probably not much of a read unless you are a serious soccer fan, in which case it is fairly interesting.… (més)