I placed discipline above all else and it might have cost us several titles. If I had to repeat things, I’d do precisely the same, because once you bid farewell to discipline you say goodbye to success and set the stage for anarchy.
If you can assemble a team of 11 talented players who concentrate intently during training sessions, take care of their diet and bodies, get enough sleep and show up on time, then you are almost halfway to winning a trophy. It is always astonishing how many clubs are incapable of doing this.
I always felt that our triumphs were an expression of the consistent application of discipline. It may surprise some to learn that much of the success comes from not getting carried away or trying to do the impossible and taking too many risks. I had a habit of sitting down in January and looking at the fixtures for the remainder of the season for both United and our principal opponents, and would tot up the points that I thought each club would obtain. I was never too far off and the exercise helped illuminate how important it was to grind out the unglamorous 1-0 results. During these sorts of games, we would concentrate on maintaining a compact midfield and yielding nothing.
Since both my parents worked their fingers to the bone, I somehow just absorbed the idea that the only way I was going to improve my life was to work very hard. It was baked into my marrow. I was incapable of coasting and I have always been irritated by people who frittered away natural talents because they were not prepared to put in the hours. There’s a lot of satisfaction that comes from knowing you’re doing your best, and there’s even more that comes when it begins to pay off.
All the top managers, Carlo Ancelotti, Jose Mourinho and Arsene Wenger have a formidable work ethic. But it is the unsung heroes who I always admired the most - the sort of managers who would never give up, even though life and luck had not given them one of the top teams.
At United we have been blessed with many players who have this sort of winning attitude. When winning becomes a way of life, true winners are relentless. Corny though as it sounds, the very best footballers were competing against themselves to become as good as they could be. It was no accident that players like Ronaldo, Beckham, the Neville brothers, Cantona, Scholes, Giggs and Rooney would all have to be dragged off the training ground. They all just had a built-in desire to excel and improve. Gary Neville, for example, pushed himself harder because he knew that he did not possess the natural talent of some of his team-mates. I never used to worry about what he was up to on a Friday night because, certainly in his younger years, he would always be in bed by 9.30 p.m.
Understandably, middle-class parents want to make sure their boys go to college or acquire skills which means football never gets as much attention in those households. Around the world, football attracts boys for whom further education is unlikely and who have no choice but to work very hard on acquiring and improving their footballing skills as the path towards a better life. I don’t want to sound like an old fogey, but the overall rise in the standard of living means that today’s players grew up with hot water, television, telephones, computers, cars and budget airlines, and in physical surroundings that are far more comfortable than those in which I grew up. I’ve long had a soft spot for people from a working-class background, because I think it prepares them for the hardness of life.
For almost all the British players who played for me, football was their ticket out of miserable circumstances.
I have an abiding belief about the virtues of tapping the hunger and drive that can be found in people who have had tough upbringings. Whenever we had a setback at United and everyone needed a bit of a boost, I’d always end team talks before a game by reminding the players that they all came from working-class backgrounds where people didn’t have much. I would tell them that it’s almost certain that their grandparents or someone in their family used to be working class and worked hard everyday just to survive whereas all they had to do was work hard for 90 minutes while getting paid a lot of money. In retrospect the phrase “working class” might not have meant much to some, especially the foreign players, but I think they all knew people who had been through tough times. We all felt ourselves to be outsiders in some ways, and people who feel like outsiders do one of two things: they either feel rejected, carrying a chip on their shoulder and complain that life is unfair, or they use that sense of isolation to push themselves and work like Trojans. I always used to tell the players, “The minute that we don’t work harder than the other team, we’ll not be Manchester United.”
For years I’ve tried to fathom out why some people possess greater drive than others. I’m not sure I am any closer to solving that riddle today than I was 30 years ago, but I did learn how to harness that power and as I said, I do know that if I had to pick drive or talent as the most potent fuel, it would be the former. For me drive means a combination of a willingness to work hard, emotional fortitude, enormous powers of concentration and a refusal to admit defeat.
Most people don’t have inner conviction. Their confidence is easily shaken, they blow with the wind and can be plagued with doubts. I cannot imagine how anyone, without firm convictions and deep inner beliefs, can be an effective leader.
I just didn’t want people tinkering with our training system. When Carlos Queiroz started running training sessions, a couple of players didn’t like the sessions because they were to repetitive. I stopped the training session and told them, “When I was a player I wished I’d been coached by Carlos. All the repetitive things we are working on will become second nature on Saturday when you have no time to think.” All our planning and preparation was to help guard against a sudden rush of animal instincts in the heat of the moment. When a game starts to go in the wrong direction, it is so easy for players - especially the youngsters - to be controlled by their heart than their head. That’s the last thing you want. But don’t forget that football is an emotional game and there can be bad tackles or refereeing decisions that can affect people. Desire and a ferocious need to win are wonderful attributes, but they have to be tempered by a cool head. Ninety per cent of the time post players are fine, but there can be occasions when raw emotion overtakes the need to discipline. All of our drills on the training grounds, all our tactical talks and assessment of competitors were done as a way to hammer into the heads of the players the need to stick to the plan. It is very hard to persuade extremely competitive spirits to be patient. Yet very often our victories were squeaked out in the last few minutes, after we had drained the life from our opponents. Games - like life - are about waiting for chances and then pouncing on them.
I’ve lost count of the times during my career that I was accused of having a lot of luck, or intimidating referees into providing a lavish amount of extra time, when United were losing a game. There were plenty of times when Lady Luck blew in our direction - it happens all the time in football. Yet preparation had a lot more to do with our success than a few fortunate breaks.
Part of the pursuit of excellence involves eliminating as many surprises as possible because life is full of the unexpected. That’s what our scouts, our youth system and the innumerable training sessions were all about.
Relentless homework, all of it unglamorous, was a mainstay of United. Here’s one example. When we played Bayern Munich in the 1999 Champions League final, we had done our homework. In every game you wanted to have a sense for how the opposing manager might change his tactics during a game. Of course, that is something that is difficult to predict, but thorough preparation can sometimes suggest which players might get substituted.
In the 36 hours before a game there was a rhythm to our preparation. We’d show a short, condensed video of the opponents to the players before we practised and then, at the hotel, on the evening of the game, we’d centre their attention on the things they needed to pay heed to. We kept these videos short because most players, especially the young ones, have limited attention spans. I always liked to dwell on an opponent’s weaknesses rather than its strengths. While it was good to look at video of some of the lethal players we would find ourselves up against, ultimately no battle are won by mounting a sterling defence. The way to win battles, wars and games is by attacking and overrunning the opposing side. So I would always dwell on our opponents’s weaknesses - partly to exploit them and partly to impart in my players a sense of what was possible. If you overemphasise opponents’ strengths, you just plant seeds of doubt in your players.
The crowd looked at the goal Beckham scored from the halfway line against Wimbledon in 1996 as if it was some sort of miracle. It was nothing of the sort. He must have practised that same kick hundreds of time so, when opportunity struck in south London, he seized it. The same goes for lots of goals scored by the United players. They had been scored, or certainly practised, for hundreds of hours during training sessions.
Every now and again we were also undone by the atmosphere we encountered. There were two grounds that always caused us trouble - when we played Liverpool at Anfield, and Leeds at Elland Road (when they used to be regular opponents). We’ve been to Anfield with some of our very best teams, but the crowd - who are merciless towards visiting teams and refereeing decisions of which they don’t approve - whips up such an atmosphere that it erodes players’ confidence and make them lose their concentration. It only takes a momentary lapse to upset hours of dedicated preparation, and there’s very little you can do to help players with that. While there are elements of chess to a game of football, wingers, goalkeepers and centre-backs - unlike rooks, bishops and knights -are made of flesh and blood and emotions.
One other element of preparation worth mentioning is the way I approached the idea of risk. It would not surprise me if some observers feel that much of United success was due to our willingness to take unnecessary chances. When the crowd at Old Trafford are chanting, “Attack! Attack! Attack!”, it is easy to think that we automatically threw caution to the wind. I never thought about it like this because part of a leader’s job is to eliminate as many risks as possible. We tried to leave nothing to chance. I cannot tell you how many half-time talks centred on the need to be patient and wait for the right opportunity to occur, rather than to be daredevils. I would only want to take risk during the last 15 minutes of a game if we were trailing by a goal. At that point, it doesn’t matter whether you lose by one or two goals, and it was only then that I was prepared to throw the kitchen sink at things.
Youngsters can inject a fantastic spirit in an organization and a youngster never forgets the person or organization that gave him his first big chance. He will repay it with loyalty that lasts a lifetime. For young players, nothing is impossible, and they will try and run through a barbed-wire fence, while older players will try to find the gate. Every generation also raises the level of the game, because they stand atop more shoulders than the previous one. That’s truer today than ever before, because of the spread of television and the catchment area of a large clubs’s scouting organizations. Television means that boys all over the world are able to watch Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo. I am sure there are thousands of them trying to emulate Lionel’s feints or Cristiano’s moves. Somewhere there are a couple of boys who will be trying to improve upon their heroes’ skills, and eventually they too will be inspiring yet another generation to ever more creative heights.
It is such a tonic for a youngster to feel that he has a mentor whom he can trust and who has his interest at heart. There is more of a natural bond between players than there is between the coaching staff and the players. Some of this is because of the normal organizational gap the exists between an employee and a manager. The other is because of age difference. For example, towards the end of my time at United it would have been much easier for James Wilson to identify with Patrice Evra than with me, since I was old enough to be his grandfather. There is a lot to be said for either picking, or being lucky enough to land, the right mentor. The best ones can change your life.
I was always sparing in my use of the younger players to make sure we didn’t play them too much during their first two or three seasons. They were always raring to go but, at that stage, were still developing both physically and mentally. I also did not want them taking it for granted that they had earned a permanent place in the first team. It was good to keep them hungry.
Whenever we came across a player of unusual ability, the unspoken question was whether he would serve us better than the current incumbent. This goes for a reserve goalkeeper as much as it does for a potent striker. Another exercise that I used to employ to keep myself honest was to ask myself which member of our first team squad would be able to command a starting place with Real Madrid or AC Milan or whatever team happened to be Champions of Europe that year. That little mental exercise always illuminated our weaker spots.
I also found that experienced players are honest enough with themselves to know if they aren’t quite as good as another player. That’s particularly the case with older players. A 35-year-old player know he doesn’t have the pace of a top-notch 20 year old, and all team members were aware of the difference between themselves and the unnatural talent of a Cristiano Ronaldo or Eric Cantona. The older players aren’t competing against the youngsters as much as they are contending with the comparisons with their younger selves.
From time to time people suggested that I become manager of England, but that post, irrespective of the decade, has always held little appeal to me. Not only would I have had to deal with the guilt of turning my back on Scotland, but I would also have had to contend with all the frustrations of the position. It’s a hopeless job because, before any major competition, the press and the public whip themselves into a frenzy. They tend to forget that a national team manager, even though he might be handsomely compensated, is in a part-time role. He only sees the players intermittently, he doesn’t conduct daily training sessions, and it is unrealistic for any group of players, no matter how talented, to instinctively sense, in the way that they can do at their club, what one of their national team-mates might do. In my opinion, international management jobs are for experienced men in the later stages of their career who have the patience to deal with the shortcomings of the post and carry the reputation needed to command a dressing room full of players with whom they spend little time.
You don’t get the best out of people by hitting them with an iron rod. You do so by gaining their respect, getting them accustomed to triumphs and convincing them that they are capable of improving their performance. I cannot think of any manager who succeeded for any length of time by presiding over a reign of terror. It turns out that the two most powerful words in the English language are, “Well done”. Much of leadership is about extracting that extra 5 per cent of performance that individuals did not know they possessed.
It was always important that the players erased the memory of the previous season, whether they had won or lost. If we had done well in the previous year, it did not guarantee that we would automatically do so again. And, if we had lost, I had no interest in prolonging any hangover or defeatism.
Some managers try to be popular with the players and become one of the boys. It never works. As a leader, you don’t need to be loved, though it is useful, on occasion, to be feared. But, most of all, you need to be respected. There are just some natural boundaries, and when those get crossed it makes life harder.
It is vital to keep some sort of distance. This could be expressed in small but significant ways. For example, I generally rode at the front of the team bus. The players understood the distance, and at the end of the season when they had their parties, I was never invited. I wasn’t offended by this. It was the right thing for them to do. With one exception in Aberdeen, I never attended any of the players’ weddings. There was a line that they were not prepared to cross and they respected my position. It also makes things easier because, as manager, you can’t be sentimental about them.
Unless you understand people, it’s very hard to motivate them. Before we signed players, especially youngsters, I always tried to understand the circumstance in which they had been raised. The first ten or 12 years of anyone’s life have such a profound influence on the way they act as adults.
Another crucial ingredient of motivation is consistency. As a leader you can’t run from one side of the ship to the other. People need to feel that you have unshakeable confidence in a particular approach. If you can’t show this, you’ll lose the team very quickly. There is a phrase in football about players “not playing for the manager”, which I have seen happen a thousand times. Once that happens, the manager is as good as dead, because he has failed in his major undertaking - which is to motivate the players to follow him. The time to be inconsistent is when changes need to be made because the world is changing around you. There was always the temptation when things weren’t going well to change or to leap to a new lily pad. That doesn’t work. Sometimes, if we lost some games, we’d hear that the players thought that our training should be more light-hearted; that our results would improve if, instead of concentrating our training sessions around technical skills, we played mock games. I always refused to bow to those suggestions.
Leaders are usually unaware, or at least underestimate, the motivating power of their presence. Nobody sees themselves as others see them. I’d never really understood this until Rio Ferdinand buttonholed me one day because I had missed some training sessions while traveling abroad to scout a player.
The lesson I absorbed was that even if I said nothing during the practice, my physical presence was a more important motivational tool than I had realized.
Complacency is a disease, especially for individuals and organizations that have enjoyed success. I like to think that United’s ability to avoid lapsing towards complacency was one of the characteristics that distinguished the club. We were not always successful at doing so, but I was always eager to stamp out the slightest trace of complacency. Whenever we played a game I never thought victory was in the bag. In the hotel in Moscow in 2008, after we had just won the Champions League and Premier League, I talked to the players about the 2008-09 season and emphasized the need to be prepared for a tough, fresh series of campaigns where nothing was guaranteed.
I would not have taken us much to win the League. It was our job to do our job - and we didn’t.
At Medinah you could see uncertainty start too creep into Team USA after they gave up one point. Then, after the next one went out of the window, confusion started to set in. It wasn’t long before they were panicking, and by then the jig was up. Players forget what they are supposed to do, are incapable of calming themselves down and commit mistakes they don’t usually make. Eventually they capitulate.
I’ve seen this happen a million times. It begins with uncertainty which leads to confusion. Then panic starts to set in, and before you know it, the team has capitulated and defeat becomes inevitable. Meanwhile, the behaviour of their opponents starts to change: their confidence begins to build, their concentration sharpens and they block out all distractions. They can smell the scent of blood, and before you know it, complacency has scored another ugly victory.
I was always careful not to exude any signs of over-confidence. That was not a pantomime show or a false front, it is how I feel about pursuing anything that others also want. You just cannot take anything for granted. If United happened to be at the top of the table and there were five games left to play, I would never say, “If we get three points here nobody stands a chance of catching up.” Instead I would say, “Let’s get this game out of the way. Just get the job done.” You win by taking one step at a time.
For me the final whistle of a game was always salvation. The final whistle is the greatest moment. It was definitive, and marks the time when you finally achieve something. I only felt in a celebratory mood for a couple of hours after a big victory. It didn’t matter if it was a League Championship or Champions League. Celebrations after victories are exhausting. I’d usually lie in bed for a bit and feel a sense of satisfaction, but by the time I woke up that was gone.
My interview for the position as manager of Queen’s Park was a disaster. I was completely unprepared. I wasn’t sure who I was going to meet and I certainly hadn’t thought about the questions I would be asked, let alone have a list of topics that I wanted to discuss. So when I arrived, thinking I was just going to see the chairman of the club, I was surprised to find a large interview committee, including men I had played with. There must have been 12 of them in the room. I was nervous. I didn’t know how to handle myself. I was shockingly bad. I spent the whole interview trying to justify myself and my record, rather than just being myself. When I came out of the room I knew I had failed and I felt really disappointed.
When I interview someone, I want to know how ambitious they are or whether they are just thinking about a job as a stepping-stone to something else. Apart from their qualities and qualifications, I want to measure the level of their commitment. I always look for enthusiasm, for a positive attitude, for eye contact and for personal courage.
You can pick up the signs of someone’s character in many different ways during an interview - and it’s often the little things that make a difference. For example, someone who sits up properly and is leaning forward a little is showing that they are eager to start. That is way better than appearing cocky or over-confident or not seriously interested in the position. Some people are often afraid to ask questions during interviews. That’s daft. Interviews should not be a one-way street. You need to know what your employer can offer you. I often get a measure of someone by listening to the questions they pose. It shows how they think; offers a sense of their level of experience and degree of maturity.
I always watch to see whether people can maintain eye contact because it is a good measure of their confidence.
Youngsters think they have all the time in the world. As you get older and more experienced, you start to think about how you allocate time. You gradually come to appreciate that an hour - or weekend - squandered is time you will never recapture.
I have yet to encounter anyone who has achieved massive success without closing themselves off from the demands of others or forgoing pastimes. I’m not suggesting that being completely obsessed with a pursuit leads to a healthy lifestyle or eternal happiness, but I just cannot imagine how, if you aspire to be better than everyone else, you can have balance in your life. If you have two people of equal talent it will be the way in which they marshal their ability that will determine their eventual success. Some people are just better at shutting out the rest of the world than others, and that means they have more time to foster their talent or improve their organization.
From time to time I’d notice that the coaching staff were chatting about something and I didn’t have a clue what they were discussing because I had been lost in my own thoughts. When we were approaching big games I’d isolate myself in a mental cocoon. Unless somebody brought up an issue relating to the team, I would barely here anything that was said. I just tried to concentrate on the one big thing - my job. When I was lost in my own thoughts, Cathy would always say, “You’re not listening to me.” She was right.
When you look at a successful person, you cannot imagine that they’ve ever failed or had a brush with failure. But we are all haunted by failure. It paralyzes some and motivates others. It was my own inner determination to avoid failure that always provide me with an extra personal incentive to succeed.
For me, the only time to give up is when you are dead.
Each time I joined a club, I just thought to myself, “I’m not going to fail here.” It was one of the things that drove me. I always had that fear of getting humiliated, and failure was always that wee thing at the back of my mind. I kept silently saying to myself, “Failure. Don’t fail.”
The experience of defeat, or more particularly the manner in which a leader reacts to it, is an essential part of what makes a winner.
Before games I always had a churning in my stomach. It never left me. It was always there. I could never find a way to get rid of it. I remember feeling acutely nervous when I played at Rangers because I never felt that the manager had confidence in me and I always felt I had to justify my place in the team. But in some ways it may actually have got worse as the years went by, no matter how many cups lined the trophy cabinet, because the expectations, and the pressure, increased. Whenever we went to Anfield to play Liverpool I always had butterflies in my stomach.
The worst time was always during the pre-match warm-up. I hated it. If we had a 3pm kick-off, I would give the team talk between 1.15pm and 1.45pm. Once I had delivered my piece I would leave the players alone. We had prepared as best we could and last-minute instructions always leave players wondering whether they command the manager’s confidence. Then, after everyone was in their warm-up gear, the dressing room would empty about 2.15pm. I detested the next 30 minutes, which always seemed to drag on an on. I was often by myself in our dressing room and the pair of clocks on the wall never seemed to move.
The loneliness was much worse when we played away games because I had no office to use as a refuge. Then, I would often find myself sitting alone in the dressing room. I don’t think this feeling, certainly in my later years as a manager, was caused by worrying about failing. Rather it was prompted by the apprehension, anxiety and uncertainty that always surrounds a big occasion, which might be exacerbated when you depend on others to implement your wishes. I’m sure other leaders experience similar feelings, no matter how worldly and important they may seem to others.
Even now, when I’m watching United from the directors’ box or at home on the television, I feel twinges in the pit of my stomach. I never tried to get rid of this feeling. Maybe some people, before a big performance or important encounter, try to calm their nerves with breathing exercises or a dram of whisky, but I never did so. I just accepted that nagging anxiety as part of my job. It accompanied me through life and it would have been a big warning sign that I was no longer up to the task had that anxiety - which really was a sign of how badly I wanted to win - every disappeared.
The old adage that you learn more from defeats than you do from victories has been certainly true for me. While I am sometimes inclined to say that I never look back, it isn’t true. I wouldn’t harp on at the players about defeats, and I would certainly try to mask whatever I was thinking, but privately I always spent more time contemplating games that we lost than the ones we won. It’s also true that if, during any season, we failed to win a major competition that we should have won, I found myself stewing on the reason during the summer so that I could correct whatever was wrong before the start of the next season.
At Aberdeen and United, once the squads were properly organized, I always felt our defeats, or disappointing results, were caused by what we failed to do rather than what our opponents did. I found it healthy to approach disappointments in that manner because it meant we were in control and could improve. I was always a better manager after a loss. For whatever reason, it made me sharper. I suppose sometimes I wanted to prove I was not a loser, and at other times I wanted to avenge a defeat. At some point in my life the desire and need to win outstripped my fear of failure. Winning was a matter of pride. It did not matter whether it was the first team or reserves. Losing is a powerful management tool so long as it does not become a habit. I felt that way to the end of my career.
I always found it helpful to put criticism in perspective and these memories of my childhood helped. It’s easy for me, decades later, to romanticize aspects of my childhood and my playing career, but both had more than their share of raw moments. Yet physical pain is one thing, mental anguish and emotional pressure are entirely different.
I’ve seen lots of people crack from the emotional pressure of playing or managing. Obviously I might not have been privy to their personal problems, but there are tremendous pressures.
When things were at their darkest for met at United, I remember my wife Cathy asking me what I’d do if I was sacked, and I told her that we would just have to go back to Scotland. I’m sure I would have been crushed if I had been fired, but I always knew I’d be able to support my family and it wouldn’t have been the end of the world.
Having a healthy, open line of communication with the boss is vital. Managers have to find a way to talk to their bosses, regardless of their differences in character; otherwise it will only end miserably.
While I was always fixated on both physical and mental freshness, I was careful never to say to a player, “You look tired,” even if I thought that he did. I knew that if I uttered the phrase he would immediately feel tired. Instead I’s say to him, “You’re so strong, nobody is ever going to be able to keep up with you.”
Authority, and the exercise of control, rests on possessing the confidence of those who provide it. No leader stands a chance if the people he is supposedly managing sense that his hold on his job is tenuous. In football the providers of this authority are the club owners. If they are unequivocal about their confidence in - and support of - the manager, they make his job a lot easier.
I hired you because you can do the job. I’m not interested in what the press say. You just get on with your job. Don’t moan. Be a man.
A manager wants four things from the owner: no meddling; money when it is needed to buy a player; support; and fair compensation.
At the same time I was always very careful that my control was not usurped. That explains why I sold players who tried to undermine my control. I hesitate to say this, because it will get wrongly interpreted as callousness, but everyone is disposable. Somebody once said, “Graveyards are full of indispensable men,” and it’s a phrase worth dwelling on.
Men like Bobby Brown perhaps lacked the confidence required to stick to decisions. Others are in a perpetual quest of the last possible morsel of information, using that as an excuse not to make a decision. When you are in the football world, and I suspect in almost every other setting, you have to make decisions with the information at your disposal, rather than what you wish you might have. I never had a problem reaching a decision based on imperfect information. That’s just the way the world works.
I was furious with him. I thought he was going to screw up our chances. But he was right, and he taught me a very valuable sales lesson. He taught me to identify the decision-makers who influence any sale. In the case of young players, it isn’t the player. It also isn’t the father because, generally, he only wants to live vicariously through his son. The decision-maker is the mother. The mother wants to know what’s going to be best for her son.
I didn’t begrudge the players a single penny. In fact, I think the best footballers are underpaid. That might seem ridiculous to someone who is working as a car mechanic or as a nurse, but I look at the topic differently. Players good enough to turn out for any team in the upper echelon of the Champions League have outshone tens of thousands of lads who would give their eyeteeth for the same opportunity. They are talented enough to entertain people all over the world - usually in numbers that dwarf the audiences attracted by music or film stars, and certainly larger than those following other sports.
I always tried to tell myself that it wasn’t the end of the world if we failed in a particular negotiation and that our success was not going to hinge on the arrival of one player. If you need one person to change your destiny, then you have not built a very solid organization.
The setting for negotiations can also play a role and, as I said earlier, I found that the hotel in the south of France where Cathy and I go on holiday was a great spot at which to convince players to cast their lot in with United. It is far away from the madding crowd and, with its view over a sunny Mediterranean, is far more conductive to the notion of a bright future than a small conference room in a stadium or a hotel suite on a rainy day in London.
All things considered, I had it easy compared to anyone in politics. I had dinner with Tony Blair in Manchester before the 1997 election, and we talked about how hard it would be to keep his Cabinet ministers on the straight and narrow because they were all after his job and would leak nuggets to their favourite journalists in order to gain favourable coverage.
But as I say, the inner circle of confidants is really quite small. Perhaps it is just very difficult to have more than a few close friends because these sorts of relationships build over a long time and lots of shared experiences. As my father always said, you only need six people to carry your coffin and, as I have got older, I have become ever more appreciate of that remark.
It’s hard to keep your head when competitors do irrational things. In business, if a competitor lowers prices or splurges on an expensive television campaign, it’s easy to automatically assume that’s the correct course. I suspect it requires a steely nerve to avoid following suit.
For the first time I also really noticed the noise of the crowd. While I had been managing, I had usually been able to block out the sound from the stands, and it rarely ever registered with me.
Sharing stories and memories with Mikael or Bobby reminds me of what I miss about my old life. It isn’t the open-top bus tours, the pleasure of spotting a youngster with great talent or the thrill of a closely fought game. Rather, it is all those shared experiences and the camaraderie that emerges between people who live and work together for a long time.
But most of all I missed being around the company of young people eager to take on impossible challenges - whether they were the players or the eager crew of video analysts.