Managing My Life - Alex Ferguson

The smell of hamburgers and horse manure swept through the air. People chatted to each other, rubbing their hands to keep themselves warm. It was March, and the spring air bit into the skin, even though the sun tried bravely to break through the clouds. An excited eight-year-old boy stood patiently with his father, waiting to go into the football ground that was just a few people away. Then finally the father and son made their way through the metal turnstiles and into another world. The young boy walked up the steps from the concourse and on to the terrace. He was inside Old Trafford. From that moment on the boy's life would never be the same again. That ...

Alex Ferguson is one of the people I most admire in football today. As much as I hate Manchester United I have to look on at his record with admiration, and I actually like the bloke as a person. Not only has he dominated English football over the last decade with his Manchester United team, also breaking the Rangers/Celtic domination in Scotland with Aberdeen and as a player. Although recently he has dropped hints otherwise, he will be retiring this summer to draw down the curtain on an illustrious career. ‘Managing My Life’ is his autobiography that covers all this and more. The book starts with a recollection of the magical events at the 1999 ...

Whether you like this book, the autobiography of Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson, will largely depend on your feelings towards the subject... More of that later, however, and for now let's concentrate on the book itself. Like most such footie biographies Managing My Life is ghost written, with healthy revisions by contributors to the mumbling mouthings of the supposed author. It has the usual hallmarks of the genre, with a preoccupation with their own particular view of life. Fergie's preoccupation with his socialist ideals was born from his working class upbringing, which he shared with most of the other great managers, like ...