Sir Alex Ferguson: Our Scottish Grandfather

There’s no doubt that by now this website and the internet must already be choc-a-bloc with tributes to the boy from the docks of Govan who went on to become the most successful football manager in history. My aim here is not to cut through the clutter of eulogies on the social network or painstakingly point out chinks in what has come to be a staggering statistical armour. I write this piece to make sense of my own disorientation on hearing this piece of news.

Imagine the scene. You’re having a merry dinner at a restaurant with a bunch of your friends. The fine food has taken the edge off your initial reluctance to be part of this gathering after a long workday and the alcohol has loosened your tongue. As you call for more of the poison of your choice, you see her walking towards you. She’s lost all those pounds from all those years ago, and her skin glows even under the unfavorable lighting arrangements. You do the whole hi – long time, no see – you’re looking great routine, and then she casually lets slip that she’s getting engaged to the fellow she’s now seeing. You stutter your congratulations, and watch hypnotized as she sashays back into the shadows. There is a barrage of ex-girlfriend jokes at the table, and despite your own nerviness, the memory train in your head has already started chugging along. Soon enough, you’re hurtling towards the swirling vortex of times past. You see yourself as you once were, and you’re colonized by a bittersweet yearning for life as it once was. Hard to believe you’re only 22.

I have long since fallen out of love with Manchester United Football Club, but Sir Alex’s retirement compels me to return to the burnt building, and celebrate its once-technicolour glory. My first foggy football memory involves Ronaldo slaloming past Chilean defenders at the 1998 World Cup. I guess I slept soundly through that night in Barcelona, because my first Champions League memories are of Steve Mcmanaman’s scissor kick and Raul rounding Canizares to slot home for Madrid in the 2000 final. Ironically, my memory turns foggy if I think of when I first watched United play. But I do credit my United fanaticism in those early years to a nifty piece of evangelism by my still believing cousin, who recently completed the United fan’s equivalent of the Haj – watching a game live at Old Trafford. He taught me to appreciate the multiple levels of delight in staying up for big European nights before he set off for the States in 2002. By then, though, I was well-equipped to go solo. My spine tingles even now as I remember the excitement of donning my first United replica. I thought the SHARP emblazoned across the front was only there to describe the mercurial Andy Cole and Dwight Yorke in front of goal.

My first heartbreak came when I was told about the Japanese consumer electronics giant. That doesn’t stop me from identifying the passage of my United years with the shirt sponsors. What was engendered in the fag end of the SHARP Era really came into its own in the Vodafone Era. No doubt, it was aided by the mass conversion happening around me. Later, when I’d read about Ambedkar’s mass conversion to Buddhism in Nagpur, I would associate it with the way we all switched to football from cricket in the early 2000s. A fresh sense of delight every weekend. The glitzy graphics that announced the beginning of football programming on ESPN-Star Sports would warm the cockles of our young hearts. Welcome to Premiership Saturday. We’re back on Super Sunday. We were glad to note that our beloved John Dykes too had made the sensible decision of switching over to football.

3-0 down against Tottenham. A five goal blitz in the second half. Nisteltooy’s shot hitting the crossbar at Old Trafford. Oh, the agony. How to bear the taunts of the Arsenal fans at school. Little Keowns elbowing us in the corridors as we made our way to play football with a tennis ball on the basketball court in the lunch break. Twelve-year-old Ray Parlours standing smug against the classroom walls, as we lived and breathed every moment of our shame. And then the redemption. We were in Agra on a school trip. The world’s most magnificent testament to love is before us, but we’re wearing our love on our sleeves. Literally. The teachers are wondering why all the boys are wearing red. Some football match happening today, they tell each other with a roll of their eyes. They’d rather marvel at poetry in marble. Back at the hotel that night, a bunch of boys from Mumbai watch a game being played in Manchester. At a different kind of cathedral. Yet, this one too is one of love. It goes by the name of Old Trafford. When Ruud van Nistelrooy fires in a penalty past Jens Lehmann, a bunch of boys grow up a little. They learn what it is to lose, and win it all back, and how much sweeter it is that way.

Cut to 2008. Penalties, ah, penalties. The Albatross diving to deny the Incredible Sulk. Moscow has always loved the colour red. There were some that came and went, and there is a memory attached to all of them. Seba Veron’s freekick against Bolton, the Forlan double at Anfield, the gazelle Saha bouncing away yet again. Sometime in the first year of college, we part ways. United and I. It is not explosive. I guess we just grow out of each other. There are those who are more knowledgeable about the team, its history, its players, its strategies. There are times when I feel inadequate as they pontificate about United’s defensive troubles and transfer targets. At some level, I begin to think of these loyalties as tribal, even primitive in a way. Liberal education has done quite a thorough job with me. I act all coolly post-modern, and lazily keep the MatchTracker tab open when United plays.

But one man has been through it all. The comings and the goings. The Arsenals and the Chelseas. The Cantonas and the Chicaritos. The word “indispensable” has been thrown around a lot in the last few hours. But the gaffer would know better than to get carried away by all the chatter. If it had to happen, it would have happened long years ago, when he’d already cemented a place for himself in the pantheon of sporting greats, spoken of in the same breath as that beacon of this football club’s exemplar of excellence, Sir Matt Busby. Always one to put the team before an individual, he knows that after the hullaballoo dies down, everyone will have no choice but to get back to the mundane business of going about their own lives. The club and its players will continue thirsting for trophies, and its fans will not forsake it for possibly greener managerial pastures. For all his gum-chewing, hair-drying audacity, he’s one of those men who is what he is because of his passion for the game of football. The kind of man we all wanted to be in the folly of youth.

One particular incident comes to mind. I visited Manchester with my parents in the summer of 2005 on a package tour. The itinerary, in Manchester, shockingly did not have Old Trafford in it. By a quirk of fate, it was the just the day after Glazer had taken over. I walked up to the Mancunian guide, a kindly grandmother in a cobalt blue dress, and wondered if she could please ask the bus driver to swing by Old Trafford so I could just, you know, breathe the air outside the stadium? The stadium was out of bounds that day, and there were a bunch of protestors just outside, livid with the Americans. For five glorious minutes, I gazed at the hulking presence of the Theatre of Dreams. That is the closest I have come to living a dream. On the way back, I asked the guide where Sir Alex Ferguson stays, and if we could stop there for a moment. I think she meant it when she said, “Today, son, I wouldn’t go near the man if you offered me the crown jewels, yeah.”

You can gauge his influence in my family by the fact that he’s endearingly referred to as “Man U Thatha” (thatha is Tamil for grandfather) by my mother, aunts and grandmother. They all thought he chewed too much gum to be a role model, but in their weaker moments, even they admitted that he must really love this club to keep at it the way he does. If there is one thing that Alex Ferguson is, it is consistent. He pumped his fists when he won, mouthed off when he lost, and knew when to hold on and when to let go. For so many of us, he represented all that was great and glorious about loyalty, honour and the tradition of the institution that is a football club. Thank you, Thatha.

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