So, it has finally happened. The inevitable day has finally arrived.  Fergie has left the building .After 26 years in charge of Manchester United, Sir Alex Ferguson has resigned. I used to be a huge fan of wrestling (to an extent still am).This just reminds of the time when Shawn Michaels retired.It was just like the end of an era.I left wataching wrestling long ago but still used to see it now and then.HBK was like the constant there.When he retired,a part of me (and wrestling for some) died.Almost same thing is happening in football currently.You don’t need to be a football fan, or even a sports fan to know who Fergie is. For me, and several others who are my age, Sir Alex Ferguson is Manchester United. Players have gone, players have come, but Fergie remained. He has been the constant, an inevitability that straight-armed every juggernaut that came its way – Be it foreign money, younger managers or most importantly, time.Yes I can go on and on about his achievements (especially since I am a red :D)

People say Manchester United has the most number of plastic/fake fans.To an extent this is true ,especially in India where I live, But those same people don't say why,it's because Sir Alex have so brought much success to the team that even those who don't watch football know about Manchester United and the legends born from it.To explain this point just think about QPR ,they don't have many fake fans either.

When I switch on the television the next season, things would have changed. A sense of immortality lost. There won’t be the traditional gum chewing. There will be no news of the usual hairdryer. There will be no ‘Fergie time’. Football will played over 90 minutes again. Even the rival manager will shake a stranger’s hand, taking a moment to accept the change.

I will like to share some of his memorable quotes:


On Ryan Giggs "I remember the first time I saw him. He was 13 and just floated over the ground like a cocker spaniel chasing a piece of silver paper in the wind."

On Gary Neville "If he was an inch taller he'd be the best centre-half in Britain. His father is 6ft 2in – I'd check the milkman."

On Paul Ince "I used to have a saying that when a player is at his peak, he feels as though he can climb Everest in his slippers. That's what he was like."

On Italians "When an Italian tells me it's pasta on the plate I check under the sauce to make sure. They are the inventors of the smokescreen."

On the 1999 Champions League triumph "I can't believe it. I can't believe it. Football. Bloody hell."

On media criticism of Juan Sebastián Verón "On you go. I'm no fucking talking to you. He's a fucking great player. Yous are fucking idiots."

On Liverpool "My greatest challenge is not what's happening at the moment, my greatest challenge was knocking Liverpool right off their fucking perch. And you can print that."

On the 2003 title race "It's getting tickly now – squeaky-bum time, I call it."

On kicking a boot into David Beckham's face in 2003 "It was a freakish incident. If I tried it 100 or a million times it couldn't happen again. If I could I would have carried on playing!"

On Filippo Inzaghi "That lad must have been born offside."

On Arsène Wenger "They say he's an intelligent man, right? Speaks five languages. I've got a 15-year-old boy from the Ivory Coast who speaks five languages!"

On his former charges as managers "It can be difficult to pinpoint who would make it as a manager. For instance, nobody here thought Mark Hughes would become a manager, never in a million years, and we all thought Bryan Robson was a certainty to be a top manager."

On the referee Alan Wiley "The pace of the game demanded a referee who was fit. It is an indictment of our game. You see referees abroad who are as fit as butcher's dogs. We have some who are fit. He wasn't fit. He was taking 30 seconds to book a player. He was needing a rest. It was ridiculous."

On José Mourinho "He was certainly full of it, calling me boss and big man when we had our post-match drink after the first leg. But it would help if his greetings were accompanied by a decent glass of wine. What he gave me was paint-stripper."

On Rafael Benítez, reacting to the Spaniard's infamous 'facts' press conference "I think he was an angry man. He must have been disturbed for some reason. I think you have got to cut through the venom of it and hopefully he'll reflect and understand what he said was absolutely ridiculous."

On whether Liverpool would win the title in 2007 "You must be joking. Do I look as if I'm a masochist ready to cut myself? How does relegation sound instead?"

On Old Trafford "The crowd were dead. It was like a funeral out there."

On Manchester City's Carlos Tévez poster "It's City, isn't it? They are a small club, with a small mentality. All they can talk about is Manchester United, that's all they've done and they can't get away from it."

On City again "Sometimes you have a noisy neighbour. You cannot do anything about that. They will always be noisy. You just have to get on with your life, put your television on and turn it up a bit louder."

On Wayne Rooney's transfer request "Sometimes you look in a field and you see a cow and you think it's a better cow than the one you've got in your own field. It's a fact. Right? And it never really works out that way."

On Cristiano Ronaldo to Real Madrid "Do you think I would enter into a contract with that mob? Absolutely no chance. I would not sell them a virus. That is a 'No' by the way. There is no agreement whatsoever between the clubs."

On Manchester United's 19th league title "It's not so much passing Liverpool. It's more important that United are the best team in the country in terms of winning titles."

And on their 20th "Look at me – it's taken 10 years off me today. It's these tablets, they're great!"

And my favourite one:

"It's a mission. I am deadly serious about it – some people would say too serious ... we will get there. Believe me. And when it happens life will change for Liverpool – dramatically."   -----Sir Alex in 1988



By Anurag Sharma ,a true red from Delhi India :)

No doubt about it, Ryan Giggs is a Premier League legend and deservedly so. However, as good as the Welsh star is, the question has to be asked: Did Sir Alex Ferguson stunt Giggs' development to the point that he is not the great he could have been?

When you look back at Giggs' amazing career, and it is truly phenomenal, you realise what a fantastic player and professional he was and still is. The first player in English football history to win two consecutive PFA Young Player of the Year awards in 1992 and '93 respectively has had a glittering career.

Over the course of the last 23 years as a one-club player at Manchester United, Giggs has won every single honour available in top-level club football. To name all his trophies would take an article in itself; it takes an entire page on ManUtd.com. Any player who has won 12, soon to be 13, Premier League titles and two UEFA Champions League titles, to name but a few, deserves to be called great.

Giggs is a celebrated and unrivaled Premier League legend; he will go down in history as one of Manchester United's best ever players and he has amassed more trophies in 23 years as a player than many clubs manage in a century. But for all of that, just how great a player will Ryan Giggs be remembered as? 

For that we need comparisons.

The players Giggs is most commonly compared to are Cristiano Ronaldo and Gareth Bale.

Cristiano Ronaldo is the last great to walk to the doors at Old Trafford. The Real Madrid star is a world-class talent and heir to the great history of wingers at Manchester United. Ronaldo inherited all the great traits one would associate with both George Best and Ryan Giggs.

He took his phenomenal attributes, combined them with the lessons he learned under Giggs and Ferguson and became one of the greatest players the game has ever seen.

Current thinking in the English game suggests that Giggs' Welsh compatriot, Gareth Bale, will be the next world-class player the league produces.

Giggs, Ronaldo and Bale all share eerily common traits, skill sets and physical attributes. They are all recognized as having cut their teeth in the game as wingers before moving inside to central positions. In the case of Bale and Ronaldo their super-human levels of power, pace and incredible skills mark them out as central players almost impossible to mark.

For Giggs, his experience, vision and positional sixth sense make him one of the most effective centre-midfielders in the Premier League, even if he is just shy of 40.

As players today, there is simply no comparison that can be made between Giggs, Ronaldo and Bale.

Or is there?

When Sir Alex Ferguson recognized that Cristiano Ronaldo was a special talent, he moved him inside as quick as possible. Once there, the evolution of the player we see today began to take place. The same can be said of Gareth Bale under Harry Redknapp and Andre Villas-Boas.

Tottenham Hotspur's new Portuguese manager instantly understood the phenomenal talent that is Bale and in recent times has also moved him inside to great effect.

It is here that the question of Giggs' greatness is asked. 

Did Sir Alex Ferguson stunt Ryan Giggs' evolution as a footballer by not moving him inside sooner as he did with Ronaldo?

Looking back at the beginnings of Giggs', Ronaldo's and Bale's careers, one can see eerily similar statistics that perhaps suggest that Ferguson should have acted sooner.

The table below shows the first eight seasons for Giggs, Ronaldo and Bale. Both Giggs and Ronaldo made their debut as mere 17-year-old teenagers while Bale bettered that by beginning his career at 16.

The table shows a very similar trajectory for all three players. For Bale, we must take the fact that up until his fourth season he played at left-back.

With that taken into account we can see very similar goals-to-games ratios developing amongst the three players as young men.

However, Ronaldo's career takes a sudden turn after year four. Two major factors combined to make the player a superstar in 2006. The first was the experience he gained whilst playing for Portugal in the 2006 World Cup in Germany. The second was his club and international managers moved him from the wing to a more central position.

We can see a similar improvement in Bale's output in year eight after he too was moved inside by Andre Villas-Boas.

With Giggs, however, we see no dramatic improvement. If anything there is a decline and flattening off in output which stayed with him for the rest of his career. We can see this in the fact that he only scored double figures twice more after his 12 in 1996.

The reasons for Giggs' flattening off is twofold. The first is that Sir Alex Ferguson pigeon-holed the star as a winger and as such his game evolved at a completely different rate to Ronaldo's. The second is his complete lack of experience at international level.

By the time Giggs retired from international football in 2007 he had played 64 times for Wales. This return from a 17-year career is not as good as it should have been. Ronaldo played more than 64 times for Portugal by the time he was 25. At 28, he has now played a staggering 101 times for his country.

Bale, at 23, has already played 39 times for Wales.

The significance of international football in elite players' development cannot be underestimated. It is the highest standard in the game and provides the kind of pressure, intensity and experience that cannot be matched in any other competition, even the Champions League.

Giggs, of course has played in the Champions League but would have been better equipped if he had more international experience.

The two factors of lack of international experience and being seen as only a wide player by his manager have robbed Giggs of the legacy of what could have been. 

He will be remembered as an English league great and a Manchester United great, but he will never be remembered as the true great of the game he could have been.

Over the course of the history of the game we have had maybe five or six true greats.

Think Pele, Diego Maradona, Alfredo Di Stefano, Johan Cruyff and Lionel Messi as the greatest players to have ever caressed a ball. There is even a very good argument that Cristiano Ronaldo deserves to be on that list too.

Ryan Giggs could have been there too.