What drives Fergie on - I wish my father was alive to enjoy my success

Published: 23 May 2009 - 00:49:10

Rss feed

What drives Fergie on - I wish my father was alive to enjoy my success

Sir Alex Ferguson fell out with his late father at the start of his career in professional football. They didn't speak for months after Alex Snr took umbrage at his teenage son's headstrong impatience to make the grade with Queen's Park in Glasgow. The rift was soon healed, of course, but now, at the other end of his remarkable 50-year career in the game, Ferguson wishes only for one last chance to impress a man whom he dubbed with or without irony 'Old Thunder Face'. Asked this week about the opportunity to win his third Champions League final in Rome against Barcelona on Wednesday, Manchester United's manager eschewed the opportunity to make comparisons between himself and Bob Paisley, the great Liverpool manager of the 1970s. Instead, Ferguson said only: 'I just wish my father was alive. He would've loved to have seen me achieve that.' Such is Ferguson's regrettable mistrust of the modern media, it is rare that, at 67, he offers any great insight into what drives him.