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Fergie: Go now? But I've only just started!

By Jeff Powell
Friday, May 28, 1999

It is one thing for Montserrat Caballe to reprise Freddie Mercury's Barcelona anthem on the big night in her home city, but what on earth is Alex Ferguson supposed to do for an encore?

Go for the Worthington Cup as well and make it a quadruple while negotiating peace in the Balkans, standing for election as a Labour Member of Parliament and leading Scotland to World Cup victory on the side?

If ever there were the perfect moment for a man to walk away in triumph and enjoy his own immortality, then this is the moment and Ferguson is that man.

Here is the manager who has achieved club football's immaculate Treble in the most dramatic fashion imaginable and thereby, at a stroke, exorcised the ghosts of Manchester United glory past.

In the process he has routed his enemies, confounded his critics, converted the doubters and seen off the most renowned of his contemporaries.

Kevin Keegan, Arsene Wenger, Glenn Hoddle, Ruud Gullit, Carlo Ancelloti, Paul Ince, Ottmar Hitzfeld, Martin Edwards...they all come into one category or another and the list of the vanquished goes on and on. What can his next trick possibly be?

'Do it all over again,' he says. Spoken like the true obsessive. But there can never be another night like Wednesday. What we witnessed in the Nou Camp was something unique in the annals of the game and by that historic judgment has to be deemed unrepeatable.

Even without that impossible climax, the hoisting of European football's greatest prize in unison with the winning of England's classic Double may not be a realistic dream ever again.

Next season's expansion of the Champions League to draw in more of the Continent's major clubs - especially additions from the mighty leagues of Italy, Spain and Germany - would in all probability have put this conquest of Europe beyond even United's formidable powers of recovery.

United's resources were stretched close to breaking point by the time they came out fighting against Bayern Munich, both physically and in terms of available personnel.

Only that indomitable will to win which these players have contracted from their manager conjured victory from the dying moments of a night spent in defiance of a superior German team.

This was so very nearly one huge game too far. With no more millions available to strengthen this squad significantly, next season threatens to commit England's finest to several big matches too many.

Given the blinkered refusal of United's rival clubs to reduce the size of the Premiership, the prospect of keeping the grand old European Cup in England is remote indeed.

Even the Championship and FA Cup Double, which Ferguson has now accumulated an unprecedented three times, will make higher demands on this man's exceptional capacity for motivation.

For all their wealth and celebrity lifestyles, there are no fitter players on the planet than Fergie's young men.

This, in itself, is a tribute to the brilliance of the manager's psychology but even he must wonder how long he can keep affecting those minds to this extreme.

The pride he instils is as impressive as the attacking style of play but there has to be a danger of some of them, at least, becoming sated with all the success.

The most effective way of challenging their nature would be to replace the first two or three waverers with fresh ambition but the apparent lack of transfer funds would seem to deny him that option.

United cannot expect Ferguson to keep reaching into his flourishing academy of youth for an international class player every time he needs one.

And, once the party's over, a sober reassessment of United's overall performance in Barcelona is likely to confirm that this team already requires reinforcing with a central defender and, if David Beckham is to continue his evolution into a midfield general, someone to duplicate his crosses from the right flank.

That in addition, of course, to bringing in Mark Bosnich to replace Peter Schmeichel. The sight of his goalkeeper taking his farewell bow at the height of such jubilation must have tugged at Ferguson.

And, while he was wearing his own emotional heart on his sleeve that night, he may look back with concern at the manner in which other players celebrated.

After the repeated raising of the trophy to the hordes, they sat together on the pitch. Not only were they reluctant to leave the scene of what they seemed to have realised was their finest hour possible but they gave every impression of men fulfilled.

Some, like Gary Neville, acknowledged that true greatness lies in the ability to repeat, but upon others there was a mood which Ferguson will have to address at some point between now and next season.

There must be in him a sliver of temptation to seek fresh challenges with one of the massive clubs abroad. He will resist of course.

Not just because he has signed a new contract worth £1.5million for each of its three seasons. Real Madrid, to name but one, might pay him more but he believes it only right that United are the ones who should be obliged to reward him properly at last.

Not only because he cherishes every moment with a gifted group of players who regard him as a father figure.

No, Alex Ferguson is addicted to football in all its adrenalin, excitement and potential for glory. He will be aware of the potential for anti-climax.

He will be alert to the heightened degree of difficulty in persuading his lads to go back to the mountain. Yet, as a true gambler, he will accept the risk that any slip from the summit, however small, might take a smidgin of the gilt off his golden reputation.

For most men it would be enough to be acclaimed as the greatest manager in the history of the British game. For this man, it will be as difficult to walk away at 60 as it is today.

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