Alex Ferguson begins by pointing to a new addition to his extensive collection of books about the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
The Devil’s Chessboard, David Talbot’s account of the theories surrounding Kennedy’s death, sits on his desk. Ferguson, who has been fascinated by the assassination since hearing about it as a young footballer 63 years ago, quickly launches into his own theories about what happened in Dallas.
His study is filled with reminders of a life spent collecting memories. Among the bookshelves is a leather-bound copy of the Warren Commission report on Kennedy’s assassination. Elsewhere, there are reminders of a football career that stretched across seven decades.
At 84, the former Manchester United manager has increasingly become the archivist of his own life.
Since retiring from United in 2013 after winning 13 Premier League titles, two Champions League trophies and five FA Cups, Ferguson has written several books, including Managing My Life, My Autobiography and Leading. A documentary, Sir Alex Ferguson: Never Give In, examined his journey from his working-class upbringing and trade union activism to his near-fatal brain haemorrhage in 2018.
His latest book, Games of My Life, takes a different approach. Rather than presenting a conventional collection of career highlights, Ferguson chooses 21 matches from a life that included more than 2,800 competitive games and around 300 exhibition matches in 61 countries.
The matches trace his development from football pitches in Glasgow to playing for Rangers and eventually managing Aberdeen and Manchester United.
“I could easily have done it just with games for Man Utd,” he says. But his son Jason reminded him of the matches he played for Glasgow schools and amateur clubs.
One notable omission is the 1999 Champions League final against Bayern Munich, when Manchester United scored twice in stoppage time to complete an extraordinary treble.
Ferguson says there was little point revisiting a match that has already been documented and replayed countless times.
“It was probably the most important game for me because I’d never won a European Cup,” he says. “Getting the holy grail was always in the back of my mind.”
Yet his most vivid memories are not necessarily connected to the biggest victories.
“The games that really spring to mind are to do with people, more than the games,” he says.
The cap he waited 54 years for
Among the most personal chapters in the book is the final one, which concerns a Scotland cap displayed in a glass cabinet in his study.
Ferguson waited 54 years to receive it.
In 1967, he was selected for a Scotland summer tour and played four matches against Israel and Australia, scoring nine goals. However, the Scottish Football Association classified the trip as a B-team tour because several established players had withdrawn due to club commitments.
Ferguson never accepted that decision.
The issue remained with him for more than half a century until he eventually wrote to the SFA asking the organization to recognize what playing for his country had meant.
“This is not a vanity thing,” he wrote. “This is a plea for you to understand what it is to play for your country.”
The SFA eventually awarded him a cap, along with three other players. The words “summer tour” appear on it, but Ferguson considers the matter settled.
“It put a bow on my entire life,” he says.
The story also reflects how deeply Ferguson identifies with Scotland. He still receives the Sunday Post, named his first Manchester home Fairfields after the Govan shipyard where his father worked and routinely brings tattie scones back to Cheshire after visiting Glasgow.
‘Cathy was the one who managed Ferguson United’
Ferguson is also acutely aware of how fortunate he is to still be here.
In May 2018, he woke with what he describes as a “savage headache” and collapsed at home. His wife, Cathy, heard the crash and called their son Jason, who lived nearby.
Ferguson was taken to Salford Royal Hospital, where doctors operated to relieve bleeding on his brain.
He later learned that five patients had undergone surgery for brain haemorrhages at the hospital that day. Only two survived.
When he regained consciousness, one of his first questions was about Doncaster Rovers, the team managed by his son Darren.
The recovery was difficult. Ferguson temporarily lost his ability to speak and wrote notes to himself to help rebuild his memory. Losing his voice was particularly frightening for someone whose commanding presence had become one of the defining sounds of English football.
Four months later, he was back at Old Trafford watching United play Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Cathy was beside him.
“I might have managed Manchester United,” Ferguson says, “but Cathy was the one who managed Ferguson United.”
They were married for 59 years. Cathy died in 2023.
Her absence remains visible in the house and in Ferguson’s memories.
“She was a great judge of people,” he says. “Very careful with people who wanted to be friendly with me. She never involved herself in my life as a manager. Never complained about it, because she knew it was my job.”
He remembers their wedding day with typical humor. They married on a Saturday morning, and he played football that afternoon.
From the shipyards to Old Trafford
Ferguson grew up in a tenement in Govan, Glasgow. His parents slept in a recessed bed in the kitchen because one of the two bedrooms was rented to an Irish family. Ferguson and his brother Martin shared the other room.
He later described the flat as the place where he developed the confidence and determination that shaped his life.
His apprenticeship as a toolmaker also left its mark. The skills listed on his qualification included milling, shaping, slotting, turning and grinding — skills that could almost serve as a metaphor for the way he later developed footballers.
The family was proudly working class, politically engaged and obsessed with football.
Ferguson first saw Manchester United play in 1953, when they faced Rangers at Hampden Park. Three decades later, he would become the club’s manager and eventually its dominant figure.
His managerial career began in 1974 at East Stirlingshire. He arrived in a Ford estate with a transfer budget of just £2,000, managing players earning between £5 and £8 a week.
From there came St Mirren, Aberdeen and eventually Manchester United, where he spent 27 years.
‘You need an aura’
Ferguson believes the greatest managers share something that cannot be measured in statistics.
He mentions Jock Stein and Bill Shankly, as well as Matt Busby, as managers who possessed a particular aura.
“You wanted to be like them,” he says.
His own approach was based heavily on understanding people.
Rather than simply imposing authority, Ferguson learned to persuade players to commit themselves to a collective purpose. His experience as a trade union shop steward played a role in shaping that philosophy.
While working at Remington Rand, he helped organize apprentices during a strike over working conditions and salaries.
“The strike was to give the apprentices better standards and salaries,” he recalls. “Everybody out — that was the core message.”
That ability to communicate became central to his management.
He often invited younger players into his office to talk, sometimes telling them stories rather than discussing football directly.
One image he kept on his office wall showed workers sitting on a steel girder high above New York during the construction of Rockefeller Center.
He would point to the photograph and tell young players that there was no fear in those workers.
Then he would tell them that he expected the same courage from them on a football pitch.
“Be consistent” was another principle.
“I never changed in my beliefs, with young players, whether I was at St Mirren or Aberdeen or United,” he says.
He also believed strongly in youth development. During his time at United, dozens of academy graduates went on to play international football.
Discipline and presentation mattered too.
When Ferguson arrived at United, players did not routinely wear club blazers while travelling. He changed that.
“When you’re walking through an airport, people would think: ‘They’re Man United,’” he says. “The badge tells everybody.”
Adaptation was the key
Ferguson’s career was marked by an ability to adapt as football changed.
He went from managing part-time players in Scottish football to handling some of the biggest personalities in the modern game, including Eric Cantona, Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, David Beckham, Roy Keane and Ryan Giggs.
His clashes with Beckham and Keane became defining moments in his authority at United. Both eventually left the club.
During one argument, Keane told him: “You’ve changed.”
“You’re right, I’ve changed,” Ferguson replied. “I wouldn’t still be here if I hadn’t.”
That instinct to evolve became one of the foundations of his longevity.
In an era dominated by sporting directors, huge coaching teams and data analysts, Ferguson’s insistence on having ultimate authority over football operations belongs to another era.
“If I were a manager nowadays, I would still want to have ultimate control over everything to do with the football operations — everything,” he writes. “If the manager is the man held responsible for the results, then he deserves the authority.”
Still following United
Ferguson remains careful when discussing the succession of managers at Manchester United since his retirement. Eleven managers have taken charge in the 13 years since he left, but he prefers not to comment on their struggles.
He does, however, continue to attend matches.
For him, the loyalty of United supporters remains one of the most remarkable aspects of the club.
“75,000, every week,” he says. “There can’t be a more loyal fanbase than that.”
His memories of United are inevitably tied to the great players he encountered during his career, including Denis Law, Nobby Stiles and Bobby Charlton.
Charlton, he says, was an “absolutely magnificent man.”
A new concern
In recent years, Ferguson’s interests have expanded beyond football, wine, racehorses and the Kennedy assassination.
He has become increasingly involved with dementia charities, partly because of his concern about the condition affecting former footballers.
His brother Martin has dementia, and Ferguson bought a house in Glasgow to be closer to him and to ensure that Cathy’s memorial remains properly cared for.
He also worries about his own health.
“I worried about that myself because I headed the ball a lot,” he says. “All footballers did.”
To reassure himself, Ferguson jokes that if he makes it to 85, everything will be fine.
He has also supported Playlist for Life, a charity that uses familiar music to help people with dementia reconnect with memories.
Ferguson donated £100,000 and supplied a playlist featuring Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Elvis Presley, the Beatles and Dusty Springfield.
There was also one inevitable choice: Queen’s We Are the Champions, the song that reminds him of Manchester United’s first Premier League title in 1993.
Now recovering from an Achilles injury and wearing a medical boot, Ferguson is taking things more slowly.
But age has not erased the instinct that defined him for so many years: the need to talk, laugh, remember and keep moving.
As he walks to the door at the end of the conversation, he laughs.
“I’m still alive, anyway.”
He always was fiercely, relentlessly alive.
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