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Manchester United Legend Sir Alex Ferguson Gives Blueprint For Success
Manchester United Legend Sir Alex Ferguson Gives Blueprint For Success
Manchester United legend Sir Alex Ferguson gives blueprint for success | Football | theguardian.com
Manchester United legend Sir Alex Ferguson gives blueprint for success
The former manager at Old Trafford reveals his secret in a series of interviews with a Harvard Business School professor
Press Association theguardian.com , Tuesday 1 0 Septem ber 2 01 3 1 7 .3 6 EDT
Form er Manchester United m anager Sir Alex Ferguson went into detail about the key elem ents of his job to a Harv ard professor. Photograph: Lindsey Parnaby /EPA
Sir Alex Ferguson has unveiled his managerial blueprint while admitting the conditions that allowed him to be so successful at Manchester United are unlikely ever to be replicated. Over a series of interviews with the Harvard Business School professor Anita Elberse in 2012, Ferguson went into detail about what he believed to be the eight key elements of his job.
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9/21/13
Manchester United legend Sir Alex Ferguson gives blueprint for success | Football | theguardian.com
In doing so, Ferguson said he did not believe a manager would be given four years to achieve success, as he was at United, and that the manager should always remain in control of the dressing room, a situation that does not apply at all clubs. He also outlined his natural instinct for taking risks, which led to so many dramatic late victories and, in direct contrast to his successor David Moyes, said he felt observing training sessions, rather than running them, was essential to his own managerial ability. This is an edited version of his theories, which appear in full in the October edition of the Harvard Business Review.
9/21/13
Manchester United legend Sir Alex Ferguson gives blueprint for success | Football | theguardian.com
in at 7am. "I expected even more from the star players. Superstars with egos are not the problem some people may think. They need to be winners because that massages their egos, so they will do what it takes to win. I used to see Ronaldo, Beckham, Giggs, Scholes practising for hours. They realised that being a Manchester United player is not an easy job."
6 Prepare to win
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9/21/13
Manchester United legend Sir Alex Ferguson gives blueprint for success | Football | theguardian.com
"Winning is in my nature. There is no other option for me. Even if five of the most important players were injured, I expected to win. I am a risk taker and you can see that in how we played in the late stages of matches. If we were still down with 15 minutes to go, I was ready to take more risks. I was perfectly happy to lose 3-1 if it meant we'd given ourselves a good chance to draw or win. So in those last 15 minutes, we'd go for it. We'd put in an extra attacking player and worry less about defence. We knew that if we ended up winning 3-2, it would be a fantastic feeling. And if we lost 3-1, we'd been losing anyway. All my teams had perseverance they never gave in. It's a fantastic characteristic to have."
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www.theguardian.com/football/2013/sep/10/alex-ferguson-manchester-united-blueprint/print