Two men pass each other on the hallway of history.
They are men of substance, shaped by sacrifice and solidarity.
Their reputations are landmarks in a post-apocalyptic landscape.
Their world, football, has spun off its axis.
Their standards are being challenged by corporate cockroaches, chicken farmers, and assorted opportunists.
Today is the 8810th that Sir Alex Ferguson has devoted to Manchester United.
That is a day longer than Sir Matt Busby was in charge at Old Trafford.
Together they bridged the gap between minimum wage and ransom demand. They witnessed the lurch from idealism to cynicism. Busby’s father was killed by a German sniper on the Somme.
Ferguson’s father fought for social justice in the shipyards on the Clyde.
Busby found strength in his faith, succour from the extended family of a Lanarkshire mining community.
Ferguson absorbed life lessons on the wharf, the importance of diligence, dignity, and discipline.
Great football clubs – and they can be more than mere cash cows – are developed by great men.
Not by those whose wallets are stuffed, but whose souls are empty.
Neither Busby nor Ferguson could claim to be perfect human beings.
Sir Matt had the avuncular air of a parish priest, a knack of making the little man feel 10 feet tall.
He espoused honesty and humility, but was sufficiently streetwise to hide a slush fund, to attract the best and the brightest.
When his authority was challenged, even by icons like Denis Law, he had a tyrant’s wrath.
Sir Alex is attentive to those toiling at his trade, and respectful to those pushed to the margins by principle.
He is a good friend, a bad enemy. His intransigence occasionally spills over into vindictiveness.
When his authority was challenged by Wayne Rooney, he responded with a mixture of sensitivity and savagery that would be beyond a younger man.
The nouveau riche can’t wait for him to detach himself from his life force, the game on which he imposes his will.
They see him as just another dinosaur fossil, more suited to the Natural History Museum than the Theatre of Dreams.
Can any sentient being really dispute Ferguson’s insistence that the game has gone mad? It’s most powerful figure, Sepp Blatter, sets the most putrid example.
Just when Blatter’s reputation couldn’t get any worse, his ramblings about gay football fans “refraining from sexual activity” at the 2022 World Cup assaulted the senses.
The crass, casual bigotry was breathtaking, and beyond apology.
Qatar’s winter World Cup will be the tipping point, at which clubs go their own way.
The old men of FIFA will go to their graves not caring about the consequences.
Absolute power corrupts, absolutely.
And ignorance breeds arrogance.
Anuradha J Desai, first female president of the World Poultry Science Association, may well be one of India’s richest women.
But if she believes that Blackburn Rovers – her new executive toy – can qualify for the Champions League, she is several McNuggets short of a Happy Meal.
If football follows her model, which neuters the manager – and sub-contracts control to agents – clubs will become factory farms.
Meanwhile, Manchester City are busy staging a remake of Pulp Fiction for the pantomime season.
There’s blood all over the walls, and no one knows who to believe.
Not quite the PR scam the Sheikh’s advisers envisaged.
Where is the dignity in multi-millionaire footballers being traded like counterfeit perfume?
Busby, of course, saw the realities of life, and sudden, violent death.
He lived through the Second World War, and the Munich tragedy.
He never forgot that the club he built was lubricated by the blood of boys who died too young.
Ferguson won’t. Neither should we.
Written by Michael Calvin Decemver 18th
@mirrorfootball
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