The following is an excerpt from Sir Alex Ferguson's new book, "Leading". Taken from the chapter entitled "Inspiring," Ferguson discusses how he dealt with star players during times of difficulty.
One other aspect of managing high-achievers that is worth emphasising is the need to restrain them from trying to do the impossible. Every now and again, someone would pull off an acrobatic goal or some other exquisite form of mastery, but you can never count on these. There is always a temptation when the chips are down to try and resort to stunts that might have worked in the pages of the old comic magazine Boy's Own Paper, but were almost always guaranteed to fail in front of 75,000 desperate fans. Whenever we were in a tight game and trailing by a goal, I would always emphasise to the team that we should not panic, and I would implore them not to try and shoot from outside the box. Instead, I would want them to keep their heads, retain possession and get crosses into the penalty box. Gary Neville, who was our indomitable right-back for so many years, had this habit of trying to shoot from 35 yards. It drove me bananas. After the game I would always be asking him, 'How many times have I told you it doesn't work?' Disciplined perseverance pays far more dividends than impetuous attempts at individual heroism.
Part of the way to extract the most out of people is to show genuine loyalty when the rest of the world is baying for blood. Football provides plenty of opportunities to do this. After Eric Cantona's famous kung-fu attack on what appeared to me to be -- when I reviewed tapes of the incident after the match -- an aggressive, foul-mouthed fan at Crystal Palace in 1995, the club, which gave him a four-month suspension (which was doubled, in a punitive manner, by the FA), did everything we could to support him. Eric had been sent into exile and forbidden from training or travelling on our pre-season tour, so it was natural for him to feel isolated and forgotten. I worked very hard to make sure he understood that we cared about him, and eventually, when he was teetering on the edge of departing to play in Italy, our loyalty towards him caused him to stay in Manchester.
Some years later, in the 1998 World Cup in France, after David Beckham got sent off for lashing out at Argentina's Diego Simeone, now the Atlético Madrid manager, we wanted to be sure we were by his side. The entire press corps was convinced that David's dismissal from the game had cost England the fixture, and the headlines reflected this. They were merciless: '10 Heroic Lions, 1 Stupid Boy' was the headline in the Daily Mirror, while the Daily Star blared: 'Beck Off'. There were effigies of David hanging from lamp-posts, and it wouldn't have surprised me if an immigration officer had refused him permission to re-enter Britain. After I saw what happened, I immediately phoned David, because I knew he would be devastated. He was. I learned afterwards that he had burst into tears when he saw his parents after the game and was almost inconsolable.
The last thing David needed was criticism from me, because he had already found himself guilty. So I phoned him, tried to bolster his confidence, told him that I understood what had occurred, that these things happen to us all, and that Manchester United, and everyone associated with the club, knew he was a wonderful player and were looking forward to his return, and that we would take care of him. United's first away game of the following season was against West Ham, where an effigy of Beckham was displayed hanging from a noose en route to the stadium, and the United team bus was pelted with stones and pint glasses.
Copyright Sir Alex Ferguson and Sir Michael Moritz, courtesy of Hachette Books.