Ryan Giggs won everything in his playing career and did so at the club he grew up supporting under the guidance of arguably the greatest manager there’s ever been.
Alex Ferguson was Giggs’ manager for the entirety of his club career except for Giggs’ final season as a professional, when David Moyes was manager until he was dismissed in April 2014.
Ferguson was 71 years old when he stepped down in 2013, but his retirement still came as a shock to fans and players who had never known United without the Scot in the dugout.
Giggs, writing in his column for the Daily Telegraph, has revealed how he discovered Ferguson was leaving, and how difficult it was to come to terms with.
Ferguson and Giggs had known each other since 1987, when the United manager signed the then 14-year-old winger.
“I remember clearly where I was when I heard Sir Alex was stepping down as manager,” Giggs writes.
“He called me to tell me the evening before the club made the announcement. Although we talked a lot at Carrington it would be rare for his name to flash up on my phone out of hours and my first instinct in seeing it do so that evening was, ‘Oh God, what have I done wrong?’ Even at the age of 39.
“He rang me to say that he was leaving. I suppose it could have happened any summer since his first retirement announcement in 2001 that he would quit in the summer of 2002, later reversed. But somehow it still felt like a shock.
“When I finished talking to him that evening my overriding emotion was a great sadness. He had been part of my life for so long. It hit me at different stages over the next few months. When we went back for pre-season and he was not there, and then at Christmas. He was such a massive part of all our lives, organising, nurturing, driving us.”
Giggs also offered insight into his working relationship with Ferguson during his final years at the club.
“In my latter years as a player at the club, he would call me into his office to tell me which of the games coming up he had in mind for me to play and to get myself ready.
“But he would also consult me, and others like Gary Neville and Rio Ferdinand, more than he had done in the past. We would be asked how we thought the team was training, how they were playing, about opposition, about selection. But don’t get me wrong, there was only one boss.”
In the latest GAA Hour, we talk to Ken McGrath of Waterford and with Declan Brennan about a new club players’ association.
