Now Streaming: Sir Alex Ferguson – Never Give In

Before Manchester United, there was Aberdeen FC.

Sir Alex Ferguson took over the club in June of 1978, when the 36-year-old manager had just a few seasons of lower-league experience under his belt. Aberdeen was such a small organization that the team trained at a local park.

No matter. Sir Alex guided them to the Scottish Premier Division title in 1980, then again in 1984 and 1985. Aberdeen also won four consecutive Scottish Cups and a Scottish League cup to boot.

Those titles qualified Aberdeen for European competition. In 1983, the lads from the local park competed in the European Cup Winners’ Cup, and held a Bayern Munich that featured Gerd Müller and Paul Breitner to a 0-0 draw in the Olympiastadion, then defeated them 3-2 just two weeks later in Scotland. But that was just the warm-up. Aberdeen made it to the final, where they beat 3-2 Real Madrid in stoppage time behind a 112′ goal from John Hewitt, a local boy who spent most of his career playing for his childhood club.

It turns out the Fergie Time was a thing long before Manchester United turned the last-minute winner into an art form.

Brilliant and bitter

Those high-profile, high-pressure victories in Scotland speak not just to Sir Alex’s tactical brilliance, but to his bitterness.

He was driven as much by a desire to succeed with Aberdeen as to watch Rangers FC fail. A striker who made his professional debut at age 16, Ferguson signed for Rangers in 1967, when he was at the height of his powers. He scored 25 goals in 41 appearances for the Scottish giants, but his marriage to a Catholic didn’t sit well with the Protestant club.

Or so he claims in this movie: He lays out the argument that he was sidelined despite his productivity. Ferguson left after two seasons with Rangers that saw him spend time on the bench and with the Second Team. Was he demoted because of the quality of his play? That seems suspect. Sir Alex went on to make 317 appearances in the Scottish top flight, and score 171 goals.

Was he demoted because of his wife’s faith? It doesn’t matter. The movie makes it clear that Ferguson the manager was motivated in large part by the desire to make sure that Aberdeen finished the season ahead of Rangers. They failed to do so only once, in his first season at the helm. Aberdeen bested Rangers the following seven years, right up until Ferguson left in 1986. Never Give In, indeed.

It didn’t matter that Rangers won the title the following season. By then, Ferguson had moved on.

Sir Alex Ferguson: Never Give In | Official Trailer

The United years

The Sir Alex most familiar to us is the stern disciplinarian who ran Manchester United from 1986 to 2013, collecting 13 Premier League titles, two Champions League titles, five FA Cups, four EFL Cups, and one FIFA World Cup along the way.

He won 38 trophies in all at United, which alone would give him the most silverware of any manager in the history of the sport. (The Romanian manager Mircea Lucescu also has 38, and Pep Guardiola has 36 at last count.) Add to that the 12 he earned in Scotland, and Ferguson has a clean 50.

But the Sir Alex years at United feel oddly underdeveloped in this movie. It’s surprising, given that his time at United continues to define his public profile. Maybe it’s because Ferguson’s legacy at United has become somewhat tarnished now that we understand that a disagreement between him and two tough-guy Irish billionaires over the stud rights of a racehorse called the Rock of Gibraltar eventually led to United falling into the greedy and incompetent hands of the Glazer family.

It’s too complicated to explain here (we suggest you read the excellent article on the topic in The Athletic), and it goes completely unmentioned in Never Give In. That’s understandable. This is Sir Alex’s show, and he’s not going to spend time examining events that make him look bad.

But those 38 trophies he won with United make him look more than good, they make him look god-like. Still, this segment of the movie feels flat, especially in comparison to what’s on display in Beckham, the deeply biased but extremely entertaining docuseries now streaming on Netflix: Who doesn’t want to be a fly on the wall in the Manchester United locker room in the late 90s? In some ways, Never Give In and Beckham are companion pieces, two parallel narratives that complement each other.

But even then, the United story remains incomplete. We’ll have to wait for Rock of Gibraltar: The untold truth before we’ll get a clear picture.

The mortality of an immortal man

But all of this ignores the reason for the movie existing at all. In 2018, Sir Alex was rushed to Salford Royal Hospital for emergency brain surgery after collapsing at home. Ferguson was unable to speak at first, and was worried that his cognitive abilities – and his memory – would never be the same.

In many ways, Never Give In, which is directed by Sir Alex’s son Jason Ferguson, is the oral history he never had time to make when he was too busy scoring goals, or beating Rangers, or turning United into a global powerhouse. That brush with mortality forced Sir Alex to stop, collect his thoughts, and recount them for posterity.

The movie dwells on his reflections, maybe giving too much screen time to his musings. That’s OK. It’s worth sitting through those moments to get to the machinations that set him against Rangers, and that drove him to find greatness at Aberdeen.

As for the United years, you should check out Beckham.