Sir Alex Ferguson’s Aberdeen: The Kings Of Europe That Nobody Expected

Once upon a time, a young, fiery, “delusionally ambitious” Sir Alex Ferguson achieved the impossible in Scotland.

Crushing the old firm, while defeating Europe’s biggest clubs in the process. An achievement that ⁠the man himself⁠ described as “Nothing short of a Miracle”.

How did he do it?

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[Music] They have won. Alec Ferguson is on now in the penalty area. Aine have definitely won the championship. Can you blame the man for going out of his mind temporarily? Oh, come on. Nothing wrong with losing your temper. Nothing wrong. I think you’ve got I think you’ve got to use your all your facilities as a manager. as times it’s it’s suitable to lose your temper. Here’s a fun fact. The last time any team not named Celtic or Rangers won a Scottish first division title was 1985. Four decades. Do you know how insane that is? At this point, you’re probably asking yourself, if that’s the case, will it ever end? More so, what does it actually take to dismantle this duopoly? For the first question, unfortunately, I do not have an answer. For the second, you’re in luck. The answer is this man, Alex Ferguson. The last manager to ever do it. Well, I I remember going there just when I arrived where Drew won one against Rangers eyebro. They’re all dancing and doing cartwheels in the dress room. We get a point, you know, in a way that disappointed me that if you beat Rangers and Celtic, you know you’re in business. We beat Celtic for the league in 1980. We beat Rangers in the cup final in 82. There was a change. There was a change and they were feelings. By the time he decided to walk away from it all, Ferguson had achieved everything the game had to offer. He made impossible dreams become reality. He became Sir Alex Ferguson. And on top of that, he convinced multiple generations of people that the good times would never end. No comment. But this isn’t that story. This is the story of the club where he had done enough to earn himself a statue well before dawning the red of Manchester United. This is the story of how a young, fiery, some might even describe as delusionally overly ambitious man disrupted the duopoly of Scotland’s greatest rivalry with a team viewed as nothing but an afterthought in comparison, Aberdine. He then led the same team to shocking victories over the best teams in all of Europe, lifting his first piece of European silverware in the process. Our success at Aberdine is nothing short of a miracle really. Aberdine remained the only Scottish team to have won two major European trophies. In fact, despite the fact that decades later he would retire with more trophies than any other British coach in history with a European treble to boot, some still label this particular prize as his greatest and most impressive moment. This was Ferguson in his aggressive prime. He pulled no punches when the standards weren’t high enough. You bloody idiot. You are hopeless. You’ll never play for this club again. Go home and look at yourself in the mirror. People meet Alex now that they still see this determination. You should have seen him at mid30s. According to Eric Black, one of his strikers at Aberdine, by the time he went to Manchester United in 1986, quote, he had probably mellowed to a typhoon by then. He was a ferocious leader at that time because he was trying to build a reputation. This is what he had to say moments after winning the Scottish Cup on live television mere days after achieving European glory. team in the world. A disgrace of performance. Their standards have been set ago and we’re not going to accept that from any Aine team. Drive like this is rare. This is the story of where it all began. By the late ‘7s, Aberdine Football Club was a proud but frustrated institution. The Dons had a history more successful than most. a league championship in 1955, a handful of Scottish cups and the occasional title challenge. Pogri, their home ground, perched on the cold granite shores of the North Sea, attracted a fiercely loyal base. However, that base was grounded in the reality of the difficulties of acquiring a crown. In Scottish football, there were and still remain two kings, and they both resided 150 mi south in Glasgow. the old firm Rangers and Celtic. These two teams not only dominated the trophy count, they dominated the psychology of the Scottish game. Since the very beginning, the question was never whether one of them would win, but which one need some convincing? At the time of recording this, in the 135ear history of the Scottish First Division, Celtic and Rangers share 110 crowns. Simply put, Aberdine, for all their flashes of quality, were merely a nuisance to them on a good day, but never a true threat. The supporters knew it, too. Aberdine squad in the late ‘7s was solid with the collection of good professionals, but without the aura or financial muscle of the two giants. At many points in this period, the team began to pick up some steam, finishing third, then second in successive years in 77 and 78. In the latter year, they actually came as close as two points within reach of eventual champions Rangers under manager Billy McNeel. Things were looking on the up for the Silver City team, only for Celtic to poach him and lift their 31st title the very next year. It didn’t help that McNeel spent a near 20-year playing career at Celtic beforehand. But that’s, you know, that’s besides the point. Not for the first time, Aberdeene had flirted with Glory only to be sent crashing down to earth. The board and the team and the fans wanted more. They understood that to change the club’s trajectory, they needed something more radical. They needed a leader who could blow the hierarchy of Scottish football wide open. And so when St. Mirin unceremoniously dismissed their young manager in the summer of 1978, Aberdine took a gamble. And the man they appointed was slightly controversial and still reeling from the only sacking of his career. Alex Ferguson was born in 1941 in Governing district in Glasgow where toughness, hard work, and resilience were an absolute necessity. His childhood was shaped by industry and poverty. It was a background that would produce not only his relentless drive, but also his inherent disdain of privilege and entitlement. Something that shone very, very bright throughout his entire career, both as a player and a manager. As a player, Ferguson was a striker who weaved his way from club to club through the Scottish leagues. Queens Park, St. Johnston, Dun Firmland, Rangers, Falerk, Ire United, some big names in there. Although he was never a superstar, not the flashiest on or off the ball, never a winner of a major honor in his playing career. I didn’t win much as a player, but I had this great desire to win. Although what he lacked in technical elegance, he more than made up for and compensated for with aggression, determination, and goals. He scored plenty, notably finishing as Scotland’s top scorer in the 1965-66 season with Don Firmland 45 goals in 51 games. It sounds like a dream. However, he wasn’t exactly a dream teammate. I won’t change. You’re all going to have to change. Stubbornness, a willingness to berate others, an absolute refusal to accept second best. It was subtle foreshadowing. By his early 30s, Ferguson had turned to management. His first post was at East Sterlingshire at 32 years of age. It was a part-time job that paid about £40 a week, and the side was so bare bone, they didn’t even have a goalkeeper under contract when he took over, but it was a crash course in resourcefulness and improvisation. playing out in front of crowds that barely reached a thousand people. He quickly built a reputation as a strict, demanding young boss. Quote, “I’d never been afraid of anyone before, but Ferguson was a frightening bastard from the start.” End quote. Bobby McCauley, a former player of Ferguson’s at the time. After only a couple of months with the Shire, he then moved on and took over at Paisleybased club St. Mirin in 1974. A club within the same division as East Sterlingshire, but not a hell of a lot better at the time. However, also a club with a stadium over 10 times the size of his lost with much more room for growth. Simon was a was a good apprentichip in the sense of bringing my philosophy into football because I always believed in producing young players and coaching at that time and some that’s all we did. Within only a few years, Ferguson had completed his first complete turnaround of a club, his first of many. St. Marin were playing bright attacking football and after four years were promoted twice, skyrocketing all the way to the Premiership with a second division title to show for it. Before Ferguson, like at East Sterling, crowds peaked at 1,000 on a good day. Post Ferguson, during a time before UK stadiums were forced to be allseers, crowds ballooned as high as 25,000 strong at St. Marin’s home ground. Sadly, after 4 years, this chapter in the man’s career had a bitter end. A lot of stories have flown around regarding why this happened, and I must say most of them paint him in in a pretty bad light. In 1978 May, Ferguson was dismissed for breach of contract. Officially, the board accused him of secretly negotiating with Aberdine while under contract and of unsettling players and staff by trying to take them with him during an active season. Unofficially, Ferguson’s stubbornness, pettiness, and refusal to bow to authority had alienated many at the club. He routinely froze people out when he never got his way. There’s a famous story of how he fell out with the office secretary at the club and refused to speak to her for six weeks, confiscating her keys and only communicating with her through a 17-year-old intern. Feeling he’d been hard done by, he fought the dismissal in court, only to be humiliated when a tribunal upheld his sacking and labeled him as quote particularly petty and immature. In the same hearing, St. Miran chairman at the time, Willie Todd, described Ferguson as quote, possessing neither by experience nor talent any managerial ability at all. End quote. Ferguson would later admit that he was obsessed with proving them wrong. An interesting fact is that Ferguson describes his time managing Aberdine as the first time he actually managed a club as a full-time job. It was first opportunity to go full-time as a manager when I was a man. I was running two pubs and bringing up kids, taking kids to school in the morning. And you know, being full time was a matter of relishing that opportunity to concentrate solely on the the one job. By the time he walked into Podri, Ferguson had a chip on his shoulder. He was still only 36 years old, but he had already experienced enough battles to know the path to glory would not be smooth. What he did not yet know was that Abedine would be the crucible in which he would forge a legend. June 1978, the arrival. As I said earlier on, at the time this appointment was seen by many as a gamble. A recently sacked manager from a team a fraction of the size of Aberdine with a growing reputation for going rogue. It doesn’t exactly sound like the move, you know, and the beginning of the 7879 season was less than ideal. It tested him both professionally and personally. He recognized he had inherited a talented squad, but struggled to bring them over to his side. There were moments when his disciplinarian approach nearly backfired. Being so young, only a few years senior to some of the more experienced guys, didn’t help. He clashed with some of Aberdine’s older established players for this very reason. Off the pitch, Ferguson was hit by personal tragedy. His father, Alexander Senior, was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer in February 1979 during an away match, strangely enough, against St. Mirin. His father passed on in a Glasgow hospital. Ferguson, however, did not let family heartbreak derail him. It’s a testament to the level of pathological obsession he bore to his work. He continued to pour himself into the job. The first year at Abberine was also mixed on the pitch from second place the previous year to fourth this time around. All things considered, this was not a bad return. But you likely know as well as I do, narratives don’t always work like this. Many remained unconvinced. That however was about to change. Ferguson’s Aberdeene project quickly gathered momentum. His footballing philosophy was already clear as day from his time with St. Mir. Absolute discipline, relentless fitness, no tolerance for mediocrity. Players initially resented Ferguson’s intense training sessions and haird dryers after poor performances. He used every tool that he had to to get players to play. He treated players differently. Some new he had to be on their case the whole time. But as results slowly improved, many came to the realization that he knew what he was doing. That’s or they were far too afraid to do anything about it. Ferguson fostered fierce competition within the squad. Even in training, standards could never slip without consequence. The foundation of his Aberdeene was strong. The experience and guidance came on players like captain at the time, Willie Miller, Joe Harper, and Bobby Clark. But the majority of the squad that would make history over the coming years was bursting with youth. Alex Mcclesich, a pillar of his defense, was only 20 by 1980. Gordon Straken, the man who provided much of the spark for the team, was only 21 when Ferguson arrived. Neil Simpson and Neil Cooper, players that would form the engine for the club as the years went on, both got their starts at 18. John Leighton, the man who stood between the sticks almost throughout this whole period, was 21. This was not a squad packed with superstars. But under Ferguson’s watch, it became something greater. On paper, Aberdine lined up in a conventional 442. In practice, Ferguson’s approach was anything but conventional for Scotland in the late ‘7s. Bravery is an apt description. The team relied on defensive aggression, pressing high and causing mistakes. As I’ve already said, fitness was a key weapon. Their conditioning was so superior in comparison to most of their opponents that they may as well have been playing a different sport. Wing play and width was paramount, a hallmark of any Ferguson team, a tool used to stretch and unsettle the defense. Perhaps more than any tactical tweak. Ferguson’s secret weapon was psychology. He convinced his players that everyone associated with the old firm not only hated them, but were the epitome of evil, a force that absolutely had to be stopped. It’s a siege mentality. He was obsessed with knocking them off their perch. And the way I phrase that last bit, it’s probably quite familiar to most of you. There’s only one club to beat to win the W week, and that’s Liverpool. I knew that if you beat Liverpool, you’re on the right path. He spoke of pitri as a fortress of every game in Glasgow being an opportunity to shock the establishment. His players they began to believe it and crucially prove it on the pitch. At home they were imperious. Away from home they shed that inferiority complex. They played a combined 13 games against Celtic and Rangers this season losing only twice. Each of those games carried a symbolic weight. Notably, Aberdeene made it to the finals of the Scottish Cup while having to go through both of them in successive rounds. No losses were sustained. To wrap up the season, Aberdine went on a 15game unbeaten streak, clinching the league by a single point after a draw to Particle. Aptly, they became the first non-old firm team to win the title in 15 years. The margin of victory may have been somewhat slim from a points perspective, but their plus 32 goal difference compared to Celtics plus 23 in second showed that they were right where they deserve to be. It was a seismic shift. But Fergie’s boys were only getting started. Over the next few years, Abedine collected an impressive hall of silverware. In total, three Scottish League titles, four Scottish cups, and a League Cup. Michael Grants, author of the 2014 book Fergie Rises, describes Ferguson’s Aberdeene era as quote, “One of the most astonishing upheavalss in the game’s history,” end quote. And it’s not hard to see why. You may remember this graphic from the intro. It’s the winners of the Scottish Premiership since 1965. Take a moment to revel in it and really digest what it is that you’re looking at. This is not generational. That description would indicate frequency of some sort. Words cannot truly describe what we’re looking at. Dundee United also deserve a mention here, of course. Very clearly they’re in the conversation for giant killers. But staying on target for Aberdine, while this achievement is more than enough to drop Jaws, it’s arguably not even the most astonishing feat that Ferguson managed at this club. If conquering Scotland was a remarkable feat, Aberdine’s 198283 European campaign was the stuff of sporting fairy tales. On the night of May 11, 1983, under a steady drizzle in Goththingberg’s Ulvie Stadium, Alex Ferguson’s Aberdeene stepped into the pitch and faced the legendary Real Madrid in the European Cup Winners Cup final. The Cup Winners Cup, for anyone that doesn’t know, is a now defunct European competition that put the winners of all the domestic cup competitions across Europe against one another. Think the FA Cup winner versus the Copa Ray winner versus the DFP pal Copa Italia Coupe Def France. You get the idea. The competition may have been discontinued, but don’t let that fool you into diminishing its importance while it was still active. Firstly, for the majority of its existence between 1960 and 1999, only the European Cup trumped it in prestige from a continental perspective. And secondly, domestic cups themselves were far more prestigious and highly regarded than they are in the modern day and age. What this meant is that every team that managed to qualify for this competition was inherently a very heavy hitter. Just take a look at the history of the winners. Some incredible names over here. Teams truly showed up for this cup. They meant business. On route to the final, Aberdine took on all comers and proved to be unstoppable. By the quarterfinals, they were expected to fall out with a pat on the back as their prize. Bayern Munich, finalists of the European Cup the previous year, led by Carl Hines Rumineer, favorites for the title, stood in their way. So when Bayern took the lead early on and then again in the second half, most felt the script was being followed to a tea, only for Aberdine to respond in kind both times, scoring twice in the 77th and 78th minute to push them on. And look at the trickery on display for their second equalizer. John McMaster and Gordon Strachen both stand over a free kick on the edge of the box. Both go for the ball and some faint confusion streed off the training ground. The Bayern players switch off and Aberdine get a goal in the chaos. Bayern did not know what had hit them. The Germans were actually laughing at us. Think that they don’t believe it. They were rattled. They were then rattled. Belgians Vaté fell in the semi-finals and Real Madrid managed by the great Alfredo D Stefano himself were the only ones that stood in the way of glory. And like with the Bayern fixture, everyone had written off Aberdine completely. Ferguson, however, sensed something different. Uh I couldn’t see Real beat them. After I saw Real playing in the semi-final against Osh, I phoned Art and I phoned the chairman. I says, “I’m telling you honestly, you can’t believe the chance we’ve got. We have a marvelous chance.” I really felt that. For context, Real Madrid have appeared in 11 major European finals since 1983. Of all of those, they have only lost once. Aberdine’s victory didn’t come via fluke or penalty kicks, but through fearless attacking play and ironclad belief. The final in Goththingberg saw 19-year-old striker Eric Black give Aberdine a shock early lead. And after Rail equalized, super sub John Hewitt, a local lad, and funnily enough, Ferguson’s first signing at Aberdine, came off the bench to score a diving header in extra time. Captain Willie Miller, drenched and exhausted, hoisted the trophy, etching Aberdine’s name into European football history. On theme for Fergie, every player in the Gothamberg lineup was 28 or younger, and four of the starters were aged just 19 to 21. These were well and truly Fergie’s first fledglings, a whole decade prior to the fabled class of 92. But Ferguson as we all know you know Ferguson was he was never one to be satisfied. Forward was the only direction imprinted in his mind. A telling incident came just 10 days after beating Real Madrid in the cup winners cup. Aberdine faced Rangers in the Scottish Cup final. The team was fatigued and produced a flat performance yet still managed to grind out a 1-nil extra time victory to any other club. A European trophy followed by a domestic cup in the matter of a couple of days would have promoted jubilation. Ferguson on the other hand was losing an internal fight in an attempt to hide his disgust. The luckiest team in the world disgraceful performance. I’m okay and winning cups doesn’t matter. Their standards have been set a long ago and they’re not going to accept that from any Aberine team. As his players celebrated a second trophy in two weeks, Ferguson went ballistic. He fumed on live television, sparing only his two center backs for praise. The stunned players sat in silence afterwards. The celebration felt it felt like a wake. Gordon Strachen apparently even walked out in protest at what was deemed to be an unbecoming response to silverware. Ferguson, for all his faults, he did realize that he may have gone too far and did later soften and issue an apology. one of the few times he ever conceded that he might have actually gone over the line a little bit. But even then, even his players, some of them weren’t entirely convinced that he meant his apology. I guess that didn’t seem to make all that much of an impact on the team’s relationships or squad dynamics because they won back-to back league titles in 84 and 85. And even before that, Aberdine became unofficial European champions by winning the 1984 European Super Cup, a match contested between the European Cup holder and the cup winners cup holder, their opponents and prey this time around, Hamburg. Perhaps saying that they were the European champions is taking it a step too far. The Super Cup is a one-off competition. However, the fact that Aberdine were even part of this conversation should tell you all you need to know about the magnitude of this period’s impact on not only Scottish football, but the game itself. Alex Ferguson had made an incomparable mark on the British and world game. So, it was unsurprising that come 1986 he was hot property. Arsenal, Tottenham, Hotspur, Wolves, and many more were among top suitors, but it seemed that he only had one destination on his mind. By the time Manchester United came calling in late ‘ 86, Ferguson had nearly 12 years of managerial experience and went on to make history over a 27-year reign over the club. And the rest, as they say, is history. But let’s rewind a couple and stay on topic for the day. As we’ve come to see in this episode, everything the world would later associate with Ferguson’s greatness at Old Trafford was already evident during his Aberdine tenure. He had honed a formula that blended raw discipline, strategic youth development, psychological edge, and an unyielding competitive drive. He set at home that nobody could slack off. But he also knew when to be realistic, which players required tough love, which needed a softer approach. Ferguson favored youth partly because they were incredibly cost-effective for a club of Aberdine’s resources, but also because they were far easier to mold into his hardworking nononsense image. So when the budget did eventually balloon for him in the years to come, he was still able to make the most coste effective decisions while fostering a culture that would proliferate at every club he was at for years on end. Interestingly, a major criticism of Ferguson in his Scottish football days was that he pushed his youth players far too hard and did not manage their workload nor take enough of an interest in their personal lives. In Michael Crick’s 2002 biography, The Boss, Crick states, “There were players shattered at 25, and you have to ask yourself why.” When commenting on the same subject, Ferguson once stated, “Maybe they had too much first team football with all the pressure that brings.” In 2016, when speaking with the Scotsman, Neil Cooper, if you recall, was one of Ferguson’s first fledglings at Aberdine, echoed these sentiments. Quote, “We were overplayed.” And Fergie admits that. I’m wrecked now and couldn’t go for a run if I wanted. playing golf the other day. I had to use a buggy but still ended up hurting my left knee. Eric Black is in so much pain with his back. If you were slightly injured, you were scared to say. End quote. Of course, sports and medical science have come a long way to prevent a lot of the injuries and setbacks that players experienced back in the day. But compare that with the rigorous protection and care that Ferguson took to ensure his Manchester United fledglings were protected from all angles. He prevented them from doing interviews until they reached an appropriate age and then was present for all their first few interviews. He made house calls for all promising youngsters. Had spies all over the city watching their every move. He managed their minutes impeccably. and look at the longevity that most of his first group of United youngsters had in their careers. But it’s not just them. There have been several teenagers at United that he’s managed really, really well. And finally, regarding what he took from his Aberdeene days from a strategic perspective. Ferguson became remarkably tactically astute at Aberdine, he learned to adapt his game plans to far superior opponents on paper. The old firm Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, his Aberdeene side could grind out gritty one-nil wins or play free flowing attacking football as needed. A hallmark of a winner. Long before he wore United Red, the young Fergie had molded himself into a winner. Long before the red carpets, the global acclaim, and the fanfare, Fergie was already a miracle worker. and he was right on the verge of doing it all over again. We haven’t won the league for 20 years. That is a great challenge for the Manchester United players and will be until it’s achieved.