The Year Mourinho Supplanted Ferguson as Wenger’s Bitterest Rival

Just like with a Mafia sit-down, the League Managers Association had suggested meeting on neutral ground in January 2005. Offering to act as a consigliere, they wanted to mediate a beef between bosses Arsene Wenger and Sir Alex Ferguson so toxic it was generating more heat than a pan left on a stove.

This was Tony Soprano vs. Phil Leotardo heavy. It wasn’t good for business. The authorities were taking an interest. Someone was going to get whacked at this rate.

Ruud van Nistelrooy wouldn’t walk the Manchester Ship Canal by night for fear Martin Keown might be lurking in a tunnel, in full kit. 

In October the previous year, Arsenal’s Invincibles (no more) had reacted to having a 49-game unbeaten run in the league end at Old Trafford by showering Manchester United’s manager with pizza he hadn’t ordered at full-time in the players’ tunnel. It was a wound the Scot never allowed to form into a scab, let alone heal, such was his compulsion to pick at it.  

Just for a second, pause. Take a moment to construct a mental image of Ferguson being assaulted by a deep crust, or as Ashley Cole put it in his autobiography (h/t BBC Sport): “All eyes turned and all mouths gawped to see this pizza slip off that famous puce face and roll down his nice black suit.”

To describe Ferguson as puce is brave, even for a ghostwriter.

The pizza perpetrator has never handed himself in, though Ferguson had his suspicions in his own autobiography, per the Daily Mirror: “The next thing I knew I had pizza all over me. They say it was Cesc Fabregas who threw the pizza at me but to this day, I have no idea who the culprit was.”



In fairness, Fabregas had a considerably better pass-completion rate in 2004/05 than he does today. 

Barely had Ferguson’s suit returned from the dry cleaners when at the turn of the year he launched a series of Wenger-baiting missiles, labelling the Frenchman “a disgrace” in the buildup to the corresponding fixture in February, per the Independent (h/t BBC Sport).

“He ran at me with hands raised saying ‘what do you want to do about it?'” said Ferguson, of Wenger’s tunnel metamorphosis into Ray Winstone. It sounds like he was lucky it was pizza he got hit with and not a snooker ball in a sock.

“To not apologise for the behaviour of the players to another manager is unthinkable. It’s a disgrace, but I don’t expect Wenger to ever apologise, he’s that type of person.”

Wenger responded in a Wenger-like way by claiming he had “no diplomatic relations with him (Ferguson).” He also made a vow it’s fair to say he has struggled to keep over the years: “I will never answer to any provocation from him any more.”

He concluded his lament with a pop at the press for good measure: “What I don’t understand is that he does what he wants and you (the press) are all at his feet.”

In October last year, when Wenger was asked by the Guardian’s Daniel Taylor if he could ever envisage calling a truce with Jose Mourinho, he replied: “I will leave you, and your love story with him, to continue without interference.” 

It’s hard to decipher whether the faint sound that can be heard in the distance is an echo, or Wenger’s persecution complex letting off a little steam. Mourinho and Ferguson both felt the same way about the Arsenal manager. It’s like children who are convinced their parents love another sibling more.

Relations were so strained between Ferguson and Wenger in January 2005 that the Metropolitan Police issued a terse public warning with regard to the conduct of both managers, amid fears loose tongues on the touchline could spawn loose fists in the stands.

Government ministers sniffed around disapprovingly too, a dog looking for a target to relieve itself. Football is political enough to know that when politicians proffer a view on the national game it is either to cash in on its easy populism or moralise on its decaying values. This was very much in the latter camp.

An equally aghast public reached into the bag for more popcorn.

This was the best managerial spat since Brian Clough and Don Revie went at it live on a special edition of Calendar for ITV called Goodbye Mr. Clough on 12 September, 1974, the day the former was sacked by Leeds United after just 44 of them in charge at Elland Road. No vine can compete with television gold so good that Mr. T would be proud to wear it around his neck: 

Share Tweet

These days Wenger and Ferguson may share the odd glass of expensive red wine—make that a bottle—but back then, the relationship between them was so bitter when Arsenal and Manchester United used to go at it players were handed cans of Boddingtons in water breaks. The weary acceptance of one another that imbued their final years of touchline jousting was still a long way off at this point.

There was genuine nastiness to the fixture that began with the managers’ mutual contemptuousness and bled through to the players.

The two clubs had history. In 1990, the Football Association took the unprecedented step of deducting league points from both clubs after a mass brawl broke out at Old Trafford involving all but one of the 22 players.

The seed had been sown, though it was only when Wenger pitched up in north London that the spite was ever harvested.

From the moment Wenger first passed through Highbury’s marble halls in 1996 to Ferguson signing off at Manchester United with a Premier League title in 2013, the pair …

continue reading in source www.bleacherreport.com