Revolution is key for canny Ferguson

The Scot recognised long ago that constant renewal was the key to European success, writes Louise Taylor.

PEOPLE AND places are sometimes made for each other and Alex Ferguson and Moscow certainly appear a perfect fit. It is surely entirely appropriate that Manchester United's manager will endeavour to win his second Champions League trophy in the Russian capital because this is a city and a country still touched by the teachings of one of the architects of the 1917 revolution, Leon Trotsky.

Rather like life at Old Trafford under Ferguson since the European Cup was last lifted in 1999, Trotskyism is all about permanent revolution. The enthusiastically relentless application of this doctrine to football has seen United constantly reinvented since Bayern Munich were vanquished at Camp Nou nine years ago.

Having introduced the art of playing very much on the - invariably lightning-quick - counterattack to English football during the 1990s, Ferguson knew that United could not stand still if they wanted to secure Europe's biggest prize again. Indeed when, in April 2000, Real Madrid ended United's interest in the competition at the quarter-final stage a watershed was arguably reached.

After the second leg at Old Trafford the visiting coach, Vicente del Bosque, memorably described Ferguson as "a tactical anarchist" who defied the cat-and-mouse, system-led conventions of European football and it appears warning bells duly began clanging in the Scot's ever-fertile mind. Ensuing seasons saw Ferguson not only make a philosophically ground-breaking shift away from his beloved 4-4-2 formation featuring two fairly orthodox wingers but hire - and later re-employ - as his assistant a widely travelled, highly tactically articulate, football technocrat in the Portuguese coach Carlos Queiroz.

In came experiments with the now en vogue 4-5-1/4-3-3 systems and the beginnings of the kaleidoscopic positional interchanging that has become the hallmark of United's class of 2007-08. Ferguson, though, always knew that without the players capable of retaining both possession and concentration under extreme pressure any system would prove worthless.

His restless, ceaseless quest to find the right personnel perhaps explains why Old Trafford's exit gates bear the footprints of so many fallen comrades.

Alongside Ferguson's transfer-market mistakes - Juan Sebastian Veron, Kleberson, Eric Djemba-Djemba, Diego Forlan and Alan Smith - there are the imprints of men once widely regarded as vital to the cause who found themselves suddenly no longer indispensable - step forward Roy Keane, David Beckham, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Nicky Butt and Jaap Stam.

Such bold willingness to rip teams apart before rebuilding once more has proved a hallmark of Ferguson's last decade at United. Moreover, creative tension on the pitch has been more than matched by the political machinations off it. Quite apart from the Scot's U-turn regarding his proposed retirement there has been the furore over his ownership of the racehorse Rock Of Gibraltar with the "Coolmore Mafia", followed by the controversy surrounding the Glazer family's takeover of the club.

But then the big flaw with Trotsky and co is that they did not always make room for the "human factor" in their social equations. Rio Ferdinand's mysterious failure to take a drugs test and the tendency of, among others, Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney to freeze on the big occasion has kept him waiting almost a decade for the prize on offer in Moscow. Few, though, should bet against either Chelsea or Liverpool preventing the ultimate vindication of Ferguson's permanent revolution next month.

Guardian Service