Master of stud poker

Profile: In suing John Magnier over Rock of Gibraltar's stud earnings, Alex Ferguson is again showing the world that no-one …

Profile: In suing John Magnier over Rock of Gibraltar's stud earnings, Alex Ferguson is again showing the world that no-one is too powerful for him to do battle with, writes Shane Hegarty.

It's squeaky bum time, as Alex Ferguson once so memorably described a particularly tense moment. Ferguson owned 50 per cent of Rock of Gibraltar when the horse was racing and believes he should take 50 per cent of the earnings that come from its retirement as an equine Lothario. In the powerful John Magnier, he is suing one of the sport's most successful stud owners, taking him on at his own game. If this were the old west, the piano player would have dived for cover and the saloon cleared.

It is as if, every so often, Ferguson needs to give either himself or the world a jolt, to remind them just how tough this Glasgow boy is. His life seems to have been lived in a state of constant battle-readiness, punctuated by ferocious conflict. It is hardly three months since the Manchester United manager sold David Beckham - living legend, match-winner, money-making machine. More than that, he sold him to Real Madrid, the team that United so desperately wants to be.

It is less than two years since he decided, almost at the last minute, not to retire from the game. The quiet life of horses, wine and football sainthood looked less appealing to Ferguson than the blood-boiling intensity of continued football life. And it is more than 40 years since an obstinate and proud 19-year-old led his fellow-workers in an unofficial walk-out over pay at Govan shipyard.

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He was born in Govan in 1941 and when he finally retires from football - his current contract runs out in 2005 - he will be one of the last of the top-flight managers to have ever had a proper job. He did not become a full-time footballer until he was 24; before that, he played part-time while taking an apprenticeship as a toolmaker at the shipyard. He became a union shop steward.

As with the other great Scottish managers, Jock Stein, Matt Busby and Bill Shankly, an unforgiving Lanarkshire working-class background is credited with thickening his skin and cultivating his hunger, but it is his time in the shipyard that is credited with developing his ability to read and motivate the men around him.

He played as a centre-forward. It has been said that he would sharpen his elbows before he went on the pitch. In 1967 he signed for Rangers. He had grown up within a hoof of a ball from the club's stadium, clambered over the Ibrox walls to see the team play. He was a prolific scorer for them, but was sent off almost as much. His time with the club was a frustrating one, culminating in crisis.

In his autobiography, Managing My Life, he describes his final months at Rangers as the worst period of his life. Frozen out of the first team, he was forced to train with the apprentices, to play against the likes of Glasgow Transport and Glasgow University. It was, he wrote, a period "so miserable it might have done me permanent damage".

Ferguson, though, has always had the ability to harden scars into armour. He stores defeat and humiliation and uses it not to feed excuses but as fuel for his desire. As his playing days wound down, his first management role was behind the bar of a Glasgow pub.

It was at Scottish first division team St Mirren that his reputation as a football manager began to develop. His ruthlessness was proved on the day he sacked eight players and in the emergence of the ferocious "hair-dryer" treatment that makes his temper legendary. He found great value in what biographer Michael Crick described as the "the motivational powers of household crockery". Ferguson sees a little more subtlety in his tantrums.

"Like the nuclear deterrent, it is the threat of temper, more than its actual use, that instils respect," he once said.

There was his obsession with every detail of the club, from the detergent used to clean the jerseys to the whereabouts of any player at any given moment of the day or, most pertinently, the night. Whichever club he went to, he developed a network of spies around that city. Former Manchester United player Norman Whiteside often recounts being smuggled out of the back door of a pub just as Ferguson marched in the front with an A-Z of Manchester in his hand, having plotted the course of the player's night out.

The character of his teams mimicked that of their gaffer. At Aberdeen, he developed a team that played as if football was a cause for which you should be prepared to die. He perfected the siege mentality, persuading the team that it was them against the world. It brought the club extraordinary domestic and European success.

He did the same at Manchester United. Impertinence was treated mercilessly. Even terrace heroes were expendable if they challenged his authority. When, in 2001, defender Jaap Stam said a little too much in his autobiography, he was out the door so quickly he still looked positively dazed at a subsequent press conference for his new Italian club, Lazio.

At Old Trafford, a rocky start brought Ferguson, some say, to within a match of the sack, before he built a team that became famous for never knowing when they were beaten. When, in 1999, Ferguson grasped the Holy Grail of winning the Champions League final (and, with it, a unique domestic and European treble), it was only achieved through two goals in the last four minutes. Nothing more epitomised the team's attitude than the sight of David Beckham sprinting to take a corner two minutes into injury time. United had just equalised and could have settled for extra time. Another player on any other team would have sauntered to the ball and run down the clock. Beckham's corner resulted in the winning goal.

"The sweetest moment for me is the last minute of victory," Ferguson has said. "After that, it drains away quickly. The memory's gone in half an hour. It's a like a drug really."

You can see why he and Roy Keane get along so well.

Ferguson has also become known for his mind games, whether it is moaning at referees, keeping his own clock during matches, or making digs at other teams through the press. That he seemed to have developed an almost supernatural ability to influence results beyond Old Trafford was confirmed in 1996, when Newcastle manager Kevin Keegan famously blew his top on live television following yet another bit of Ferguson psychology, and subsequently lost out on the Premiership title to him.

It is only in the last eight years, Ferguson says, that he has started to earn real money from the game. While staying at a fancy European hotel during his time as Aberdeen manager, he once stuffed the wardrobe's coat-hangers into his suitcase as a treat for his wife.

At United he watched, with growing resentment, as former chairman Martin Edwards amassed a £100 million fortune on the back of the success Ferguson had brought the club. Meanwhile, his job was to motivate a team of twentysomething millionaires. He has since developed a business portfolio, through commercial property investments and shares. During the boom, he also developed a line in advising start-up companies and hospitals in how to motivate young employees with big wallets and even bigger egos.

He has always been intensely loyal to those he trusts, and it may be that the row over Rock of Gibraltar is driven by a sense of betrayal as much as it is by money. He and Magnier had enjoyed the fruits of racing success together; he may not accept that he cannot also enjoy the rewards of stud. A fee of €65,000 is charged each time Rock of Gibraltar covers a mare, yielding an estimated turnover of €7.2 million a year.

Perhaps he is still that 19-year old; stubborn and enraged, walking from Govan shipyard, refusing to accept the unfairness of it all.

Who is he?

Manchester United manager and most successful British football manager of his generation.

Why is he in the news?

Suing Coolmore stud boss and part-owner of Manchester United John Magnier, for his share of stud fees and earned by the horse the co-owned, Rock of Gibraltar.

Least apealing characteristic.

Reputation as a world-class moaner since his playing days. His whinging at one decision is always aimed at influencing the next.

Most likely to say

"It's my ball and I'm going home."

Least likely to say.

"I give up".