SOME people just make you sick. Sir Alex Ferguson is manager of Manchester United, but his team were knocked out ages ago so he had nothing to do with the FA Cup Final on Saturday. At half-time I managed to find a television in the ground to watch the first Classic of the English racing season. The race, the 2000 Guineas, was won by Rock of Gibraltar, part-owned by Ferguson. Ferguson has been in racing for just four years. No one should be allowed to be that jammy. Ferguson is a little like The Outlaw Josey Wales, a man who lives by the feud. It’s simply not worth getting up in the morning unless you have someone to get even with. He has at various times conducted feuds with Glasgow football, the press (individually and collectively), the BBC, the Manchester United board, Mark Bosnich and David Beckham, to name but a few. Feuding is his strength — and therefore, it is, of course, also his weakness.
Feuding has cost Manchester United its season because the demands of Ferguson’s feud with his own defender, Jaap Stam, forced him to get rid of the man and as a result his side has leaked goals — 44 goals in the Premiership already this season with two games to go compared with 31 last year. But with his taste for the feud unsated, Ferguson has chosen to take a throwaway remark of the Arsenal manager, Arsène Wenger, as deadly insult in the dying days of the season.
Ferguson attempted to annoy Arsenal by saying that Manchester United had played “better” football than Arsenal since Christmas, as if there were marks for artistic impression in the Premiership. Wenger responded with the throwaway line that “everyone thinks he has the prettiest wife at home” — the fact that Wenger’s girlfriend is notably exquisite probably had nothing to do with it. But the remark has driven Ferguson into a fury — not the longest of drives, it must be said. It’s hard to say if this is a motivational trick, or for that matter, whether his own team or Arsenal are motivated by it. Arsenal play Manchester United on Wednesday and a single point would allow them to win the title on the soil of their dearest enemy and the defending champions. It promises to be a vividly theatrical evening: The Revenger’s Tragedy perhaps. What’s more, I think my mare is prettier than Rock of Gibraltar . . . but everyone thinks he has the prettiest horse at home.
I’VE just had a great idea. At the semi-finals of the FA Cup they made Chelsea and Fulham, clubs that live within a mile of each other, travel to Birmingham for the match. For the final on Saturday, they made two London clubs travel to Cardiff to compete on West Country transport with the Badminton Horse Trials, Gloucester rugby and some pop festival or other. This is clearly silly: nice stadium, true, but the fact that it is in Cardiff rather takes the gloss off it.
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So here’s the idea: why not build a stadium in London? Say, northwest London, somewhere handy for the Tube and rail and the North Circular. You could stage all kinds of events there and people from all over the country could get there easily. Amazing, eh? Why didn’t anyone else think of it? I can even visualise it: a wide, elevated road leading to an impressive entrance dominated by twin towers. It’s all pie in the sky, isn’t it? A mere fantasy, with no grounding in reality . . . but imagine if it existed. It would be a national treasure, something we would have for ever because no one would dream of spoiling it, still less of taking it away from us.