Best XI Manchester United
By Sam Pilger
Copyright 2011 Sam Pilger
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BEST XI MANCHESTER UNITED CREDITS
BEST XI MANCHESTER UNITED CREDITS
Series editor: Paul Hansford
Cover photos: Colorsport
Publishing Information
This first edition published in December 2011 by Calm Publishing Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system or be transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the permission of the publisher, except for the quotation of brief passages in reviews.
© Sam Pilger, 2011
The publishers and authors have done their best to ensure the accuracy and currency of information in Best XI Manchester United; however the publisher accepts no responsibility for the information published herein.
For my son Louis, who shares my love of United
THE TEAMSHEET
I WENT TO see Manchester United for the first time in March 1980 with my Dad at the age of six. They beat Crystal Palace 2-0 with goals from Mickey Thomas and Joe Jordan and I was hooked.
The history of the club soon lured me in just as much as the team of the day, possibly because in the ’80s it was the only place where you could read about United winning the league title.
I recall reading about the great names of the past and then jotting down who would make it in to my greatest ever eleven on the back of an envelope, so I’ve been in training for this task for a while.
This would also prove useful for my first ever job as the staff writer, and then deputy editor, on Manchester United magazine, the official publication of the club.
This was in 1996, when the magazine was still the main source of club news. Even then there was no proper website and it was just before the rolling news of Sky Sports and MUTV (and a long time before the constant updates of Twitter and Facebook).
For a brief time, players were more accessible and less guarded. It was just them and us. We would approach them directly at the training ground, unhindered by press officers or entourages.
I got to know the players of the era, the manager, and also interviewed a host of club legends, before moving on to be the deputy editor of FourFourTwo, and for the last decade, a freelance sports writer. No matter where I have worked, I have always written about United.
I have sat with George Best in a London pub and visited him back home in Belfast; sat with Sir Bobby Charlton at Old Trafford as he reminisced about the Busby Babes; written a diary of a season with Gary and Phil Neville; ghosted columns for Ryan Giggs and Jaap Stam; helped Ole Gunnar Solskjaer choose a suit; had a cup of tea at home with Bryan Robson and Mark Hughes; inadvertently had Roy Keane hauled into Sir Alex Ferguson’s office; and probably best of all, had Norman Whiteside recreate his 1985 FA Cup Final winner with a salt and pepper pot and a bottle of ketchup.
In the autumn of 1996, I also interviewed a young David Beckham in a Manchester restaurant, when a television on the wall began to show the video for the song Wannabe by a new girl group called the Spice Girls. “Here, I do like that one in the black dress,” he told me, to which I replied I actually preferred the ginger one.
This book lists what I believe to be United’s greatest ever XI, having written about the club, and spent the last three decades watching them home and away, while adding my appreciation and insights from when I have interviewed and met the players.
The Manchester United Best XI is:
Peter Schmeichel
Denis Irwin
Roger Byrne
Duncan Edwards
Jaap Stam
Ryan Giggs
Roy Keane
Bobby Charlton
George Best
Denis Law
Eric Cantona
The decision to put Peter Schmeichel in goal was probably the most straightforward. United’s two other European Cup winning goalkeepers Edwin van der Sar and Alex Stepney provided only fleeting competition. If I was choosing a greatest XI from the entire history of the game, Schmeichel would be in that too.
You would assume after 687 games Gary Neville would claim the right-back role, but though he always made the best of himself, he didn’t offer enough of an attacking threat. He himself admits scoring just seven goals was a “crap total.”
Instead I moved United’s greatest ever full-back Denis Irwin across to right-back. Though he mostly played on the left, he was naturally two-footed and played his first season at United at right-back. A player of unrivalled consistency, he was brilliant at augmenting United’s attacks, and could score free-kicks and penalties too.
At left-back is the captain of the Busby Babes Roger Byrne, whose life tragically ended in the plane crash in Munich two days before his 29th birthday, but by then he had already proved himself an exceptional full-back.
A place had to be found for his teammate Duncan Edwards. Blessed with both raw power and an elegant touch, his most regular position of half-back is now redundant but he was renowned for his versatility and also played in the centre of defence. Teammates and opponents all testify to him being the Busby Babes’ best defender.
According to Sir Stanley Matthews, Edwards in defence was like “a rock in a raging sea”, while Nobby Stiles recalled when United wanted to protect a lead during their dominance of the FA Youth Cup, they put Edwards in central defence.
While both Nemanja Vidic and Rio Ferdinand came close to partnering him, Jaap Stam was simply the best defender I have ever seen. Tough as teak and never outpaced, the Dutchman brought supreme authority to the back four as he was almost never beaten.
On raw talent alone, you could argue Cristiano Ronaldo is Manchester United’s greatest ever player. The only United player to win each of the World, European and English Footballer of the Years awards, in six years at United he won every trophy possible, and yet I’m afraid he doesn’t make the cut here.
The feeling always persisted Ronaldo was only ever passing through United, biding his time before Real Madrid called. As Oliver Kay once memorably wrote in The Times about Ronaldo’s United career, “It was a rocky marriage, but the sex was great.”.
It was important each player of this side enjoyed the best years of their career at United and Ronaldo is still young enough to reach greater heights in Spain. Crucially I wanted the side to capture the spirit of United and simply couldn’t countenance including Ronaldo at the expense of either George Best or Ryan Giggs, both geniuses who always quicken the pulse with the ball at their feet.
In this side Giggs would play on the left side of midfield, and Best, brilliant with both feet, would start on the right with a licence to roam.
The decision to choose between Roy Keane and Bryan Robson in the centre of midfield was my hardest. In the ’80s, Robson, along with Norman Whiteside, was my hero. He was a world-class player to be proud of during often bleak times but while Robson scored more goals, Keane edges it for bringing greater success to United with his presence and ability to inspire all those around him.
In 2004 I asked Robson: who the better player – him or Keane? “If you put 1,000 people in a room, 500 would say me, and 500 would say Roy”, he answered. But history has been kinder to Keane and several members in that room will have swapped their votes by now.
In contrast, the selection of Keane’s partner in central midfield, Sir Bobby Charlton – scorer of a record 249 United goals, a record 49 England goals and the owner of both World Cup and European Cup winners’ medals – was one of my easiest decisions.
Up front Ruud van Nistelrooy and Wayne Rooney’s sheer weight of goals, 312 between them and increasing, made strong cases and Ronaldo could also be deployed as a striker. But ultimately it had to be a royal forward line, the two ‘Kings’, Eric Cantona and Denis Law.
They were meant to play together, too; Cantona, the “can opener” as Ferguson called him, would sit just behind Law, effortlessly penetrating defences to provide chances for the ultimate goal scorer.
I have set this side out in a traditional 4-4-2 formation but the players are good enough to swap and play in several positions, making for a more fluid 4-3-3 or 4-2-4.
Together these eleven players can boast a total of 4,697 games, 1,035 goals and 87 major honours for United, whilst earning 677 international caps.
My pace would certainly quicken walking along the Warwick Road to watch football’s greatest ever goalkeeper, an impenetrable defence, and some of the game’s greatest ever attacking talent playing together.
THE WRITER
Sam Pilger
Sam began his career as a staff writer, and then deputy editor, on Manchester United magazine in the mid-1990s, regularly interviewing Sir Alex Ferguson, Roy Keane and David Beckham and covering them at the 1999 Champions League final and the inaugural World Club Championships in Brazil. He has also ghosted columns for George Best, Ryan Giggs and Jaap Stam. In 2000 he moved to FourFourTwo as deputy editor, before going freelance in 2001 to cover a range of sports for publications including The Times Magazine, Esquire, FourFourTwo, Sky Sports Magazine, Inside Cricket and The Cricketer. He has written books, including For Club and Country with Gary and Phil Neville, Manchester United: The Insider Guide, The Treasures of Manchester United, The Ashes Match of My Life, Victory The Battle for the Ashes 2005, and is currently editing The Official Sachin Tendulkar Opus. A lifelong United fan, who is unlikely to ever surpass his personal record of going to 51 United games in a single season, he now attends games at Old Trafford with his six year-old son, Louis.
I.
PETER SCHMEICHEL
Goalkeeper
The Crazed Viking
Honours 1991-1999 – 398 appearances (one goal); Premier League 1993, 1994, 1996, 1997, 1999; FA Cup 1994, 1996, 1999; Champions League 1999; League Cup 1992; European Super Cup 1991
In the team because he was arguably the greatest goalkeeper to have ever played the game
Quote “You get through on goal against him and it’s a terrifying sight… Here is this big, blond Viking flying out at you” – Sir Alex Ferguson
Greatest moment The night he kept out Newcastle at St James Park to turn the Premier League title in United’s favour in 1996
BEFORE EACH GAME during the ’90s, as the Manchester United players filed out of the dressing room amid the clatter of boots on concrete, Sir Alex Ferguson would turn to his goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel and say, “Hey, big man, we need a clean sheet today.”
Schmeichel would simply nod his head and in nearly half his games for United – an incredible 179 times in 398 games – he would deliver exactly what his manager had asked of him.
While the Dane’s status as Manchester United’s greatest ever goalkeeper is almost beyond debate, it doesn’t quite do him justice. He deserves an even grander title.
“A better keeper never played the game,” Sir Alex Ferguson has said, while a poll by Reuters in 2001 found he was considered to be the greatest goalkeeper in the history of football, ahead of legends Gordon Banks and Lev Yashin.
For his eight years at Old Trafford Schmeichel provided the basis for the most successful era in the club’s history, giving his side an aura of invincibility and opponents a psychological barrier to overcome.
If a striker eluded Steve Bruce, Gary Pallister, or later on Jaap Stam, and found themselves one-on-one with him, they should have been favourite to score, but they still had to overcome their hardest challenge, for this wasn’t any keeper.
Standing 6ft 4in tall and weighing 14 stone, broadly built inside his specially made XXXL goalkeeper shirt, Schmeichel appeared to blot out the goal. He would stay on his feet for as long as possible, heaping more pressure on a striker, and forcing them to make the first move.
“You get through on goal against him and it’s a terrifying sight,” said Sir Alex Ferguson. “You think, ‘I don’t fancy this. Let me out of here. I’m going to get murdered.’ Here is this big, blond Viking flying out at you.”
More often than not Schmeichel would win these duels, smothering the striker, tipping the ball around the post, making himself even bigger with his trademark star jumps he learned from watching hand ball, and getting anything of his body on the ball. He once had the imprint of a shot from Stan Collymore on the inside of his thigh for two months.
“I want my opponents to feel intimidated by my presence” he once said. ‘Everything I do is aimed at undermining their self-confidence. Even a fraction of a second delay in shooting can make the difference.”
Despite his hulking frame Schmeichel could also be remarkably agile, flying through the air to catch a ball and reaching shots that appeared destined for the back of the net.
He could stop the roars of opposition fans as they traveled up their throats, clawing back shots before they could cross the line.
Witness his save from John Barnes against Newcastle in 1997, voted the Premier League Save of the Decade, or the header he reached from Rapid Vienna’s Rene Wagner in 1996, prompting the headline “The Greatest Save Ever?” and comparisons to the goalkeeping gold standard, Gordon Banks’ save from Pele at the 1970 World Cup finals.
Schmeichel was more than just a goalkeeper. Consumed with a crazed desire to win, he would demand the same from his teammates; snarling, shouting, cajoling and marshalling them from the back.
“He was one of those ferociously driven players who made all the young lads realise what it took to reach the top,” Gary Neville once said. “He could be brutal, but that was just his raging desire to win.”
“Peter craved perfection so much he would rant and rave if he had a shot to save but it was his way of keeping his concentration,” recalled Steve Bruce, the victim of many of his tirades on the pitch.
“An aggressive loud mouth,” is how Schmeichel once admitted to me he must appear to be on the pitch during an interview at United’s training ground in 1997, as he sat in his sweaty training gear with a cut lip and a patchwork of bruises on both legs.
“It is my way of feeding my energy in to my concentration,” he once said. “If you take the [shouting] away from me, I would be an ordinary goalkeeper. I’ve tried to restrain myself and it just doesn’t work. I use my temper to stay alert, to stay focused, and to feel that I am constantly part of the game. It is essential for me to be at my best.”
On the pitch, he had too much of this energy, too much talent, to stay confined to the penalty area. Ferguson once said: “He sees himself as an attacking goalkeeper,” acting almost as a quarterback whose long throws to Ryan Giggs or Andrei Kanchelskis would begin attacks.
“Those throws are outstanding,” Ferguson added. “Like Glenn Hoddle’s passes, taking out half a dozen opponents in one go.”
He was always willing to throw himself in to the opposition box at the death of games, becoming the first United keeper to score from open play with a header against Rotor Volgograd at Old Trafford in 1996.
“What the hell is he doing,” was Ferguson’s thought when he saw Schmeichel sprinting past him at the Nou Camp when United were a goal down to Bayern Munich in added time in the Champions League final. But the Dane’s presence in the area unsettled the German defenders and helped secure an equaliser to begin that dramatic comeback.
Schmeichel never wanted to be loved, just respected by teammates and feared by opponents. He never courted popularity inside the dressing room. As a young player Gary Neville found Steve Bruce and Paul Ince helpful, but describes Schmeichel as a “different animal.”
“I had to give him crossing practice and if I hit even one bad ball he’d shout, ‘What’s he training with us for? He’s fucking shite.’”
“Schmeichel was a poser,” Roy Keane wrote in his autobiography. “He fancied himself in a big way and played to the crowd. It was all about him. All the finger pointing and gestures of frustration were designed to convey a message to the fans: look at me, how much longer can I go on performing miracles to save this team! This was an act mostly, but we didn’t mind because his pose was what he had to do to gee himself up. To be fair, he was as good as anybody in the world… The fannying-around was a small price to pay.”
Schmeichel could be a prickly interviewee, refusing to answer questions, while telling you other questions were ridiculous, but he was a deep thinker about the game. He never shied away from voicing his opinion, even if it was unpopular with the United fans, such as telling them he supported the hated Sky bid or that the vocal support at Old Trafford could be better.
Ferguson first came across Schmeichel in the late ’80s when United were sharing the same hotel in Spain as the Danish side Brondby for a training break. “Instantly I knew I was seeing somebody very much out of the ordinary,” the United manager recalled.
The United goalkeeping coach Alan Hodgkinson went to Denmark on at least ten occasions to watch Schmeichel at a time when foreign players were still a novelty in the English First Division.
“My fear was he couldn’t play here, but Alan said there was no doubt, he was a winner. He shouted and bawled at everybody, he was a real hungry bastard,” said Ferguson. “I went to Denmark and I could feel it in his handshake. He thrust out this massive hand, and I thought, ‘You’ll do me’.”
While a relative unknown in England, Schmeichel hadn’t exactly been plucked from nowhere, and at 27 years old, he had already won three Danish titles with Brondby and was voted Danish Player of the Year in 1990. He once told a colleague of mine, “I wasn’t a novice when I arrived here, I had already played 45 games for my country.”
The son of a Polish pianist and a Danish musician, Schmeichel grew up as a childhood United fan whose hero was Gary Bailey. “I was bigger than everyone so players were frightened of me, I put pressure on myself and worked and trained like a mad man.”
In his first five years at Old Trafford Ferguson had muddled through with Chris Turner, Gary Bailey, Gary Walsh, Jim Leighton, and Les Sealey but he knew to fulfill his aim of winning the league title he needed a commanding goalkeeper. He had to have Schmeichel.
After arriving for a fee of just £505,000, the Dane was quickly being hailed as the “Buy of the Century” by his manager. In his first season at Old Trafford he helped United win the League Cup and concede just 33 goals all season, as they narrowly missed out on winning the title.
Expecting to enjoy a break in the summer of 1992, Schmeichel was drafted in at short notice to play at Euro 92 with Denmark as a late replacement for the war-torn Yugoslavia, and helped his small nation create a minor miracle by winning the tournament.
It was Schmeichel’s penalty save from Marco van Basten in the semi-final shoot-out that secured Denmark’s place in the final where they overcame Germany 2-0 to become European champions. Schmeichel rates his fingertip save from Jurgen Klinsmann in the final as his best save, and the win, “the greatest day of my career.”
Back at Old Trafford the following season, he played a crucial role in United becoming English champions for the first time in 26 years, and was voted the Premier League Goalkeeper of the Year.
The Premier League and FA Cup double followed in 1994, and after a rare barren year – despite Schmeichel conceding just two league goals at Old Trafford through the whole season – United once again won the Double in the 1995-96 season, with his heroic performance in a 1-0 win against league leaders Newcastle in March hailed as the turning point in United’s season.
“People believe Eric Cantona won us the title in 1995-96, but Peter’s contribution was just the same,” declared Ferguson. “He was stopping goals, making great saves when the score was 0-0 or 1-0 to us. We had eight 1-0 wins that season which helped us win the title. He saves 10 to 12 points that other keepers are not getting their clubs.”
Another title was added at the end of the 1996-97 season before Schmeichel announced he would be leaving Old Trafford at the end of the 1998-99 season, ultimately to join Sporting Lisbon in Portugal, citing a desire for a new challenge and to play under less pressure.
In his final season the Dane’s experience and undiminished talent were essential in pushing United on to win the treble of the Champions League, the Premier League and the FA Cup.
It was on a turbulent night at Villa Park against Arsenal in the FA Cup semi-final replay that United started to believe making history might be possible. With the score 1-1, in the final minute Arsenal won a penalty and only Schmeichel could keep the Treble alive.
“I had lost my sense of time and thought there was about eight minutes left, so as Dennis Bergkamp placed the ball on the spot the full implications of the penalty hadn’t really hit me. I was only thinking about saving the penalty. I gambled correctly and hit the jackpot.”
United went on to win the game in extra time, before securing the Premier League, and beating Newcastle in the FA Cup Final.