1
(CROWD CHEERING)
COMMENTATOR 1: Welcome to Barcelona.
Almost 100,000 people here
in the Nou Camp this evening.
It really is an extraordinary atmosphere.
COMMENTATOR 2: But you do wonder
is fate now taking a hand
in Manchester United's destiny.
They have made their own luck
with their boldness and their adventure,
but they have had just enough luck
to stand here on the brink of history.
It's the chance of a lifetime.
A treble chance,
the likes of which no English team
has had before, or may ever get again.
QUEEN ELIZABETH III 1992
is not a year on which I shall look back
with undiluted pleasure.
MALE REPORTER: One of
Manchester's busiest shopping streets,
suddenly a living hell.
A bomb planted in bushes
behind Kendals department store
showered office workers with flying glass.
(CLAMOURING)
FEMALE PROTESTER: Smash the poll tax
and smash the Tories
and in the end put an end
to this Tory government itself.
I've only got one thing to say,
it's nice to be back.
NEWS REPORTER: Ll' is clear tonight
that it is no longer a matter of whether,
but when there is a royal divorce.
NEWS REPORTER: England's shattered
players arrived back at the hotel.
A few hours later we once again saw
the dark face of English football.
It has turned out to be
an annus horribilis.
ALEX FERGUSON: A club of this size,
one would expect at the platform, the stage,
everything is geared to doing very, very well.
And that very, very well
means winning the league.
The first thing I ever did
at United was buy a map.
I had a map on my wall at The Cliff
of Manchester.
And I got the scouts in.
I just wanted to make sure
that by getting the map,
that all the areas were covered.
I got all the scouts in and told them,
"I want the best boy on your team,
not the best boy on your street."
ERIC HARRISON:
I was a Man United supporter,
and it's extra special
when you get the coaching job there.
When Sir Alex took over, everybody realised
that he wanted a vibrant youth system.
And he said to me straight out,
as typically Sir Alex does,
he says, "I'm not entirely satisfied
with the youth system," you know.
He'd only been there
probably a few weeks, or a month.
I said, "Well, you know, we've had
Norman Whiteside through,
"and Mark Hughes through."
And he looked at me with those steely eyes
and he said, "That's not enough."
I said, "Do you know how many local scouts
Manchester City have got,
"and how many
Manchester United have got?"
When I told him, he was staggered,
he was absolutely staggered.
We'd only two scouts in Manchester.
The whole of Manchester,
there were only two scouts.
Can you believe that?
If you think the population
of Greater Manchester
at that time was six million.
When I left Aberdeen,
the population of Scotland at that time
was three and a half million people,
and we had 17 scouts in Aberdeen.
And I'm not exaggerating,
within a month he trebled
the scouting system at Manchester United,
and that's when we started
getting the players.
Nicky Butt, what an absolute warrior.
What a great player Nicky Butt was.
Another Bryan Robson. Without question.
I think he nicknamed himself One Nut Butt.
He used to just head-butt people
and knock 'em out, he said.
GARY NEVILLE: I think the lads were always a
bit nervous about giving Butty a nickname,
'cause you didn't how he was going to
react, he might just give you a dig.
You just don't mess with him.
RYAN GIGGS: Scholesy was like the joker
that got away with it all the time.
DAVID BECKHAM:
We kind of nicknamed him The Ghost.
You know, he'd just
disappear at some point.
I know what Scholesy was like,
he was a little rascal.
And if somebody's underpants were missing,
I knew who it'd be. Paul Scholes.
GARY:
You've got a kid who's smaller than most.
He's got asthma. He's not the quickest,
but the best player I've ever played with.
Work that out.
BECKHAM: When I first saw Giggsy,
I just saw this really skinny kid.
PHIL NEVILLE: There's no flashness to him.
He's probably the most down-to-earth
superstar I've ever met.
NICKY BUTT: One minute he can be
the most serious man in the world,
where he can be eye-balling somebody
and really deep-eye staring at somebody,
and then next minute he can be
dancing on the table doing Elvis, so...
GARY: The thing that struck me early on
about Becks was his appearance.
You thought,
"He's too pretty to be a football player."
That was his nickname, "Pretty Boy".
PAUL SCHOLES: You just think
he's a flash cockney.
GIG-GS: I used to call him "Treacle".
"All right, Treacle." You know, and just...
That was his nickname.
We still all know him,
I still see him in his red Escort Mexico.
That's how I look at him.
EGGS: "Busy Brothers",
"Busy One and Two",
"Nervous Nevilles".
SCHOLES: "Nervous Nevilles", yeah.
He was a bit jittery on the ball at times.
Gary and Phil could be. Not always, though.
GARY: I think Freddie Flintoff
on interviews has said
that the best day of his cricket career
was when Phil Neville retired,
because he then became
the best all-rounder in Lancashire.
He's just bubbly, he's always happy.
Another difference from him and Gaz.
SCHOLES: Gary was the geek, wasn't he?
He was always sorting things out and everyone
just started calling him Busy and...
Actually, Busy (BLEEP)
we always used to call him.
(BUZZING)
Everybody, the lads used to
walk past me going... (BUZZING)
GARY: I grew up in Bury.
Lived in a terraced house opposite a park.
All I remember about being a kid
is playing football,
playing cricket at the cricket club.
And massively about
my dad taking me to United as a kid.
I always remember the first time I went
and I was absolutely mesmerised.
You always thought
next year will be our year.
"We'll win the league. We'll
win the league." We never did.
All I ever wanted to be
was a football player.
And the only club I ever wanted
to play at was United.
And Gary was one of them lads that
when you know him, you love him to death,
he's a great lad, everyone likes him.
And when you don't know him he has
this persona of not being a nice person.
I couldn't stand his
guts when I was younger.
And all I wanted to do was kick him
whenever I played against his local team.
Gary Neville was nowhere near as talented
technically as the other boys.
And he won't mind me saying that.
I always felt as though I had to work
extra all the time.
And just live and eat better
than anybody else.
I've given up on it a little bit now.
I made a conscious decision at 16,
when I left school,
that I couldn't continue to see the friends
that I had been friends at school with,
because I knew full well
I would get drawn into doing things
that 16 to 18-year-old lads did,
and I couldn't do it.
I couldn't do it. I
couldn't have any regrets.
And he wanted to make himself a player.
I didn't make him a player,
he made himself a player.
Eric Harrison was a massive influence
on me. He was just what I needed.
Took absolutely no (BLEEP).
They, probably
the young boys will tell you,
but at the window, I don't know
how that window ever survived.
He would be upstairs at The Cliff
and somebody
would make a mistake and he'd be...
He'd batter on the window
and they wouldn't look up!
They'd be dead scared to look up.
But if they didn't see him at the window,
they knew he was on the way down.
It was funny, it was...
And I'd be in my next door
and I could hear the window battering
and I would shake my head
and kill myself laughing...
I said, "God help them
when they come in at half-time!"
I remember my wife watching me one day,
because we were going to...
She wanted to go to the Trafford Centre
after a training session.
I got in the car, and she was sat in the
car, she said, "You're a disgrace."
I said, "What do you mean?"
She said, "You wouldn't do that
to your children, would you?"
Eric has grounded them people, and he's put
into 'em morals and "treat people right".
I think that if you're looking at Becks,
probably one of the biggest
sports stars in the world,
you know, and he's still grounded.
You know, we can thank Eric for that.
You've got to make those demands
to be successful out there.
Those who could cope with those demands
played, those who didn't...
And that's football.
HARRISON: The one I was most disappointed
in was Raphael Burke.
Supremely talented player.
I wish he had have had that right attitude
because he would have been
a first-team player.
BURKE: For me, I thought I was talented,
but I didn't dedicate like these guys.
When people say, "What was Becks like?"
Or, "What was Giggs like?"
I say, "Well, the first
thing is they sacrificed."
If you're gonna even have
a tiny chance of being like them,
if you don't practise or you don't
sacrifice, you haven't got a chance.
HARRISON: I made Gary my youth-team
captain of the Class of '92.
And he was a fantastic captain.
Gary was the leader,
because if you saw Gary doing something
different on the pitch, after training,
it had me thinking, "Well, if he's doing
it, I need to be doing something."
You know, he was the captain of the team.
So he always took on the mantle
of looking after everyone.
I thought he was the glue
that held them lads together.
Like our, I don't know, Uncle Gary, he is.
He does everything for us.
It's just the way it is.
We phone each other up now and again,
and I just go like that...
"Have you finished yet?"
Oh, dear me, he talks for England, he does,
you know. And Phil's not bad as well.
Gaz and Phil would be, like,
throwing balls up at each other.
They'd be like, you know,
jogging on the spot.
"Lads, relax, there's an hour to go
till kick-off yet. Relax."
If you laid back, then you just sat there,
just looking at them,
and just, "What you doing?"
"What are you doing?"
And they were probably doing the same.
You can probably just imagine them
speaking to each other.
"Phil, have you seen these?
It's cup final. Look at them.
"They're not even prepared right.
We're prepared.
"Are you prepared? Yeah, I'm prepared.
"Yeah. Right. Well, we're prepared.
Never mind these."
You know, you can just imagine it, that's
what they were like from an early age.
They were just all about the focus,
and it worked.
GIGGS: I'd had two really bad experiences
in the Youth Cup.
I played as a schoolboy,
we got beat in the semi-final.
Played as a first-year apprentice,
and got knocked out in the semi-final.
So I was desperate to win it,
absolutely desperate,
even though I'd played a few games
in the first team.
The football was so good, I think.
It was just so enjoyable to play in that.
We'd be winning four, five, six-nil
most weeks.
COMMENTATOR: And here's Ben Thornley.
Could go it all alone!
He's scored!
Switzer trying to get in behind
and there are people in the middle...
And it could come to... It's Giggs!
One of the things that I remember
is Butty's overhead kick, you know.
Didn't go in, but he got
so excited about it.
There was only going to be one result
for this team, it was just...
You just knew.
(CHEERING)
HARRISON: And that was a really tough game.
But I mean, that was the biggest relief
I've ever had in my life,
to come off that field
winners of the Youth Cup, you know,
and see them lifting the Youth Cup.
It was sensational.
COMMENTATOR: How many of these faces
will we ever see
in a Manchester United first team?
They hadn't won it for such a long time.
I think it was the Busby Babes
who won it last time, I think.
So there was a great optimism
from everyone at the club,
including the supporters
and particularly the supporters.
They realised
they were seeing something special.
BUTT: Went in the changing rooms
and the manager was there,
the players were there,
the first-team players were there.
All the staff was there.
Directors were there.
(INDISTINCT TALKING)
BUTT: It was massive. It was huge.
And I put that medal alongside
every other medal that I've made.
I wouldn't put it any higher,
I wouldn't put it any lower,
it's on a par with every single medal
that I've ever won,
because at the time, at 16, 17, 18,
it's the biggest medal you can win.
We had a great team spirit.
Great bunch of lads. Great coaches.
We hadn't won it for a long time,
and we lifted the cup at Old Trafford,
we couldn't ask for much more really.
It was an achievement, but it's never
enough to just win one trophy.
"Okay, next year we're
going to do it again."
BUTT: Best time of my career
was my apprenticeship.
You go to work every day
together with your mates,
you've got no cares in the world,
it's just fun.
You knew you was good,
you knew you was better than most teams
you played against.
But they were the best times in my career,
I can still say that now.
(INDISTINCT CONVERSATIONS)
What happened at The Cliff
when we was kids was the old apprentices,
or the first-year pro,
would always, you know...
(CLEARS THROAT)
...get hold of the first-year apprentices,
which was us, do all sorts.
Most of the things are unspeakable.
It was the end of that era
where it was just the done thing.
Where part of your initiation,
part of your growing-up process,
your toughening-up process, was to put
you in situations that you didn't like.
They put me in a kit bag and
padlocked it up once and put me on a bus.
And then did the same with Scholesy
the week later.
Nicky wasn't small,
but I was tiny, so I'd fit in quite easily.
And you'd end up smacking
the bag like this,
and you'd be in the middle of Old Trafford
in the laundry getting plucked out.
So it were unlocked and sent back.
At dinner times, you just knew
when you've had your dinner, that's it,
the second-years were gonna
absolutely try and abuse you.
And we just all used
to go and hide somewhere.
I think we used to hide in the big gym.
When it comes to initiations, a lot of people,
it would be over in 20 seconds, 15 seconds.
They would just do something stupid,
you'd get a round of, "That was brilliant",
you get a round of applause,
right, you don't have to do anything again.
There would be the odd player
who wouldn't do it,
or didn't want to do it,
or would do it rubbish,
and then you would be on 'em.
There's one time they put Scholesy
in the dryer and...
I don't know whether they turned it on,
but they shut the door and they might've
just turned it on and off like that, quick.
I think he had a panic attack.
But it was a big old
industrial dryer, as well.
I think that's what brought his asthma on.
The nightclub scene was the best.
You had to chat someone up.
I had to do that with you once.
- Chat them up?
- Yeah.
It wasn't my greatest skill
when I was a young kid, chatting girls up.
I had to perform sexual actions
to Clayton Blackmore's calendar.
No!
- On the bed?
- Yeah, on the bed.
Yeah, that was my worst one.
Boot polish, as well, on the...
I had a boot-polish number
put on the back of my...
- The bongs on your back?
- What about the spoon in your mouth?
What, did they draw the kit on you?
I'm not sure about that.
I'm not sure who did it, but...
Giggsy used to draw the kit on him.
- Do you not think...
- it was you!
- It was part of his initiation.
- Don't even know why you're here.
Right, and look how you turned out.
- No, I didn't enjoy it.
- You're welcome.
(LAUGHING)
- You was horrible, Giggsy.
- BUTT: I hated him.
It made you solid, it made you hard,
it made you tough.
It made you not be soared
of looking a fool in front of your friends.
Not be scared of, you know, saying things
out loud in front of older players.
So, although it probably,
nowadays, could be classed as bullying,
it was a massive part
of becoming a player at the club.
Because if you're a 20-year-old lad
and something's wrong on the pitch,
if you've not got the bollocks
and go and say it to the older players,
then you've got no chance of making it
at Man United.
Even though I hated it,
and it used to make me ill,
I still think there's part of that old-school
values and that toughening-up process
that the kids nowadays miss out on.
I'm happy that us lot came through
at that time,
because when we came
into being reserve-team players,
we were the players that stopped it.
We were the players that kind of knew it
wasn't right to do these kinds of things.
And it stopped.
Having coaches like Nobby
that had done what he'd done in football,
and then moving up
to having someone like Eric,
and having the manager around us
all the time,
playing at The Cliff like we played,
and then having players like Bryan Robson
come in to the A team
and playing games like that,
I don't think there's
many teams that do that.
For me, that's my best moment at The Cliff.
Having Bryan Robson play in an A-team game
with me, next to me.
That's great, when they come, Bryan Robson
and all that, come and watch your team play,
or watch the teams practise
and all that business,
what a confidence boost!
We probably learnt how
we need to look to look after our players.
He was the one who taught us that.
And I always remember,
I think we were playing Oldham, I think,
one day...
I remember Ben Thornley,
the left winger,
got absolutely battered
off the Oldham right back.
And I can still see it now,
and it sickens me now.
Ben got a cross in
and the lad just went like that with his
boot, with his studs and all that business,
and he's straight down.
Robbo, who was playing in that game,
went up to the guy who did it,
just put his finger up like that,
I remember him waving his finger like that,
and the lad told him two words,
and the last one was "off".
And I thought, "You're dead."
And Robbo just went over
and absolutely steamrolled him.
Not illegally, but hitting him really hard.
Just a typical Bryan Robson tackle.
Oh, aye.
I'm sure... The Enforcer.
But Robbo was a fantastic person
for them too, you know.
He had a wonderful way with the young
players. They all idolised him.
I think we all looked around at each other
and we all smiled,
because, you know, being looked after
by someone like Bryan Robson...
it doesn't get much better than that.
That was the beauty of
The Cliff, wasn't it?
We were all, what... Sparky, Robbo, lncey,
these were your heroes growing up.
- There was already winners in the team...
- Yeah.
Then, like, the success we had as a youth
team and the A team, like you say,
brought that in as well, so it's a habit.
A lot of football's up here.
You know, people talk about skill,
obviously it's important, and technical
ability and understanding and tactics,
but also the mental strength to know
that basically those opponents
you're playing against,
they know they're in for
a massive fight here to win this match.
All the lads that came through the ranks
under Eric Harrison and Nobby Stiles...
You know, Nobby Stiles would say,
"Just get wired into everybody.
You know, just get stuck in."
And that was the message that was
given to us as 14, 15, 16-year-olds,
you know, "Pass the ball,
"but make sure you don't lose
any battles out there.
"You win that fight."
GARY: Got to remember that
in the, sort of, '60s, '70s and '80s,
that Liverpool had an incredible time,
you know, in music, football,
and I suppose in some ways,
this last 20 years
has been Manchester's time.
The Stone Roses, Oasis.
United winning the league.
But the two cities
have got a lot of similarities.
The spirit and fight, the honesty,
the integrity of the people.
There's tribalness to it.
Why shouldn't there be?
GARY: When was your first goal here?
BECKHAM: Galatasaray.
GARY: Was it?
BECKHAM: Oh, yeah.
- Was it that scuff into the corner?
- Yeah.
Proper scuff.
- When was yours, Scholesy?
- Trying to think.
Do you remember you used to play at all?
Have you just completely forgotten already?
In the A-team games we used to come up
against, you know, all the teams
around the country,
but obviously when we played
against Liverpool,
those were the big games.
I was about 16 when we played against
Liverpool at The Cliff,
and their team with...
Alan Hanson was playing,
coming back from injury,
Sammy Lee played.
We sure knew that we was
good enough then, I think.
They had a really good side out,
and, I mean, Liverpool don't like getting beat
by Man United, even at tiddlywinks, do they?
They beat them 6-1 at The Cliff, you know...
I think Scholesy scored a hat trick.
Probably did beat Liverpool a few times,
4 or 5-nil, which was nice.
I think the frustrating thing
growing up as well,
is Liverpool were such a great team.
They were a great team.
They had great players,
and that just made it worse.
I just hated them because
they were so good.
They played brilliant football,
they played the right way,
they had great players,
they played a good system.
To watch that mob down the road,
to just be head and shoulders
above everybody else in the league,
in Europe and...
It was really difficult.
I remember watching the World Club
Championship and I was buzzing.
It was Flamengo-Liverpool,
and Flamengo battered them 3-nil.
Zico scored,
and I must have been about 10,
and I was flipping dancing round
the living room,
flipping Liverpool just got beat.
But, I think all things considered,
you play the long game
with Manchester United Football Club
and these people ended up
getting knocked off their perches.
I remember, '99 season, January, Liverpool.
- The FA Cup?
- In the FA Cup.
- One-nil down, weren't we, with what...
- Yeah...
- Five minutes to go.
- Michael scored for them, didn't he?
- Michael Owen?
- Yeah.
That's was my fault, as well.
(LAUGHING)
They just got a cross in,
I just couldn't get my head there in time.
- You remember?
- You left your runner.
I think you blamed me, as well.
Again.
I always remember the
goals I give away, me.
There's that many of them, though,
aren't there?
I thought that was the best atmosphere
of the season.
- To be fair.
- Yeah.
Yeah. That last couple of minutes here.
That's where it all started, I think.
BUTT: I think the beginning
of the season, '98/'99,
I don't think it was any different
to any other season.
We knew we had a good team,
a good squad.
We expected to go and do well.
Our form was inconsistent
in the early parts of the season.
We were conceding goals.
We were exciting,
the attacking football was brilliant,
but we were still conceding goals
intheleague.
But at the turn at Christmas,
the FA Cup against Liverpool...
(GARY EXHALES IN RELIEF)
What a game that was.
And then it just seemed
to snowball from there.
COMMENTATOR:
You know, the season hasn't been
all Manchester United had hoped for.
Not so far.
But an FA Cup tie against
what is a young Liverpool team,
at this stage, could change that.
One-nil down.
Four minutes, five minutes to go.
A few minutes to go,
they took Paul lnce off,
and Paul had played for me
and went like that to me, you know,
winding me up, just... Wasn't vicious,
it was just, you know, lncey being lncey.
We'd made a substitution,
and brought Ole Gunnar Solskjaer on.
COMMENT AT OR:
Beckham may just take this on.
Lifted towards the head of Cole...
And Yorke!
When you're one-nil down
and you score that equaliser,
you know it's coming.
COMMENTATOR: Into Cole again...
May break for Scholes.
Solskjaer!
I was on the bench,
and whenever I was on the bench,
I was a fan. I wasn't a sub.
I was in the K Stand, I was singing
the songs, I was up, I was at it.
Shirt was off, tracksuit was off,
I wanted to dive onto their bench
and just celebrate.
To look over to a bench
that thought they'd won a game,
and they've lost it, is the greatest
feeling in the whole wide world.
You know, for us to come back
and score two late goals,
sort of set the tone of the season,
and it was, for me,
it was the turning point that...
Teams knew that,
no matter what the score was,
we would still come back at them.
It's at the back of their mind that,
"They always come back, these."
That season, the Liverpool game,
we knew we'd score late,
- the opposition knew we'd score late.
- Yeah.
And you know what it's like, if you think,
"Against United at Old Trafford."
It's amazing,
because you've played at Newcastle,
and you've been out,
but when you're out of Man United,
and there's like 20 minutes to go,
and it's 2-nil up, you're at other teams
and they say, "Oh, game over."
And you probably say it to the lads now,
"This is Man United, you know they're going
to come back, they'll win this 3-2."
And more often than not, they do.
I think all the boss's teams,
they always came back, didn't they?
Like Bruce's goals to win the league
first time. They always had that...
They went till right at the end.
I think it is fitness, but I also think
keeping possession,
- and Old Trafford being a bigger pitch.
- PHIL: Desire as well.
I think our biggest strength
is we're all Man United fans, aren't we?
It ultimately comes from the gaffer,
doesn't it, really.
It ultimately comes from him, I think.
What he demands of you,
what demands he puts on you.
If you think, "We will get one more
chance", you get one more chance.
Might not score,
but we will get one more chance.
And we always, if we equalised, we always
tried to get a second one as well.
And the third.
- It was never, yeah.
- It was never enough, never enough.
You win a league and that's not enough.
And next year you've got
to win the league and double.
But I think that was bred in us
from youth-team level,
from B-team, from A-team,
from reserve team,
you know, that was put in us, I think.
The story of Manchester United was great.
Us great players...
Now we could feel...
like the ghosts.
I remember walking the corridors
up to the manager's office at Old Trafford.
And the smell of Sir Matt Busby's pipe.
You just knew there was a big...
Just a big presence about him
still there and...
You just walked past and, you know,
you might see him now and again.
The door would always be open.
I look back now and think, you know,
we should have gone in more
and talked to him more,
but you were scared.
This was like a god.
DANNY BOYLE: And there were two, like,
big important books in our family.
One was a massive Bible.
And the other book was the photo album,
you know, like black-and-white photos
of us as little kids.
And with a, you know, big extended family
around the area and all that kind of stuff.
Biggest picture in that book, at the back,
was the Busby Babes.
NEWS REPORTER:
On the fringe of a Munich Airport
lies the wreckage of an airliner
still smouldering from a crash,
in which 21 people were killed.
HARRISON: (SIGHS SADLY)
I heard it at school.
I heard that news at school,
and I was crying my eyes out at school.
You know, and I mean the teacher
took me to another room,
I was that emotional about it, you know.
And I thought, they can't be dead.
The teacher said to me,
"Sorry, Eric, I'm sorry, they are."
GARY: I think probably 17, 18,
we'd won the Youth Cup,
the Busby Babe comparison
started to come out.
You've got big footsteps to follow here.
You've got lads who were young men,
just wanting to play football,
wanting to dream like we're dreaming.
Their legacy is enormous.
Everything you see there at that club today
was built out of that tragedy
and Sir Matt Busby's determination
to grow another team.
To rebound. To go again.
BECKHAM: Obviously what he created
at Manchester United
led to what the boss had created
at Manchester United and what,
you know, we were part of.
And you feel that.
FERGUSON: The most
important part of the history
was Matt Busby's
introduction of young people.
That was uppermost in my thoughts.
To try and recreate the history
which was started by Matt Busby,
and I thought that it was
the perfect football club for me.
I was born in Cardiff.
My dad played rugby,
so he signed professionally
for Swinton,
so I moved to Manchester when I was seven.
Everyone on my street was United fans,
and I used to go watch them, Stretford End,
United Road.
Go with my mates,
catch the match bus, the 26.
Try and climb over the fence
and get in for nothing.
You know, all that sort of stuff,
as a United fan, I used to do.
GARY: First time I seen him play,
I was like, "Oh, my God,
"What have I just seen?"
If that's the standard
that we have to get to, I'm done.
I'm finished. What's the point?
You know what I mean? Go back to Bury.
Kick your little ball against a wall.
Just get off this pitch away from him,
because honestly he was unbelievable.
COMMENTATOR: Ryan Wilson again.
He is Salford's star man.
That's a terrific pass for Winwood.
Oh, that's a marvellous goal.
We were nowhere near him,
do you know what I mean?
We weren't even in the same bracket as him.
I always remember when he signed,
his 14th...
on his 14th birthday,
we were playing Arsenal.
And we signed in my office upstairs.
And George Graham had come in
for a cup of tea,
and after Ryan and his mum left,
I says, "He'll be a great player
for United's first team in three years".
So George says, "What's his name?"
I says, "Ryan Wilson".
So a few years later,
we're playing Arsenal again,
and George was having
a little bit of a go, actually,
and he says, "What happened
to that boy Ryan Wilson?"
As much as to say
he's never seen him again.
I said, "He's playing today."
He goes, "Well, this is a programme.
Where?" I said, "it's Ryan Giggs.
"He's changed his name."
He says, "Bloody hell."
Of course by that time he was a star.
Yes, when I arrived, Giggs was playing.
Yeah.
Yeah, and now I retired, what,
15 years ago and he still plays.
It's crazy.
I'll never forget the manager, sort of,
naming the team
in the old dressing rooms at Old Trafford.
And I'm just sat there
and I'm not not listening to him,
but sort of half not interested,
because I didn't think I was playing.
So left wing is last.
And he...
And I'll never forget it.
It was like, "And Ryan,
you'll play on the left today."
I was like, "Did you say my name there?"
And like...
started... I don't like flying.
So when we're taking off,
I've got, like, sweaty palms
like you wouldn't believe.
And it was like...
It was exactly the same feeling.
COMMENTATOR:
Number 14 is 17-year-old Ryan Giggs.
We looked at him and thought,
"That's our motivation."
"You know, if the manager's
giving him a chance,
"then surely he's going to give us
a chance at some point."
COMMENTATOR: And this is Giggs!
Oh, he's just getting better and better!
GIGGS: The manager used to always say,
if I'd ever I had a shave,
then the next day in training
he'd just look at me,
"You was out last night, weren't you?"
And I'd go, "No."
He'd go, "Yes, you was.
You always have a shave.
"When you've gone out,
you always have a shave,
"you're always clean-shaven."
So from then on, I just learned,
if I went out, I just wouldn't shave.
(LAUGHS)
I think growing up in Manchester,
in the '90s,
obviously it was brilliant,
it was massive.
GIGGS: It was the time of The Stone Roses,
Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets,
all the house music,
and it was the place to be.
- I mean, it was a ridiculous place.
- BUTT: The Hacienda. The Boardwalk.
We were going to concerts, Spike Island,
and it was a real special time really.
I remember once the whole
Man United team went to the Hacienda.
Wouldn't happen nowadays
with the press everywhere, but...
You'd have what's called a player's pass,
a Man United player's pass.
So every, like...
professional had one.
And certain clubs, you'd
get in free with it.
So you'd go out with your player's pass,
show it the bouncer, you know, "Let me in."
BUTT: That was a good thing that I liked
about my upbringing in Manchester,
was everyone looked after each other.
If you was a good-enough guy,
you didn't show off too much
and you weren't big-headed,
the bouncer looked after you.
It just seemed like the magic dust literally
had been sprayed all over the city.
So it was good to see the football
and the music thing.
You know, what else is there?
What else is there?
BOYLE: Manchester reinvented itself.
It didn't wait for a leader to do that
for it. In fact, it took the disinterest
that was clearly shown to it
by Margaret Thatcher's premiership,
and it took that as actually
a signal to do it itself.
WOMAN: We can't even get out,
we're walking on cockroaches, beetles.
In flats in this block?
In these flats over here.
We've got people coming up using the place as
brothels and everything all over the place.
It's disgusting.
We all grew up as
Thatcher's children and...
You know, hand on my heart,
that bitch gave me my start in music, man,
because she put me on the dole
straight out of school.
And where else would I have got the chance
to learn an instrument?
BOYLE: There are some great northern cities
that actually aren't beholden to anyone,
you know, and no matter how bad it gets,
they will regenerate themselves.
Now, the football teams, of course,
especially United, is a symbol of that.
GIGGS: Sharpey loved to go out,
loved to party and have a good time.
For me, he was the one who I had, probably,
the most in common with because of the age.
I've seen Giggsy and Lee Sharpe
and a few of the guys out and about in town
and in the clubs at the time
and what have you.
I suppose we should have took it
on ourselves to tell them to naff off home
and get an early night, before there's
a Liverpool game coming up or summat.
But it's not our place to do that, is it?
Fergie had his little network
of guys out there doing just that,
didn't he, I suppose, so...
The gaffer had been tipped off
that me and Sharpey were going out.
So he's just totally surprised us,
and we're at Sharpey's house...
I head down that road,
I phone Norman Davies and say,
"Where does Sharpe live?"
And he gave me his address,
and I get there...
I didn't know there was a party going on.
A party! I couldn't believe it.
So I knocked on the door
and there's guys inside said, "Who is it?"
And I battered the door and I says,
"Get that bloody door open."
I threw everybody out the place.
And I'm literally in his eyeline.
I mean, anywhere else I could've hid.
But I'm stood...
I'm leaning against the fridge
with a beer in my hand.
He threw my mate out.
He threw the girls out.
He's going, "Where's that...
Where's Sharpey?"
So one of my other mates has ran upstairs,
said, "Sharpey!"
Sharpey's in the mirror, just...
He's getting dressed.
He's in his bedroom just, you know,
putting his jacket on.
"Your gaffer's here, your gaffer's here."
Sharpey's gone, "Yeah, all right, yeah.
Of course he is, yeah."
Carried on sort of like getting ready.
And in the mirror, he seen the gaffer
walking up the stairs.
At this time, the apprentices
can hear his voice,
because there was a few
of the apprentices out.
They've hid in the wardrobe,
they've hid under the bed,
one of them jumped out the window.
And he didn't know about them.
They didn't get caught.
So anyway, he's caught me
and Sharpey red-handed.
And he's just sat us down
and he's absolutely battered us.
And I says, "You have no idea
what a life you're going to have now."
And I says, "You're in tomorrow, 7 o'clock.
I want you in at 7 o'clock."
And they were like that,
their eyes were going...
"Sharpey, you're going back in digs,
you're not having your own house.
"You've had too many chances."
And he said to me, he's gone,
"Do you want to end up like him?"
From that day on, really,
I was a little bit more focused,
and obviously I'd seen the gaffer
snap before, but not like that.
Fortunately, Ryan took heed.
Because if you look at him now,
playing at 41 years of age,
it tells you everything.
He's lived his life well, you know.
He's looked after himself,
and that was an experience that maybe
he might look back at and say,
"I'm glad that happened." You know?
He's a different kind of animal, Giggsy.
He came to a point where he said,
"Enough's enough.
I'm a footballer first and foremost."
Yeah, there was a time
where I just had to play within myself,
and sort of change my role where,
yeah, I couldn't be a flying winger,
I had to manage my game a lot more
and look after my body.
He looked at the bigger picture,
he looked at, "In 15 years' time,
"I still want to be playing football
for Man United."
So what sacrifices, now, do I have to make?
Diet, getting the right beds,
getting the right car,
doing different stretches, obviously
starting yoga, I'm seeing an osteopath,
doing acupuncture, ice baths, you name it,
I've done it, to sort of maximise
the time that I'm on the pitch.
And especially the last three months
of the season, you do everything you can,
because you know that's
when it all happens.
That's when you need to be at your best.
That's when the big games are coming.
COMMENTATOR: The last thing that
either club needed was a replay,
but here we are.
United already committed to two games
a week between now and the end of May,
or they are if they're to keep thinking
about a treble.
And let's not forget
the double's still on for Arsenal.
Something's got to give here.
GIGGS: We'd played, I think,
about three or four days before.
We had Juventus coming up,
we were doing well in the league.
So the manager decided to change things.
I'd played in the first game.
We'd had a goal disallowed,
and we felt that we should have won it.
And I just wanted to play in that game.
And I was subbed.
At that point in our careers,
Arsenal was the rivals.
It was such a great Arsenal team,
it was the best team
that, probably,
we played against domestically.
Power, pace, aggression, experience, skill.
They had everything. And...
They were such a tough
team to play against.
I mean, Martin Keown from England,
and they were all...
And David Seaman, they were all great lads,
I really like them.
But on the pitch, there
was just a real hatred.
And it had been such a tiring game.
You know, going 1-nil up,
then 1-1, and then...
Keaney got sent off, so we're playing,
obviously, a man down.
There were so many emotions as well.
I probably should have came off.
I was physically and mentally exhausted.
It was such an emotionally charged evening
that I just hit a brick wall.
The ball came across to Ray Parlour
and he was taking me on.
And I remember feeling shattered.
I actually remember him running at me,
to this day, thinking, "I'm dead here."
So I just collapsed on the floor,
thinking I've got to make a tackle.
And it was a tired...
I made the wrong decision.
And when I give the penalty away,
I remember thinking, "Life's over.
...l-m dead-
"I'd rather die than this penalty go in."
And it was one of those moments
when I honestly thought,
if Dennis Bergkamp would have scored,
my Man United career
would have probably been finished.
(FANS CHEERING)
(CHEERING WILDLY)
Me and Phil go to celebrate
with Peter Schmeichel,
he literally shoves us
the other side of the box.
He literally clothes-lined me away.
And I was back on it.
The game was getting a bit stretched.
So I think the manager thought
it would be perfect for me to come on now,
fresh legs, and the manager just says,
"I think the right back's tiring.
"Whenever you get a chance, run at him.
Make something happen."
You're 10 men, you're thinking
it's going to penalties.
You're hanging on.
Arsenal have sort of
wave after wave of attack.
And then Giggsy picks the ball up.
PHIL: Patrick Vieira plays the ball square.
And I just remember Giggsy setting off.
When I sprint, you can tell I'm sprinting.
Everything is moving.
With Giggsy it's almost slow motion,
he glides on the top of the surface,
his feet don't touch the ground.
He picked the ball up.
And I was at left back behind him,
and I was shouting,
"Giggsy, Giggsy, I'm on my way."
Thinking I was going to overlap him.
And Giggsy just went further
and further and further away from me.
He starts running at players,
and I've seen Giggsy do this
since I was 15 years old.
I stood still and it was like slow motion.
In and out, gliding in and out.
He was like a gazelle.
He had this grace about him.
And he was making body movements
without even touching the ball.
And Lee Dixon went for one,
Martin Keown went for one.
BECKHAM: I just saw him going through,
going through, keeping on going.
I'm thinking Scholes is
coming in back post.
Look at Scholesy, look at Scholesy.
And all he had to do
was square it to me
and I'd make a big run
and I tell you, I think
I was still 20 yards behind him,
and I was sprinting as fast as I could.
That was Ryan Giggs, whether
he was playing on Lower Broughton Road,
Littleton Road,
The Cliff training ground, Carrington...
That was what Ryan Giggs was all about.
This was Giggsy's moment.
COMMENTATOR: What a goal!
You have seen a magician wave a wand!
And conjure up a trick
which the FA Cup
and all its glorious past can revel in.
You just lose yourself
and don't know what you're doing.
And everything...
Sanity just goes out of your head.
And I just decided
to take my shirt off and just...
start swinging it.
The team were coming over.
Fans were coming over.
They were on top of me and it's just...
unbelievable.
How many times are you going to see
a goal like that in your lifetime?
Especially scored
by one of your lads as well.
SCHOLES: It is the best
goal I've ever seen.
Just for everything,
how important it was,
and the way he did it,
who he went past.
As a defender,
you look at those lads differently,
and they're the heroes for you,
they produce the biggest moments,
at the best times, when you need them.
And throughout that season
they all delivered.
Every single one of them.
But Giggsy's moment
is the stand-out moment.
You needed a result,
but you didn't need extra time,
10 men, a real battle like this...
Look, who's to know
what's going to happen in football, Gary?
It could all blow up in my face
at the end of the day,
but can you forget moments like this?
Those supporters
will be talking about that for years.
The players will be talking
about that for years.
That's what football's about.
Trying to reach peaks
and climaxes to our season,
which we're doing at the moment.
We're in a final, we've got something
in the bank for ourselves.
Now we go and try and win this league now.
I mean, the place went wild,
and I'll always remember, that game,
I don't think a supporter left that ground
not thinking we couldn't win the treble.
Not one person came out
of that ground. It just lifted everyone.
I mean, I think if they'd have won,
they might have gone on
and won the double, but...
Have you ever seen the footage when,
you know, when he scores the goal
and goes like this...
- Watch the footage of Scholesy...
- I got into the goal.
He goes in the goal and goes like this...
He's probably thinking, what am I doing?
- I've never seen it.
- Have you seen it?
Because I was running
waiting for you to square it.
And you ran away celebrating,
and you take your top off,
and I go like that...
(LAUGHS)
That'd had have got me out jail,
Scholesy, that one.
- Right next to me.
- Yeah, it would have done, yeah.
Well, cricket was my first love,
and it probably is my first love now.
I used to miss an awful lot of school
through cricket,
and an awful lot of school
in the winter through football.
So, you know, my dad was always
one of those that said,
"Well, let's give him the
best opportunities."
So they came to some agreement that I could
either miss school for cricket or for football.
And, you know, it was
a massive decision to make,
and in the end it was probably
an easy decision because
two months before that, I'd played
at Wembley for England Schoolboys,
and I think there was about
78,000 people there,
we'd played Italy at Wembley.
A couple of weeks after that
I'd played cricket for England,
made my debut for cricket for England,
I was captain of the Under-15s
and we played in Gloucestershire.
Literally, there was
probably 30 people there,
and what should have been probably one of
the best moments of my schoolboy career,
it was probably one of
the biggest let-downs.
And in a way,
that was probably the turning point.
Phil Neville was a player
we were all after.
I think Arsenal and a couple of...
But we were clever enough to say,
"Right, if we take Gary,"
who was doing very well also,
"and get the two of them,
"there's a far better attraction for the
family to keep the two brothers together."
I used to play
two or three years above myself.
I wasnt-just in my own age group playing
at centre back or fullback or in midfield,
so I was playing with men
when I was only a boy.
So I realised early on
that to get forward in the game,
I needed many strings to my bow.
The England manager used to say to me,
you need to nail down one position.
You need to nail down one position,
if you do that, you'll have
a bigger, better, longer career.
And I used to come away thinking,
that is the biggest load of rubbish
that I've ever heard in my life.
I'm 19, I'm 20,
I'm a regular in Man United's
first-team squad.
And I think it was
probably one of the times
when I probably did have to be
strong with myself,
that what I was doing
and what I believed in was right.
I first seen him at The Cliff,
playing in a game,
and he was one of them
players that you just,
"Wait a minute,
is he right-footed or left-footed?"
And me being just, you know, my right
foot's for standing on and that's it,
I'm so one-footed, to see someone
like that, I'm always interested.
Phil was always popular, because he was...
He was comfortable
around anyone's company.
He was one of them people
who were good in the dressing room,
and good to have around, because
he would just make people feel at ease.
As a fullback, you need to develop a trick,
and mine was a step-over.
And I worked on it every day.
And I did it in a game
once at Old Trafford.
I did a step-over, got to the by-line,
crossed it, and... we nearly scored.
And as I was running back,
Butty, Becks, Keano,
they were laughing their heads off.
Just laughing their heads off,
and I could not understand for the
life of me why they were laughing.
I'd just done the best step-over
that this club has ever seen,
and they're absolutely
wetting themselves laughing.
So the next time I get the ball,
I threw in a double step-over,
and the crowd, you know,
they were cheering,
and I think they thought
I was taking the mickey.
But this is something
that I was serious about
and I've worked on for six months.
And I'd just produced it at Old Trafford
against Southampton.
So I turned round after
the double step-over,
and Roy Keane looked at me
and just said, "Stop f'ing about."
I wasn't too happy when...
I'm playing in a game, and I'm thinking,
"They're singing my song, you know,
for the first few seconds, and then..."
Phil, Phil Will tear you a...
Whoa! Whoa!
"That's not right. Phil?
"No, it's my song."
it must have not been that good, because
everyone used to slaughter me about it.
For Ferguson, it was important.
The academy,
young players was very important.
Then we could see
that it was a great generation,
and we could hear
the coaches and everybody.
It was a great generation.
And then you have to have the...
It's simple, then to have the manager
who gives them the chance to play.
I think everyone that looks at us,
they all think about...
Obviously us, but the team in general,
about how we've won everything
and done this,
but if you think about it, our baptism
was we lost the league on the Saturday...
- West Ham.
- West Ham away.
And then six days later we lost the FA Cup,
so that was like a wake-up call,
that was saying,
well, for me personally,
I don't wanna do that again.
The first year that
we broke in properly was '95,
and we lost the double in a week.
(SIGHS) It was a disaster. The last game
at the end of the season, West Ham,
then you've got the game
against Everton in the FA Cup.
I remember the cup final perfectly.
That was so bad.
I think we were getting beat 1-nil,
weren't we, for a lot of the game.
They scored early
and I had a great chance to make it 1-all,
and I never wanted to say...
it was a bad summer really.
I've thought about that
loads of times actually,
and it still makes you feel a bit sick now.
GIGGS: I can't remember a lot of,
I don't want to sound blase',
but a lot of the games
where we've won trophies.
You remember a lot more from the defeats.
It's a lot more...
(EXHALES)
it has a bigger effect on you.
You lose a cup final,
you think about it all summer.
You're lying on the beach,
having a good time,
and it will just come back to you
and it will ruin your day
or ruin your afternoon...
Can't wait to get back.
I remember I was on holiday,
I think I was in Cyprus,
and I pick up the paper
and you see all these players are going,
and you're thinking,
"Wow, what's going on here?"
They must be going to go and buy
some proper big players to replace them.
Obviously the manager
was looking at where we could improve,
but I don't think anyone could foresee
what he was going to do.
You know Mark Hughes,
Andrei Kanchelskis and Paul lnce.
You know, three massive players for United.
To be fair to the gaffer,
he stood by us, didn't he?
He could have bought any player he wanted.
He was under pressure around that time,
the gaffer, wasn't he?
The three players that went...
- Massive.
- Massive.
- Fan player. You know.
- The fans loved them.
- Fans loved them.
- Scholes, I suppose, came in for Sparky.
You came in for lncey, you for Andrei.
Me for Paul Parker. Because we were, like,
we were all replacing brilliant players,
weren't we, do you know what I mean?
I've always, if you look
at my managerial career,
from the start at East Stirling
right through to Aberdeen,
I went to Aberdeen
and then to Manchester United,
it was all about young players.
I believe in the foundation of a football
club, based on young people coming through
so there was a stream of players
coming into the first team.
It's a great risk.
But...
he knew it.
And he was right.
And for me, of course, it was great to play
with a generation of players,
win things with them.
Be a bit in the middle of that, you know?
And help the new players,
and young players.
And then we'd go back to training
and he'd still not bought any,
he's still not bought any.
And before you know it,
we were playing Aston Villa the first clay
of the year, and we was all in the team.
After the first half an hour or something,
we were 3-nil down.
It was a disaster, really...
COMMENTATOR: And Taylor's made it three!
SCHOLES:...at Aston Villa.
COMMENT AT OR:
It's going from bad to worse.
BUTT: After the game we were thinking,
"We've let the manager down,
he's put his faith in us,
"we're only young,
the fans are going to hate us,
"everyone's going to hate us
because we're wrecking the club."
I think they've got problems.
I wouldn't say they've got major problems.
Obviously, three players have departed.
The trick is always buy when you're strong.
So he needs to buy players.
You can't win anything with kids.
You look at that line-up
Manchester United had today,
and Aston Villa, at quarter past two
when they get the team sheet,
it's just going to give them a lift,
and it'll happen every time he plays
the kids. He's got to buy players.
In truth, that night,
watching Match Of The Day,
I felt exactly the same as what
Alan Hansen said, we wasn't good enough.
We wanted to believe in it.
And we tried everything to win it.
But to be realistic...
With five new players
coming from the academy,
19 years old,
it's not very realistic
to think that you can win things.
I wasn't probably at that stage of my
career where I felt comfortable to sort of,
you know, "Don't worry about it,
it'll be all right."
You know, I wasn't at that...
'Cause I didn't know whether it was
going to be all right or not, you know?
They have got star names to come in.
They've got Cole and Giggs.
- Cantona, in due course.
- Cantona.
- And Steve Bruce.
- Bruce.
Still not enough.
The trick of winning the championship
is having strength in depth.
They just haven't got it.
But we tried so hard
and they were so exceptional,
and Ferguson helped them
to learn things so quickly...
that we won it.
And we won the double.
Premier League and the Cup.
Eric, when he come back
from his suspension,
he was phenomenal really and really
did carry the team quite a lot of the time.
You don't win anything
with kids, he's right.
You don't win anything with kids.
We won because we were part of a team
that had Roy Keane in it,
and we had Bruce, Palliate,
we had all these top experienced players
who got the young lads through it, really.
(SPEAKING FRENCH)
We didn't realise how special it was,
to be honest, I think, at the time.
Because, you know, we're all in the team.
There was not one piece of jealousy
between any of us
and all we were worried about
was staying in the team and doing well.
When they come from...
One's from Gorton, one's from Oldham,
one's from London,
two boys from Bury and Ryan from Salford.
You never think, years ahead,
how they became such a friendly unit.
Almost like brothers.
And they would practise and practise.
They couldn't give them enough of the ball.
Honestly, it was a joy to watch,
because they wanted to do it.
They wanted to be the best players.
It is a lot easier
coming through as a group as well,
because like, one day
Becks would be the man,
and then it would be you,
then it would be you,
then it would be you,
then it would be me...
It shares it around, it's a lot easier.
- It's amazing how...
- I'd never like to do it on my own.
There was no jealousy between us,
though, was there?
If I was knackered at half, at dinner time,
all I'd want to do is put my feet up
and I'd look out window
and I'd see you and you practising
and I'd be thinking,
"I better get out there
because I don't want to be left out.
"I don't want to get left behind."
It's like kids in the garden.
If you've got two brothers
playing football together,
they're going to be better
than a lad who's living on his own,
because he's constantly
competing against two people.
Whereas we had five, six of us.
We drove each other on,
I think that's what helped.
Like Phil said, there wasn't any
jealousy either, was there?
PHIL: And as I said, we've all failed
at some time, haven't we?
That's why it was so rewarding, I think,
when we won what we did,
and did what we did,
and it's more rewarding
with, you know, between us.
When Phil really broke in
was the '96 season, '95/'96 season.
I'd played 25 games the year before,
I was the England right back at the time,
and I got left out
for the last three league games,
and the cup final against Liverpool.
It's a strange situation to be in,
because we shared a room,
I phone home and say, "I'm playing."
Gary then phones home
and says he's not playing.
It's really difficult. And I felt
for my mum and dad really, because
they're in a situation where they can't
show jubilation or upset to either of us.
I remember my sister
taking the mickey out of me.
"Phil's got in and you're
not," and thinking,
"That's hard that,
to see your brother play in front of you."
And I think Gary probably deep down knew he
wasn't playing, and he took it well, he did.
There was not one bit
of animosity between us.
They're tough moments to have to get over,
but you're happy because he's playing,
and you certainly don't ever want him
to fall over or make a mistake,
but also there's still that competitive
tension, because we're in similar positions.
And going into the game,
I'll never forget walking out the tunnel,
and all I remember thinking was one, I
hope I play well, two, I hope we win,
and three, I hope
my brother gets on the pitch.
And that was my thought process
going into the game.
This was something
that I wanted for us both,
and we scored and he came on,
and that was a special moment.
I didn't play in the '96 final.
In the final, we played Arsenal.
He came round to my room in the morning,
I could hear him coughing outside,
you know, that...
Came in and said he wasn't playing,
you know,
but you hear his cough outside the door
down the corridor.
If you knew you were getting dropped,
I just didn't answer the door.
If he can't find you, he can't drop you.
Can he?
- Go missing.
- Yeah.
SCHOLES: You did used to wait
for that knock though, didn't you?
- Yeah, used to wait for the knock.
- About 11-ish.
GARY: I remember once
him coming up to me,
I think it was Thursday,
before a game on a Saturday.
And he said, "I'm not playing you
on Saturday, son."
He said, "I've got a game for you,
two weeks on Saturday,
"it's just the game for you." I was like,
"So I'm not playing for four games?"
"You make sure you prepare for that one.
"I need you in that game."
And I was like,
"Right, he needs me in that game."
I'm thinking, "Have I been dropped
for four games,
"or have I been told that I'm brilliant
and I'm needed for that?"
I couldn't work it out.
Do you remember Kiddo,
after you had been left out?
"I thought you were playing."
"Are you not... Are you not playing?"
"I'd have picked you."
"Tomorrow."
"I'll have a word With him."
'I thought you.
(MOUTHING) Are you not playing?"
(LAUGHING)
"Hey, Kiddo, I'm not, no.
No, I'm not, Kiddo."
"I can't believe it! You said I was..."
"How's your mam? How's your mam?"
- That's a bit strong, innit?
- A bit strong, yeah.
"How's your mum?"
(ALL LAUGHING)
There's one team talk that stands out
more than any other.
And a lot of his team talks,
particularly the strong ones,
aren't about football,
they're about life in general.
And he told a story about the geese.
And they'd be flying in an arrow,
and he'd go,
"Look, that's what we need to get at.
"Look, that's teamwork,
they've migrated from North Africa."
You know, they leave the country,
and they go and they fly in a V,
two lots of Vs,
and the ones at the back are not working,
they're carried by the stream
of the ones in front.
You know, one flies at the front,
and when he gets tired,
he goes to the back, and they...
And he was trying to emphasise
the need for teamwork.
They don't fly off individually,
they fly off together.
"Here's these geese, they're flying 4,000
miles to get to a better, a warmer climate.
"All I'm asking from you is to play
30 away games in a season."
There were some team talks he'd give
that'd make you shiver.
And that was one that I'll never forget.
Later in the season,
we might be going through a bad time
and we'd look up in the sky
and see the same birds,
and they're all over the place,
they're in like a...
No one's leading.
"Look at us there, we're
all over the place.
"Look at us. Get in an arrow!"
Alex Ferguson, in my view, could have been
a great leader in any walk of life.
If he'd gone into business,
he would have been a great business leader.
If he'd gone into politics, he would've been
a fantastic political leader, actually.
But he chose sport,
and he became a great sports coach.
Probably the greatest in the world.
He always fulfilled his promise to make sure
that his group of players, his 18, his 20,
got what they actually were promised
at the start of the season.
They all felt like they were contributing.
He always made you feel special,
no matter how small a contribution
you may feel it was,
he always made you feel special
that your contribution was big.
And his management of people
was brilliant like that.
What I tried to get through to them
was they were working class.
They're not working class,
nowhere near working class.
Because they come from
far more privileged backgrounds than I did,
and their grandparents
and their fathers came from.
But it's worth reminding them
that work ethic is so important.
It doesn't matter
how good a player you are,
if you're not prepared to work and have a
desire to work, then it means nothing.
So all my team talks were based on that.
I would bring out stories,
some imaginative stories,
and some were actually true stories,
but always working on
the principal of work ethic.
I've heard them stories a million times,
sometimes you joke, you don't even listen,
you've heard them all before.
But what I'd do is I'd look round
and I'd look at, say, Nani or Anderson,
and the manager's trying to describe
growing up in a Glasgow shipyard
in a broad Scottish accent,
and you can see Nani and Anderson
and all the foreign players
who could hardly speak English, going,
"What is he going on about?
I don't understand a word."
But they just...
They're trying to look interested.
And I used to sometimes just look round
the dressing room and go,
"They haven't got a clue what he's saying."
(LAUGHS)
What's the best excuse he gave you
for leaving you out?
- Too hot.
- Too hot?
- "Really, Scholesy, it's too hot."
- "Too hot for you."
"Sharpey always does well at Villa Park.
"He always does well,
so I'm not going to play you."
He said he was leaving me out
of Chelsea once because
they had some Combat 18
fanatics in the crowd,
and he thought I was a
bit too young for it.
Best one he gave me was,
"it's a nice ground, and
you come into your own on a heavy pitch,
"so in November you'll be my player."
So I only played one month a year, me,
one month a season.
Thing about Nicky is, regardless
of his age, he always had that...
schoolboy, 9, 10, 11-year-old look
on his face, of up to no good.
Sir Alex used to say,
"Butt, you're up to no good."
All the time.
Silly little childish things.
I did one once
with a teapot and Peter Schmeichel.
You know, big 6'8" man, giant.
SCHOLES: You'd come in the dressing room
and there was a tray of sandwiches
and, you know, the big hot silver pots
with tea in or coffee.
Obviously we were just sat
in the dressing room, a freezing cold day.
Peter Schmeichel, obviously, he walks up
to get a sandwich and a cup of tea,
absolutely bollocko.
I put a steaming-hot kettle on the bed,
and I put it behind his arse, like that,
so I was sort of like that,
looking at the lads, laughing,
thinking he's just going to touch it there.
And I've looked round like that,
he's turned round, full pirouette
and caught his manhood right on the pot.
And you heard a little... (MIMICS SIZZLE)
like that as well.
And we're just looking in absolute
disbelief, and can't believe what he's done.
And all I hear is... (GROANS)
(IN AN ACCENT) "What are you doing?"
BUTT: Screamed as loud as he could.
He's just going to kill me.
So I literally dropped the kettle
and I was just legging it right round,
all round The Cliff, and he's chasing me.
Ended up having a big
blister on the end of it.
I don't what he was thinking.
It was just a naughty school kid in him.
"Right, I've got a pot here, he's...
"Right, I think I'll have to do that,
there's nothing else I can...
"Right, I'll do it."
And I don't...
I think he just lost himself.
It is one of the funniest
things I've ever seen.
Brilliant.
GARY: Manchester was absolutely brilliant.
We were young lads playing for United.
What couldn't we be happy about?
We were doing
everything that you wanted to do,
with the badge that you wanted to wear,
winning.
GIGGS: At the time
there was a lot of optimism.
You know, six lads from the youth team
have gone through
and are regulars now in the United team.
It was becoming a young person's world,
you know?
Music was changing. Politics was changing.
Football was changing.
You had a young band from Burnage,
Oasis, just ruling the world.
And it gave a lot of optimism.
You could feel it within the country.
PHIL: Life in England
was just going along nicely.
And then all of a sudden
there was this razzmatazz.
There was this surge, this tidal wave
of culture that suddenly dominated.
Suddenly, luck sparkled
in front of the world.
GARY: I got a Union Jack guitar,
and I sent it to him to sign,
and I really should have known better,
to be fair.
He sent it back with, "To Gary,
how many England caps do you deserve?
"I'll tell you, none.
Lots of love, Noel Gallagher."
And put "MCFC" all over it.
BOYLE: There was that feeling
in that few years preceding that,
the public spirit had disappeared.
This long period of individuality,
of selfishness,
there's no such thing as society.
That led inexorably to us wanting to
re-establish a sense of idealism.
Seventeen years of hurt
never stopped us dreaming.
Labour is coming home!
TONY BLAIR: I was constantly aware
of the fact that I was young, very young.
And I remember the very first day
I came into Downing Street,
going down to meet
the head of the Civil Service,
who was much more senior figure
from the British establishment,
and he looked at me and said,
"Well done. What now?"
You don't realise until you look back
how important a time that was,
and how fortunate you was
to be around the place in them days.
What those young players felt
was possible for them as players,
there was a curious kind of echo
in culture, in art and in politics.
I mean, when I look back now and think of
the changes we made to the House of Lords,
getting rid of the Hereditary Peers,
Scottish Devolution,
giving Scotland
its first parliament,
and then peace in Northern Ireland,
sometimes I think
what was great about the spirit
of that time was that
what, on rational analysis was impossible,
became imbued by a spirit of possibility
and was actually done.
There was a kind of hope
crept back into everything
and it was a great time of change,
and it's party time, you know.
It was good times.
The Stretford End gets knocked down
and all of a sudden you've got this
massive big new stadium at Old Trafford.
You've got stadiums going out
around the world, bigger and better.
Everything was getting bigger and better.
GARY: The game became
completely different.
The way in which it was viewed.
The way in which it was televised.
The money that came into the game.
The wages going up.
BLAIR: English soccer
became a major pan' of our identity.
Suddenly it went from something
that was politically kind of irrelevant
to something that was
politically important.
We were part, probably,
of a revolution, in a way.
I suppose if you had to pick a footballer
to epitomise that, more than any,
it would be David Beckham.
I grew up in East London.
Born in Leytonstone.
Lived in Leytonstone, right near
the dog track for about 10 years,
and then we moved to Chingford,
posh part of East London.
We stayed there up until I left for Manchester,
which was when I was 15 years old.
My dad was a huge Man United fan,
all he talked about was United.
His favourite player was Bobby Charlton.
My middle name is Robert Joseph.
"Robert" because of Bobby Charlton,
and "Joseph" because of my granddad.
My granddad was a Tottenham fan. He'd
been a season ticket holder for 50 years.
So at Christmas, my dad always used to buy
me a Man United kit, the new Man United kit.
And my granddad
always used to buy me the Tottenham kit.
What was it like when you signed?
How did you feel when you...
it was brilliant.
Straight from when we left here.
When we got there, it was just brilliant.
Signing the paper and that.
Just couldn't believe it was happening.
Becks turned up to United,
and he looked like a Man United mascot.
He had all the tracksuits, scarves, caps,
Bobby Charlton badges.
But he was just a fanatic Man United fan.
It was a weird experience
for us local lads to see
a cockney lad knowing more
about United than we did.
A bit embarrassing.
BECKHAM: Sir Alex Ferguson
would just call my mum and dad's house,
and my mum would answer
and it would be this strong Scottish accent
saying, "Mrs Beckham, it's Alex Ferguson,"
and my mum would be like...
To my dad, you know.
And my dad would be like, "No way".
So my dad would come on the phone
and he'd just have a chat,
say, "How's David doing?
How did he do last weekend?"
And most of the time my dad would say,
"He did all right, but he can do better".
Because that's what my dad did.
When he was 11, every game in London,
Dave would be at the bus
as we arrived, him and his parents.
In fact, we got him as a mascot
for the game at West Ham one day,
and he was over the moon.
So it was sealed.
He was never going anywhere.
And Brucey and Robbo
would just take the mick out of him.
"Flipping heck, he must be some player.
"What's he doing
in Man United's dressing room?"
I'd go in the changing room
and I'd help Norman
pick up the dirty pants, the dirty socks,
the dirty shorts from the...
I was loving it.
It was Man United, Man United players
just kind of dropping their underwear
on the floor,
and I was grabbing it,
putting it in the box.
(SPEAKING FRENCH)
MAN: And won't you miss home?
I probably will miss it a little bit,
but I'll be doing what I want to do, so...
What I've always admired about David
is his mental toughness is phenomenal.
I mean, people can say whatever they want
about him who don't know him,
but mental toughness, he's as tough
as anybody you'll ever, ever, ever meet.
The early years were tough, I must admit.
Being an East London boy
and moving up to Manchester.
Eric Harrison was so strict, and so scary.
And my dad was strict, you know.
If I didn't do something right, If I couldn't
do something and I was lazy one day,
my dad would be on me
like a ton of bricks.
And then I had Eric Harrison.
He turned round to me a few times in a game
and said, "Seriously stop doing..."
He didn't say "seriously",
he said something else,
but he said,
"Stop doing those Hollywood balls!"
I remember in the youth team,
he used to have Eric Harrison
banging on the door at him,
calling him all the names in the world
for playing stupid Hollywood passes,
and he kept doing it.
He'd bang at him and he'd get hammered
and he kept doing it and doing it,
and then he ended up being
one of the best long passers in the game.
You'd make a run and he would put it
on a sixpence for you,
just you wouldn't have to break stride.
I mean, his 10-yard passing
to his 60-yard passing
was just something I've never ever
seen before, never seen since.
So I knew that I could,
90% of the time, reach the target.
But when I didn't, I knew
that I was going to get shouted at by Eric.
We all got given car deals with Honda.
So we all had these Honda Preludes.
I'd waited for so many months for that car,
so many years.
You know, all the players had
had their car before me.
I was literally...
I think you had to play 21 games,
and I was on 18 or 19 for, like,
six or eight months, which was killing me.
Because I was so close.
I went down to Honda, ordered my car,
you know, came out with my Prelude.
I was so happy with it.
Becks had a black one.
He paid extra for leather seats.
I used my FA Cup bonus.
I used every penny that I had.
He paid extra for these special alloys.
And the dealer, he said to me,
he said, "You know that you have
to give this car back after a year?"
And I was saying, "Yeah,
yeah, it'll be fine."
We'd just use each other's cars.
Every day we would use Becks',
'cause he had these leather seats.
And he would go mad.
Because we'd got our football boots on,
so we're dirtying his car.
And he's, "Lads, lads,
don't scuff the leather, whatever you do."
I can't actually remember saying it.
But it sounds like something
that I would say.
As soon as he said that,
every day, we would stand outside his car,
"Are you ready, Becks?"
"We're ready to go over."
And he would have to drive over,
and we would just ruin his seats...
Just ruin, you know,
put our studs over the seats.
It got nicked in the end, the car.
But it looked great while I had it.
The goal he scored against Wimbledon, he
practised that in training every single day.
Every single day he'd do that.
Just booting balls from the halfway line.
I call it booting, he was striking them,
from the halfway line, towards the goal.
Striking the ball, he was incredible.
EGGS: I was injured that game.
One of my mates said,
"Becks just scored from the halfway line."
So I'm thinking, "Slight exaggeration.
"Probably scored like, maybe on the angle
from 40 yards or something like that."
I remember Eric Cantona just shaking
his head and I'm thinking,
"That's Eric Cantona, and he obviously
thinks the goal was pretty good."
The manager turned round to me and said,
"Lucky that went in."
'Cause I think I would
have been pulled off.
Even if he hadn't scored this goal,
it was good idea.
That was when I really all went like that
and the publicity went like that.
It must have been zoomed
all around the world, that goal.
The last person to do it
would have been Pele, I think.
And even he didn't score it.
And do you know something,
he wanted to be a star.
He wanted to have leather in his car
when we had cloth.
He wanted to have the best speakers
in his boot for the best music.
He wanted to propel
himself beyond football.
Fashion was important to him.
Music was important to him.
Doing things more than just becoming
a football player were important to him.
EGGS: I mean, Becks
was obviously a huge star
and just got bigger and bigger and bigger.
But in regards to, in the dressing room,
not a lot changed. Becks was Becks.
He had a lot going on.
You know, a lot of attention.
He'd scored the goal against Wimbledon,
he was now going out with Victoria.
They were a massive story, so everything
that they did, there was pressure on him.
You know, what he's achieved is incredible
in terms of his global appeal.
I mean, it's phenomenal.
To think that that's a football player,
who can kick a football well.
So I went to visit this obscure little
Japanese school in the middle of nowhere,
and I went in and was introduced
to the school assembly.
And I could see they hadn't
the faintest idea, frankly, who I was,
I'm not really sure they could have pointed
to where Britain was on the map.
And so finally, in desperation,
I uttered the words "David Beckham",
and then there was immediate ripple
of recognition, and then you were away.
A point of connection was established.
Becks had always been
comfortable with that.
Right from the start really,
where I wasn't as comfortable with it.
And I felt that it was
affecting my football.
Becks did it in a way
that it didn't affect his football.
And luckily for me, sort
of they left me alone,
and then Becks sort of
took it on to the next level.
GARY: I thought,
"How could he cope with this?"
And he always did. He always did.
And you were always worried as a friend,
that... when would this have an impact?
We played really well.
We were playing great.
And then I remember
being absolutely hit from behind.
I over-reacted,
just kind of swung my leg up
in a stupid way.
As soon as I'd done that,
I knew that I was off.
I knew that I'd made a huge mistake.
COMMENTATOR: Oh, it's red!
Oh, no!
At the time I didn't realise
what would come after that.
I never thought that I would have
to go through what I went through.
I remember being sat in the changing room,
no one was obviously in there.
All the players came in
and I realised that we were knocked out.
None of the players said a word to me.
The only people that spoke to me was Gary,
Scholesy, you know, the United players.
And then Tony Adams came up to me
and put his arm round me.
He said, "Do you know what, son?
Everyone makes mistakes. Forget it."
I remember walking out
and seeing my mum and dad stood there.
And I was 21, I think, at the time, 21, 22.
And I remember literally falling
into my dad's arms, just... And I...
I haven't sobbed like that
for years.
But I don't know,
my emotions just got the best of me.
Immediately I phoned him, the next day.
Because I knew the press were...
I mean, the press were ridiculous.
The boss called me and he said,
"Don't worry, son,
"it's over, you'll come back,
you're a Manchester United player,
"we'll look after you,
everyone's supporting you,
"don't even worry about anything.
"Go away, have a few weeks holiday,
get some rest,
"but when you come back
to Manchester United,
"you know you've got the support
of everyone."
David was the first England player
to receive that level of abuse
for a mistake that someone had made
on a football field.
It was sickening, it was vile,
it was bordering on criminal,
some of the things
that he had to put up with.
I had quite a few death threats.
I had bullets through the post...
Delivered, no address on them,
just hand-delivered through my letterbox.
It happened to my brother in 2000,
two years later.
My brother gives away the penalty
against Romania...
I got absolutely abused.
Abused publicly, abused in the media.
And I found it really difficult.
My wife came home from work one day,
the gates were on fire
with an England flag on the gates.
You take your wife out for a romantic meal,
and you go to the toilet before the meal,
and you get threatened
to have your lights punched out,
and then you go out
and you have to take your wife home.
I had journalists turning round to
my granddad, turning round and saying,
"Do you realise
what your grandson has done?"
You know, for me
to have heard that,
that made me feel worse than anything else.
PHIL: To be honest with you, what I
suffered was 10% of what he went through.
It affected me so much,
it knocked my confidence,
I needed to get some kind of
happiness for football back in my life.
So I started to pray before matches.
I prayed that I'd make
my wife, my children,
my mum and my dad, my sister, my brother
proud of what they were seeing
from me out on the pitch,
and that's all I did.
I said the same prayer every week
for the rest of my career.
And he had the same attitude with Beckham,
when he was sent off with England,
with me when I was...
sent off in Crystal Palace,
and the club had the same attitude.
I played for France this time.
Manchester United asked me
to sign a contract.
And I was banned for nine months.
In France, completely opposite attitude.
You have to build, you know,
circle the wagons.
When someone's getting it,
everyone protects them.
That's a family.
That's what you call a family.
You do the same for your sons,
your daughters, whatever...
That's exactly what we did
at Manchester United.
When things happen outside the club,
it's like everything just closes.
You know, nothing gets
in, nothing gets out.
The manager protects you.
REPORTER: When will you allow Mr Beckham
to talk about the incident
during the World Cup?
Well, he doesn't need to talk about
anything. He's a Manchester United player.
He can talk about Manchester United.
In French we say "merveilleux malheur".
Sometimes it happens,
something bad to you, but you use it.
And the way you will take,
it will be even better
than the way you will have taken
if it didn't happen.
(SCATTING)
Oh, the new kit's out.
Sad day.
Not a sad day.
Is that the new kit? Oh, Scholesy.
First time you've not been in here
for how long?
20 years.
Giggs is still there, though.
Ashley Young's.
Should I sit where I used to sit?
Are you sat in your seats?
- Yeah.
- Sat in my seat, yeah.
They're sat in their seats,
they've done me over.
You're sat next to the keeper,
aren't you, Gaz?
Here.
BOBBY CHARLTON: What's going to happen
over the next two weeks,
if we're successful,
could be the most momentous 10 days,
you know, in the club's history.
Maybe in any English team's
history as well, you know,
because the Champions League,
the FA Cup, the Championship.
It's there for us.
Yeah, with the Tottenham game
it was the first game of three cup finals,
that's how we...
It's 10 days, three games.
You win them, history. It's...
You know, sounds simple,
but that's what it was really.
The fact that we had to beat Tottenham
kind of meant more to me
than probably most of the other lads.
COMMENTATOR: The league title,
their starter for three, is within reach.
Manchester United have put themselves
within touching distance,
can Tottenham Hotspur, of all people,
open the door for Arsenal?
SCHOLES: Up to half time I could have
scored three, four, five goals,
I had that many chances
and, you know, blew it.
GIGGS: Of course, United being United,
you have to do it the hard way.
Go 1-nil down.
You know, that's not in the script,
you know, what's going on?
I had a great chance with my head
and skied it.
And all of a sudden you kind of think,
"it's not going to be our day,
"we're going to blow it
on the last game of the season."
And then you just look for heroes.
Tottenham seemed to bring out
the best in Becks.
He used to always score great goals.
Whatever stadium you are in the world,
when the ball comes to him,
you know because he's practised so hard
throughout his career,
he's going to produce that same technique,
same quality.
COMMENTATOR: Giggs to Scholes.
Scholes to Beckham.
It's in! It's 1-1!
It's David Beckham!
It was a great goal, great technique,
everything what David was about, really.
Becks doesn't get the credit
for some of the goals he scored.
He got robbed in the FA Cup semi-final,
because I scored the goal,
everyone forgets about his goal,
his 25-yard bending it past David Seaman.
The Tottenham goal was just...
(BLOWING RASPBERRY)
Only Becks can score it.
It's like a whip-ping,
it's just a ridiculous goal.
- Then you scored.
- Yeah.
Just before half time.
And then it just sort of lifted everything.
- I missed a load of chances as well.
- We had so many chances, didn't we?
- I had about four or five chances.
- Did you?
Great chances, yeah.
I got a bit of a roasting at half time,
I remember, for that game.
"How many chances
do you want to score here?"
Nothing was going right for us.
Scholesy obviously had a few chances.
It'd never happened before,
that we'd actually won it here,
at Old Trafford.
Did you set the goal up, Gaz?
Yeah. A left-foot hoik.
It was a wonderful hoik.
It was a cultured pass
into his path, I thought.
My left-foot hoik down the channel
to Coley, that he scored from.
Yeah, it was a big long ball, wasn't it?
A fluke.
If Scholes or Beckham had done that pass,
honestly, it would have been
talked about forever more.
SCHOLES: You leave a big divot, though.
SCHOLES: A big nine-iron.
And the fact I hadn't looked
before I played it.
It was a wonderful pass. it was Platini.
It was just a hoof down the channel,
and Coley just dinked it over.
And then it's 2-1, and you're thinking,
"Right, we're at it."
But then we were hanging on
towards the end because we just...
We still needed to win.
And I remember being in the centre circle
when the whistle went, I fell to my knees
and kind of held my hands in the air,
and I turned around
and Butty, literally, comes along, lifts...
Grabs me by the shirt, lifts me up,
and we celebrate.
Those are the special moments
that I know my granddad
would have been kind of swearing at me,
but then also kind of really happy at the
fact that I was going to win a league.
And I think he'd have been
even more happier,
just because it'd have either meant
us winning the league
or Arsenal winning the league.
And as a Tottenham fan,
he was happy that Man United
was winning the league.
I mean, with Becks scoring that goal,
it was the full turn-around really
from the start of the season,
all the World Cup carry-on,
the backlash from that,
to having a brilliant season
and finishing it with such an
important goal in the league decider.
And, you know, one ticked off the list,
two to go.
I grew up on a place called Langley
in Middleton,
it's just a council estate
really, a rough area.
I didn't think it was a rough area.
People from outside probably do,
but it wasn't the nicest of places,
I don't suppose,
but it's where I grew up and I...
I enjoyed it.
We had like a square
at the end of our street, and a big fence,
I would just boot a ball
against that all day and...
Then the neighbours tried to ban me.
Tried to stop me playing and...
I think there was always arguments
with my dad and the next-door neighbour
about stopping me from playing.
Then you get the "No ball games" sign,
don%you?
You're not allowed to play any more,
you have to go off,
try and play football wherever you can.
He's hard to explain, Scholesy,
because there's probably
three or four different sides to him.
As a character he was always quiet,
but, you know, with this dry
sense of humour, and one-liners.
Finished training, straight off home.
You know, we would joke,
"Where's Scholesy gone?"
Didn't even see him leave.
Goes back in his Bat Cave, in his room,
his packet of Wine Gums, his Minstrels,
his M&Ms, whatever he has,
watches his telly.
And the next time you'd see him
is if you go round to his room,
and you'd go in his room, and it was funny
because whatever time of day
you'd go into Paul Scholes' room,
it'd be pitch black.
The curtains would be closed.
He'd be in bed, with his shorts on,
pitch black with the telly on.
(SPEAKING FRENCH)
But I suppose for me, Scholesy,
I love that. It's just very romantic,
that idea of a guy who doesn't really care
about all this, not so much.
Not really bothered about all that, really.
Just wants to play the game,
get on with it and live a normal life.
I think a lot of us
relate to that, you know.
People ask me to do interviews
and I don't have to do them,
to me it's just not necessary.
All I wanted to do was play football
and I never realised
that all that side came with it, really.
He hasn't changed as a person,
he hasn't changed as a player.
He's just one of these naturally gifted
players that just gets on with the job,
but he's so talented.
He was a frightening football player.
Frightening football player.
In terms of his awareness,
intelligence, speed of thought.
It was evident how good he was,
his vision was second to none,
he knew before anybody
what he was going to do with the ball.
If you had Paul Scholes
on your side in training, you were winning.
You know, his tackles are,
you know, really, really bad.
Never gets the ball.
When I foul someone, it's normally because I
was probably just trying to get them back.
If they've done something to me...
He's a good tackler, he just likes fouling.
He just likes leaving a bit on 'em.
He's a good tackler, Scholesy,
but he gets away with it because he's...
Obviously he's made this thing
that he can't tackle.
But if he wanted to tackle, he could tackle,
but he likes to wait back a couple of yards
to show people what he's about.
He was playing for Boundary
when he was 13, 14, 15, he was only small.
And I think he must have had that
deep down in his head, that,
"Just because I'm small I'm not going
to let you kick me or boss me about.
"I'll leave one or two on you just to
show you that I can compete with it."
And he's never really lost that,
and he's kept that going all his life.
There is nothing more beautiful
than seeing him arrive in that hole,
everybody is faffing about
in the penalty area,
there's a big hole outside
the penalty area,
outside the penalty box,
and there he is arriving.
COMMENTATOR: Back for Scholes. Oh!
That's one of the kind of great moments
in life, I think,
seeing Paul Scholes arise for a screamer.
The best way that I found it
was to try and keep things as simple as...
as they possibly could be.
I think the minute you start trying to do
things you can't...
you're not good at, like,
say if I went started trying dribbling, trying
to beat people, it'd be a waste of time.
I mean, if you know Scholesy,
you just don't turn your back on him.
You know, you go out and train,
we'd be on a field
and if you needed a piss or something,
you'd go over in the bushes.
But you'd never turn your back.
I mean, you learnt that as a young player,
you never turn your back, so you'd be...
You know, you'd be...
I always try and hit someone
on the back of the head.
Not intentionally...
Well, a little bit intentionally,
just aim for them
if they weren't quite watching.
GIGGS: You'd go over and Scholesy
would just be peppering balls at them.
And now and again he'd obviously hit you.
More often than not, actually.
So, if you were new,
or if you were a foreign player,
and you didn't know Scholesy,
you soon got to know,
if you're going to have a piss,
then don't turn your back.
One day I did catch Phil Neville
with a beauty, actually.
It was about 60 yards away,
right on the other side of the pitch,
and I think he was doing
a bit of extra running after training.
A few of the lads were sat down.
I've smacked a ball
and it's just hit him full on the head
and he's gone down eating grass
and everything.
We're just on the floor pissing ourselves,
and he didn't have a clue
which one of us it was.
It was one of them perfect moments.
But like I say, I just saw that
as a bit of passing practice, really.
The FA Cup final to me,
and probably to you lot as well,
growing up as a kid it's...
It's something you look forward to.
The twin towers at Wembley, the...
Just the full day, I think,
getting up from 9:00 in the morning,
whoever is playing in it,
it was just the biggest day
of the football year for me.
It was the biggest thing in my eyes
as a kid, was the FA Cup final,
and trying to think about being able
to be involved in one, or a couple of them,
was just something
you'd laugh about as a kid.
If you told your teacher
you were going to do that,
he'd probably piss himself laughing at you.
Growing up, like I say, the FA Cup,
it was huge.
The game, the build-up,
and also what we got to experience
was FA Cup songs as well.
So here we go, here we go...
When you're singing with one United voice
You're letting us know
We have no choice
But to carry on
Our winning ways
I hope you haven't got...
You've probably got footage
of the songs as well, haven't you?
They're just so bad it's shocking,
aren't they?
Just something
so much out of my comfort zone,
it's untrue. I just...
You know, I remember some rapper
or something,
I can't even remember his name,
coming to the dressing room,
and we're all up dancing,
or trying to dance on the side of the...
On the benches where you get changed.
It's just so embarrassing.
We are champions
Say we are champions
And we did the video in the dressing room,
and we're all sort of...
You know, it's sort of a hip-hop feel,
and I don't think Scholesy enjoyed that,
with a baseball cap on the side,
giving it all that in the dressing room.
But it was... Yeah, it was cringe-worthy.
It was stupid, and the camera panning on us
and we're all in our training kit,
dancing round like idiots.
And there was another one...
But they were
a big part of the FA Cup final.
Was it the John Barnes
one with Liverpool...
That rap one. It was good, wasn't it?
It was good to watch and...
But to be involved in? No, it was horrible.
COMMENTATOR: The FA Cup final is the
time-honoured finale to the domestic season.
But if Manchester United can complete
the English double here today,
a European treble, a unique treble,
falls within their compass...
GARY: So the FA Cup final comes on
the Saturday, and we just want peace.
We were playing against Newcastle,
and you just want a comfortable game.
You never get that in an FA Cup final,
it's always nervy, it's always tense.
But we got a comfortable game.
We played really well in the first half.
We lost Keaney after about 20 minutes,
which was a blow.
Then Teddy came on.
Even in adversity,
things that went wrong for us
ended up being a positive,
because the lad that came on scored.
COMMENTATOR: Scholes...
That's perfect for Sheringham!
The substitute scores instantly!
And Paul Scholes, who won't
have any part to play in Barcelona sadly,
played a big part in that goal!
And Scholesy manages to do
what he normally does,
scores big goals on big occasions.
Not just to play in one,
but to score in an FA Cup final was...
To me, it's the best thing I've done.
COMMENTATOR: Sheringham... Scholes!
It's two.
GIGGS: I think, again, like Scholesy,
it sort of goes under the radar, that goal.
PHIL: Pan' of me thinks that he was happy
that it was sandwiched in between
two of the biggest games.
He scored the winning goal.
Normally, if you score
the winning goal in the cup final,
your face is on the front page
of the newspapers
and you're shown all summer.
And it just got lost in the euphoria
of the previous seven days
and the next three days.
And it sums up Scholesy's character
in a way, because he wasn't bothered,
and this was a lad that just scored
the winning goal, FA Cup final. Go home.
Play with his kids. Have a beer.
End of story.
One thing that the times did represent,
and in a way those individuals represented,
was an understanding that although
we lived in more individualistic times,
yet there was still a unique capacity
to be greater together than you were alone.
I think in our eyes we were just playing
a game of football with our mates.
I know it sounds a bit...
Sounds a bit stupid when you think,
"God, you're playing for Man United,"
but we were lucky enough
to play well together,
and at the same time are playing
for the biggest club in the world.
We bounced off each other.
We were all pals, we all went out,
socialised together.
We'd even go out
with our girlfriends in groups.
We was just
six young lads who were enjoying life
like you couldn't believe, really.
It was just one of them...
It was like a dream.
BECKHAM: No matter where we were from,
no matter how we were brought up,
no matter what we'd been through,
through our B-Team, A-Team,
reserve-team years,
we all had each other's back.
When you talk about brothers,
me and my brother,
it wasn't just that,
everyone was like a brother.
You know, whether you'd grown up
through the ranks,
or it was a teammate
that had been bought in,
you really looked after one.
If someone got hurt, we always tried
to make sure we got the person back,
and it was usually Nicky that did.
Yeah, growing up in Gorton
was just a joy, really.
I was always with all my mates,
it was a real working-class place.
You know, everyone looked after each other.
No matter where you went,
the doors were always open.
Butty's from Gorton, and I think
it's where they filmed Shameless,
so it gives you a bit
of an idea of the area.
But obviously Butty is proud
of where he comes from.
I think one of his first cars was an Orion.
I remember getting in it once,
and I looked down,
and there's a chain about that thick.
"Butty, what is that?"
He went, "No, no, where I live,
you've got to have one of these."
And he used to wrap it round the gearstick,
wrap it round the steering wheel,
and it was the thickest chain...
I'm surprised that the car could even move.
It was like an anchor,
and it was just purely for security.
SCHOLES: He was a tough lad,
he was streetwise.
If there was ever any trouble, then you knew
you could just look to your right or left
and Nicky would be there to sort it out.
I think he looked after Gary
a few times as well, actually.
Down tunnels, it's always nice to have
a couple of lads alongside you, isn't it?
He wasn't the biggest, Butty.
But he had good technique of how
to get into people, you know what I mean?
You know, people know how to hit people.
Butty is Butty.
I mean, he's a fantastic soldier.
He's a typical Gorton scallywag.
I always thought Butty would be the first
to make the first team.
When he came to us, I always thought that.
He was more mature than the rest. I think
he'd lived a life before he came to us.
Nicky, at youth level,
was the best player in the team.
He had an unbelievable temperament,
he could play on any stage,
at any level, and not be phased.
BUTT: We started thinking
this is going to be magical,
probably after the FA Cup,
'cause all the hype was about the treble,
but we never really mentioned it.
Everyone must have
thought about it deep down,
but it never got...
it never come out vocally.
We had a big problem,
because Keane and Scholes were banned
for the final of the European Cup.
COMMENTATOR: Scholes tackle.
Well, he won the ball.
But the ref... Oh, it's a yellow card! And
he'll miss the final if United get there.
I knew from that point
I wasn't going to be available
for the Champions League final,
and that was that.
Nothing I could do about it.
Do you know what I mean?
Obviously you're disappointed at the time,
a little bit disappointed
in the dressing room,
but the most important thing
was that we'd got there.
I think the biggest disappointment
was Roy missing it,
'cause he had been so
good in that semi-final
that it was going to be major problem
for us really, not having Roy.
(SPEAKING FRENCH)
PHIL: We needed someone...
We needed someone that was willing
to take the fight to Bayern Munich,
and in Nicky Butt we had the
perfect person. He's fearless.
You know, you go to war,
you take Nicky Butt with you.
You know, the manager told him,
"Forget the FA Cup final. Forget it.
"You're playing in the Champions League
final. You know, I can't risk it."
BUTT: I was distraught, I was thinking...
I was devastated.
I was thinking, I was just saying to
the manager, "Well, it's the FA Cup."
But I knew, ultimately, the end,
the reward at the end was massive
for myself. And the club.
GIGGS: He's the, you know, the only
real proper centre midfielder in the team.
So there was a big of pressure on him as
well, and it was against a very good team.
FERGUSON: They're showing
their character now.
The team spirit has been fantastic
since beating Liverpool in the cup tie.
Sort of a focus on the essential
of never giving in,
and team spirit, and determination.
I was completely on my arse,
and I had to sell my Lambretta.
My most prized possession
is my Lambretta scooter,
and I sold it on the Monday,
the game was on the Wednesday.
And then booked us
on a week's holiday to Salou,
and then get 400 quid each for a ticket.
I was like, the crowd we were in...
It was any means necessary, you know.
PHIL: The Nou Camp is one
of the iconic venues.
It wasn't plush, it was pretty old, really.
You go down the tunnel,
it was bare concrete walls.
On the right-hand side
there's a little room,
it's like a little chapel
where you go in and pray.
Before you're going out to get killed,
you've got to go in
and say a prayer first type thing,
and then you come
to the bottom of the tunnel,
and at the Nou Camp the steps go up.
And as you're coming up the steps,
all you can see is the stadium above you.
COMMENTATOR: Manchester United were the first
English club to lift the European Cup,
but no Manchester United team,
no English team, has ever won this treble.
History beckons tonight.
The amount of Man United fans
that were there was phenomenal
compared to Munich.
We took up three-quarters of the ground.
You knew you were in a massive game then,
and then you just look for your family,
give them a little wave
and then it's just game on then.
This is it for us.
This is the moment where we either become
Manchester United legends,
or we just win the league and the FA Cup.
GIGGS: The game didn't go great,
obviously, with the start.
And they were such a powerful team,
such an experienced team,
that you thought, back of your mind,
"Is it one too many
to come back in this game?
"We'd done it so much,
have we run out of luck?
"Have we run out of something,
"um, at the crucial point?"
COMMENTATOR: And Manchester United,
as they've done
time and time again on this European run,
have made it hard for themselves.
At half-time, I remember
the manager sitting down with us,
and I could tell, you know, there was a few
nerves throughout the team and players.
He told us, "Just think how you would feel
"if you had to walk past
that Champions League trophy
"and you couldn't touch it,
you couldn't pick it up.
"You know, you hadn't won it.
"So, if you're feeling tired,
or if you feel like you can't run any more,
"just think Of that."
"Just think of having to walk past it
and you can't pick it up,
"you can't touch it, you can't kiss it."
GARY: The only doubts that I ever had
were probably in the last half an hour
of the Champions League final.
Because Bayern Munich
were still getting chances.
They were hitting the bar,
they were hitting the post.
And we weren't playing well.
Things weren't happening for us.
We weren't getting our crosses in.
I wasn't overlapping.
Giggsy wasn't getting his dribbles in.
We didn't have the combinations
between Yorke and Cole.
Things that we'd done all year...
The moment...
There was no momentum in the game.
And all of a sudden,
with about 15 minutes to go,
Becks came out to the right-hand side.
We made a couple of changes.
Teddy came on. Ole came on.
And all of a sudden I
thought, "Here we go."
It was disaster for the club,
Roy Keane missing it.
Disaster for Roy Keane.
But maybe that was God's way of saying
this is Nicky Butt's moment.
If people ever sort of doubted,
how good a player Butty was,
then that shows everything
about the player,
because he was just a rock that night.
MANI: He was immense. I was there.
What a guy.
Gorton, there you go.
He's from Manchester.
He knows what it meant.
You know what I mean?
But if it goes back
to fundamentally what it was about,
it was about us keeping driving forward,
keep attacking.
We got corner after corner
after corner and...
And with people like Becks on the pitch
to put balls in like that,
and the attacking power we had,
and the aerial power we had,
you know, it should only
be a matter of time.
GARY: Manchester United teams under
Sir Alex Ferguson always went to the end.
Always. Because we always felt,
"Get one goal, we'll always get another.
"We'll always get a chance."
Three minutes to go,
"Don't panic, we always get a chance."
COMMENTATOR: Three added minutes.
David Beckham.
Now Gary Neville.
Cross deflected.
Effenberg. Out for a corner.
Can Manchester United score?
They always score.
And I remember sprinting
over to the corner,
and I had a good feeling
because I knew that
I'd been kind of playing
pretty well in the game.
And I remember putting the ball down,
and it's really tight in the corners.
I could hear the United fans.
But I was just concentrating more
on watching Peter Schmeichel
run up from his goal,
and knowing that, as a kid,
if I put a bad cross in
while we're warming the goalkeepers up,
Pete would absolutely kill us.
I think those moments,
when I was a youth-team player,
prepared me for moments like this.
COMMENTATOR: Schmeichel is forward.
Can he score another in Europe?
- He's got one in Europe already.
- COMMENTATOR 2: Beckham.
In towards Schmeichel.
It's come for Dwight Yorke.
Cleared. Giggs with a shot!
Sheringham!
BECKHAM: So then we were back in the game.
Everyone was celebrating.
Everyone was like, you know,
we've got it to extra time.
I looked at the players that I'd grown
up with on the pitch at that time,
and I knew that they knew
that it wasn't over.
I'm thinking, shit, we've got extra time
now, I better get my legs going again.
So I've sprinted right back,
for, like, about 50 yards,
trying to get some blood
going through my legs.
As soon as we equalised,
my mindset just switched.
"Get this to extra time,
we're going to beat them."
That was my mindset straight away.
"We're going to beat them in extra time."
And the next minute and a half,
I couldn't even tell you what happened.
That's an out-of-body experience, that.
BECKHAM: We won the ball back again.
We broke forward.
We got another corner.
I'm getting goosebumps just...
I can feel it.
I remember the feeling
of getting that ball in the corner,
knowing that I'm going
to put a good corner in again.
And then everything just literally erupted.
COMMENTATOR 2: In to Sheringham...
And Solskjaer has got it!
(CHEERING WILDLY)
This was what was meant to happen.
PHIL: There's no greater feeling than
scoring in the last minute to win a game.
You know, I've had kids.
I've had kids and I've got married,
but it's the greatest feeling
in the whole wide world.
BUTT: I don't remember the final whistle,
to be honest with you.
It was like the game was over then.
COMMENTATOR 2: History is made.
GIGGS: As soon as the final whistle went,
it was relief, it was excitement,
it was joy, it was everything.
And I just went to my knees
and just started sobbing.
GARY: I just remember lying on the floor,
looking up, thinking,
almost nearly crying on the pitch,
thinking, "Oh, my God.
"What has just happened here?"
I went up to Gary, the lights were on,
nobody was in.
His eyes were glazed.
His eyeballs were rolling.
I looked up and the first person
coming towards me was the gaffer.
And just got up and just hugged him.
GARY: But that night you felt you were
hugging and you just never wanted to let go.
The best feeling I've ever had
on a football pitch. The best...
Best I've ever felt.
It's the greatest day of my life,
and it's hard for me to comprehend it.
COMMENTATOR: Gary Neville, 24.
Phil Neville, 22.
David Beckham, 24.
Nicky Butt, 24. Giggs, 25.
Whatever they achieve in their futures,
I doubt that they will ever, ever cap this.
Manchester United
are Champions of Europe again.
I remember feeling Scholesy
should have been out there with us.
The image that I like most is when we all
make a tunnel for Scholesy and Keaney
and they come through
and carry the European Cup,
because they were absolutely critical
to everything that we achieved that season.
SCHOLES: I'd rather have just gone
in the dressing room
and waited for everyone, really,
and congratulated people that way,
but, you know, I suppose the players
made a big deal out of it,
and me and Roy embarrassingly
were on the pitch.
I'll never ever forget that.
After all them years of waiting
and then to see it,
your team win the Champions League
in your lifetime, in such amazing fashion.
In fact, I missed the winning goal,
I was crying like a baby.
Once that first goal went in.
I missed the winning goal.
I was just slumped on my seat.
I was just out of it emotionally,
gone, you know?
I've always been...
Never got carried away,
never ever got carried away.
I nearly got carried away that night,
you know, but...
So excited, but it made me immensely proud.
BOYLE: The romance of the last-minute
never-say-die moment, of them winning
I suppose was very special.
That continuity between
the Busby Babes being lost as a team,
you know, that potential, that wonder,
that was so tragically interrupted,
and then being renewed
by that manager again,
ten years later to win the European Cup,
and then 30 years later,
to have to wait 30 years
just to see them do it again, was...
Yeah, it was very, very
special, I think, really.
GARY: You were massively aware that night
of what you were representing
in the history of the club,
because that's where the club,
and all its tradition,
all its history that it's got, comes back
and just comes all into one moment.
And that night seemed to be
just one of those moments.
I think winning the European Cup
is massive for anybody,
but when you've won it with lads
that you've grew up with all your life,
and we've got good pictures now
of the six of us
with the European Cup, and it's, like,
some of us knew each other from 12.
I never look back. I don't like to look
back, I always like to look forward.
But if you said to me,
"Could you live 10 days again?",
it would be those 10 days.
It's unbelievable.
It's perfect script.
(CHUCKLES)
Yeah.
It's romantic.
Only sports can give you
this kind of emotion.
They won the cup in Barcelona
simply because of their character.
Many people say we were lucky.
You could say that,
but I don't think they were.
What I thought was their character won it.
We had a great bunch of boys
who were getting better every game,
and they did it together.
That was the important thing.
They did it together.
But the one thing, when you look back,
in 100 years, the treble of '99 will be...
That will never be forgotten, that.
I think there are special moments in time
when a whole series of things come together,
when you had those young people from,
you know, very ordinary backgrounds,
who suddenly symbolised,
represented something new
and had that extraordinary
ability to achieve.
And to achieve in a way
that people hadn't done before.
You always hope and think
that things will happen again.
But will there ever be
a time where six lads
who grew up from the age of 12, 13,
come through and win a treble,
having supported the club? I'm not sure.
I'm not sure it can happen again.
I'm not sure football,
the way in which it's going to go,
I'm not sure football, in the way,
in the immediacy of life now,
where everything's got to be instant,
I don't think you'll ever see six, seven players
coming through in British football again.
Well, you probably dream about playing
for Man United, don't you, but...
The reality for most people,
it's not going to happen.
And we were just the lucky ones
that it did happen to.
We managed to all play with each other
right through the youth team,
straight through to the first team. It
doesn't really happen at that many places,
and will anything like that happen again?
I'm not too sure.
Until recently, where I sat back and looked
at old videos, looked at old pictures,
and really kind of thought
about what it was like
with these players that I'd grown up with,
to win what we'd won,
to turn round and see,
you know, Gary behind me...
We'd grown up in those positions.
You know, to look to the side
and see Scholesy and Butty and Giggsy.
You know, to look back to see Phil.
You know, this was...
This was more special
than anything I've been involved in
through my whole life and my whole career.