Red: My Autobiography Read online

  But there was a buzz about the place, about our team, and in the Youth Cup we were on a roll. United had not won the competition since 1964 and, under the manager with his insatiable demands, these things mattered.

  We’d play games at the Cliff and there would be more than a thousand people watching us on a Saturday morning. The crowd would include first-team players, which made us feel ten feet tall. We were building the confidence that we could do anything, beat anyone.

  My own self-belief was growing. I’d never seen myself as a centre-half but that’s where I ended up in my first year as an apprentice. It was obvious I wasn’t going to make it in midfield with the competition. Eric pushed me back, but with a word of warning: ‘If you’re going to be a defender, you’d better start tackling.’ It’s funny to admit, but I didn’t like putting a foot in then. Laugh if you like, but I regarded myself as a passer.

  My first big test at centre-back came in a Youth Cup match against Sunderland. I’d never been as nervous, but we won, and I felt assured. For the first time I felt that I belonged in that company.

  Everyone knew we had one prodigy in our ranks: Giggsy. He was such a sensation that he was playing regularly in the first team even as he joined us in those Youth Cup matches. Giggsy’s impact for a seventeen-year-old was incredible. He had this unbelievable balance, the ability to make swaying runs at top speed that would leave a defender on his arse. Quite often that would be me on the training pitch. I spent years having to face him down in practice and there probably wasn’t a day when he didn’t nutmeg me, and then I’d clobber him back. He must have called me a ‘clumsy bastard’ a million times after I’d taken him down rather than let him skip past.

  Showing the versatility that would help turn Giggsy into a United legend, playing over two decades, he mostly played as centre-forward in the youth team. That was the one position we were short in; there was no truly prolific striker. Sav and Colin McKee were never true goalscorers. Striker has always been the hardest position to prove yourself in at a big club like United. Up front and goalkeeper are the two specialist positions where we’ve always ended up buying players more than bringing through our own. Still, Giggsy wasn’t a bad stand-in.

  Reaching the final of the Youth Cup in 1992 was a very big deal, and it showed how good we were – and how competitive – that Scholesy wasn’t even on the bench as he worked to improve his strength and stamina. A 3–1 win over Crystal Palace in the first leg in London set us up nicely for the return.

  In front of 14,681, a team that read Pilkington – Switzer, Neville, Casper, O’Kane – Thornley, Beckham, Butt, Davies – Giggs, McKee (with Savage and Gillespie on the bench) beat Palace 3–2 to make it 6–3 on aggregate. It was Giggsy who lifted the first major silverware of our young lives.

  Let no one be in any doubt about how important that moment was. A group of talented sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds had tasted success. And God did we like it.

  After all the championships, and even the Champions League, that Youth Cup is still one of my proudest achievements. Not just because we won it, which gave us all a great rush of joy and self-belief, but because it was such a fantastic team to be part of. There was a real togetherness because we were great pals.

  It’s inevitable that Giggsy, Becks, Butty, Scholesy and me and Phil are the focus, but to concentrate on the six of us actually undersells the phenomenal success of that squad.

  Take Sav. He should count as a success for the United youth system, even if he was eventually released. The fact is, he didn’t have the most natural ability among us, and he was never going to be a United centre-forward, but given his limitations he made for himself a brilliant career out of football. When he left Old Trafford for Crewe Alexandra as a teenager, he could easily have disappeared out of the game. But he battled back and ended up spending many seasons in the Premiership. And I bet his years at United underpinned that career. He had learnt to extract every ounce of ability from himself – a quality driven into us by Kiddo and Eric.

  I only have to look at him on telly and I laugh. And I can see why a lot of other people might think he’s a pain in the backside. But he’s not to be underestimated. I have huge respect for his career.

  Keith also went on to have a fine career, playing Champions League with Newcastle United. Casp was a classy centre-half until he suffered a terrible injury, and then became one of the youngest managers in the league at Bury. He’s currently working for the Premier League in the youth department and passing on all those valuable lessons he learnt at United. Ben would have been a top-class winger had he not also been struck down by injury. Kevin Pilkington has hundreds of league appearances to his name.

  It’s only John O’Kane whose career you can trace and say he should have done better. John was a good lad, a right-back with far more gifts than me. Six foot, great on the ball, quick, and he could use both feet. But he was the one member of the group who couldn’t get his head round our basic ethos: if the coach said run five miles, we’d run six.

  In a game against Rotor Volgograd in the Uefa Cup in September 1995, Phil was picked at left-back, John on the right. But John came in after his warm-up, turned to the manager and asked to play on the left instead. Here was a young right-footed defender asking the manager of Manchester United fifteen minutes before a European tie at Old Trafford if he could swap positions. The boss did it, but he took John off after twenty-seven minutes and he never started for United again.

  I don’t want to pick on John, but he didn’t come close to fulfilling his potential at his subsequent clubs Everton and Bury. He ended up at Hyde United.

  It was unheard of for a whole youth squad to be invited to turn professional, but all of us were given that chance. Only George Switzer and Sav would never play a game in the United first team. Eleven out of thirteen making it into the first XI, however briefly, isn’t bad. It’s sensational.

  To have a group which combined our love of the game, our ability and our dedication to practice – well, any club would kill for it. There was no one like us. We were fitter and stronger, better prepared, and possessed more ability as a group than all of our rivals. We weren’t in it for the money, we were in it to become United players.

  It shows how rare a group we were that United, despite all the resources it pours into the youth system, has not had a crop like us since. There are dozens of Premiership players who have been through the United academy, like Ryan Shawcross, Phil Bardsley, Kieran Richardson and Chris Eagles, who are all proof that the club still produces very good players. No club in England works harder to bring through its own. But to make it at United in this era is to be among the very best.

  We were a rare generation, so much so that I honestly wouldn’t speculate when there will be another group like it. Fergie’s Fledglings – to be honest, it’s not the greatest title in the world, but it makes me shiver to think that I was part of a team that will go down in history.

  The First Time

  WE STILL HAD plenty to learn, and who better to learn it from than one of the most ferociously competitive teams in the history of English football?

  The boss has gone on record many times to say that his favourite United team, if not his best, was the 1992–94 vintage, and I can understand why. They played the game the same way they behaved off the pitch, with power and presence. They reflected the manager’s character. This was a team that could win the championship not just through ability but sheer force of personality.

  Schmeichel, Bruce, Ince, Robson, Hughes, Cantona – they weren’t just great players but fierce competitors and real men. Perhaps it took those qualities to shoulder the responsibility of finally bringing the title to Old Trafford after twenty-six years.

  That long wait had been an embarrassment for a club of United’s stature but a new era, finally, was dawning. And as history was being made at Old Trafford, young players like me had front-row seats.

  As apprentices, we would travel with the first team helping Norman, the kit man, with
the laundry skips. We would watch close-up as this squad of huge characters stormed their way to the title. We witnessed their fire and passion – which led to some explosive clashes in the dressing room.

  We went to Anfield one day and it all kicked off in the dressing room between the boss and Peter. It was the first time I’d truly seen what people call ‘the hairdryer’, though the players never referred to it as that.

  ‘You’re slipping!’ the boss shouted at Schmeichel.

  ‘So are you,’ the big goalie replied, just in earshot.

  Everyone looked up, thinking, ‘Oh my God, here he comes’. And sure enough, the boss ripped Peter’s head off. I’d thought Eric Harrison had a temper, but this was something else. I think Peter was fined for that bit of backchat, but the worst of it was the manager’s four-letter ear-bashing.

  Then there was the time in 1994 when we got thrashed by Barcelona at the Nou Camp, torn to shreds by Stoichkov and Romario, and at half-time the boss ripped into Incey. At one point Kiddo half stood up ready to intervene, thinking it was about to go off.

  I loved to see this competitive spirit come alive in the dressing room, though for us young lads it was intimidating to say the least. We’d had brilliant coaching from Eric and Nobby, we’d had a taste of success, and now we were witnessing what it took to be champions from seeing Schmeichel, Hughes, Ince and Robson with their ferocious determination. This was the final part of our education, the perfect schooling.

  I experienced first-hand the exacting standards one day in September 1992 when, totally out of the blue, Kiddo told me I was in the first-team squad for the visit of Torpedo Moscow.

  I could hardly believe it. I was still a raw apprentice, seventeen years old. None of our age group had been near the first team, not Butty, Becks or Scholesy. Never mind playing for the first team, we still had to knock on the door before we could even enter their dressing room. Mark Hughes, in particular, was a stickler for manners like that. I wouldn’t have dreamed of speaking to a player like Sparky unless he said something first so I was nervous as hell as Kiddo told me where and when to meet.

  I kept myself to myself as we were taken on a bus to the Midland Hotel in central Manchester for a pre-game nap. Even the hotel was an eye-opener for me. I hardly ventured into the city centre in those days and I’d never seen anywhere so posh.

  When we reached Old Trafford, the manager told me I was going to be among the substitutes. I assumed that I’d just be filling out the numbers for a European game, making sure we had enough on the bench, but with the clock running down Kiddo told me to get ready.

  Of the 19,998 fans in the ground, I expect only my dad noticed the kid running up and down the sidelines. Then, as the clock counted down on a drab goalless draw, the signal came for me to strip off. I was going to make my debut. I was going to be running out at Old Trafford to play alongside Hughes, Bruce and Brian McClair. The boy who’d sat in the K-Stand all those years was about to get his big chance, tucked in behind Andrei Kanchelskis.

  I shook out my nerves as Lee Martin trotted over to the bench. It wasn’t much of an appearance, or much of a game, but my dream had come true.

  It was a moment to cherish and remember – and I haven’t forgotten what happened afterwards, either. We won a throw-in down in the right-hand corner and taking it was the only touch I got in those three minutes. I lobbed it into the box – I’ve always had a decent throw on me – but like everything else that night the move came to nothing.

  Afterwards, as we stripped off in a subdued dressing room, the manager started laying into Gary Pallister.

  ‘Pally, have you ever watched the youth team? Have you not seen his long throw?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then why weren’t you in the box then!’

  He wasn’t happy we’d been held to a 0–0 draw at home – we’d go out on penalties in the second leg two weeks later – and Pally was getting it in the neck for a tiny detail. As I sat there thrilled, eager to see my dad and relive the experience, I’d witnessed yet another stark reminder that the boss wouldn’t let standards drop for a minute.

  You can never beat the first time. Of all my hundreds of appearances for United, that debut will always have a special place in my memory. We were brought up at Old Trafford always to strive for more, but I remember the night after that tie with Torpedo Moscow thinking, ‘If I die tomorrow, I die happy.’

  A dream really had come true, but I’d be lying if I said it was the blossoming of my career at United. My promotion was short-lived. It was straight back to the youth team, back to learning my trade. It would be months, many months, before I got another sniff of the first team.

  Rather than dreaming about running out at Old Trafford again, I had to knuckle down to the job of defending the Youth Cup and earning a professional contract. With such quality in our ranks we should have retained the trophy in 1992/93, our second year as apprentices. But we ended up losing the final to a Leeds United team with Noel Whelan, Jamie Forrester and Mark Tinkler but few others who made the grade.

  We were sitting in the dressing room at Elland Road gutted after defeat in front of thirty thousand fans. ‘I couldn’t have asked for more from you over two years, you’ve made me proud,’ Eric told us. It was a fond farewell as we headed off to the senior ranks. And we really couldn’t have worked harder for Eric. We’d given him everything.

  Then the door opened and the manager walked in. ‘You lot,’ he said, with one of those looks. ‘You can have all the ability in the world, but if you haven’t got the temperament, you won’t play for my team.’

  This was how it was at United under the boss – a constant test of your desire, your determination, your concentration. We were very self-motivated as a group, but as we moved up to the senior ranks, we saw competitiveness in a whole new dimension.

  Liverpool beat us in a reserve game one day. We hadn’t played that badly but the manager was apoplectic. We were hauled in, knackered, for training at 7.30 a.m. the next day and told to buck up our ideas, or else. The message was clear: any defeat was bad, but some were worse than others. No United team would be allowed to come second to Liverpool under any circumstances.

  Most of the time we trained with the reserves, though some days we’d be called in to work with the first team. It was a hard school. Some of the players would look out for you. Brucey generally had a kind word. Incey, despite his reputation for cockiness, would offer helpful advice. Schmeichel was a different animal. I had to give him crossing practice and if I hit even one bad ball he’d shout, ‘What’s he training with us for? He’s fucking shite.’

  It was tough, but we were starting to make the transition. We would play in A-team games or for the reserves alongside some of the first-teamers who were coming back from injury, and through doing that we started to feel more comfortable alongside senior pros. We’d play with the likes of Clayton Blackmore and Lee Martin and, no disrespect, we started to realise that they were no better than us. We’d seen them from the stands, watched them play in cup finals, but suddenly it hit us that they weren’t gods, they weren’t untouchable. Robbo tells the story himself about going to take a free-kick in an A-team game and Becks shooing him away. And Robbo was captain of England.

  Because he was my childhood hero, it was Robbo who gave me the biggest boost of my young career, though he won’t know it. A mate rang me up one morning and said that Robbo had done an article in the papers talking about the young lads who had come through, the class of ’92. I remember reading that newspaper like it was yesterday and seeing what Robbo had said about me: ‘I’ll be amazed if he doesn’t become a top player.’ This was my idol saying that I could go all the way. It sounds a small thing, just a line in a paper, but, honestly, I never looked back from there. If Robbo believed that I could make it to the top, that was good enough for me.

  Robbo wasn’t the only one singing our praises. My dad has still got a scrapbook at home full of cuttings from that time, including an article where the boss says,
‘If this lot don’t make it we can all pack in.’ You think about how cautious the manager generally is about building up young players, how he likes to play down the hype – but in our case he was willing to make a bold prediction.

  Outside the club, there were other managers comparing us to the Busby Babes. We were getting amazing write-ups, and I had another reason to believe in myself when I was part of the England squad that won the European Under 18 Championship in the summer of 1993. The tournament only lasted just over a week, with four matches crammed in, but it was fantastic experience. It was the first time I played at right-back, and in a really good team. Five of us – me, Butty, Scholesy, Sol Campbell and Robbie Fowler – would go on to play for England, though that tournament is a good example of how players develop at different speeds. The stars at the time were Julian Joachim, who had bags of power and pace, and Darren Caskey, the captain, who was a bit older and had the most experience.

  We beat Turkey in the final at the City Ground in Nottingham in front of more than twenty thousand fans. It was a useful part of the learning experience of facing European sides – I remember a young Clarence Seedorf playing for the Dutch – but the best thing of all was the taste of victory. Trophies, medals, give you confidence. You become ambitious to win more.

  Obviously I couldn’t have known at the time that this would be the only success of my international career.

  *

  As a United fan I was overjoyed that we were back on the summit of English football with that title in 1993. The manager had transformed the club after decades of frustration. Winning that first title was a major turning point in the club’s history and, honestly, I was as happy about that championship as any I played in.