弗爵爷传奇是怎样炼成的
他把一支19年无冠的曼联，带向了长期的竞技、经济双丰收。Simon Kuper指出，弗格森的传奇成就是一砖一瓦盖成的。（尽管有“吹风机”的雅号）爵爷的领导风格是谦逊、冷静和善于学习的，他能够团结人、激励人，也能够坚持己见，目光长远。他的影响远远超过了足球界，他留下了精彩的管理教程，值得各行各业的领导者学习。
测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：
Sir 爵士称号。1999年，阿莱克斯·弗格森率领曼联夺得英超、足总杯和欧冠联赛三冠王，获英王室颁发爵士称号(knighted)。
Old Trafford 老特拉福德球场，曼联的主场。注：在英国，俱乐部教练被称作manager，除了负责竞技，也负责经营。
publican['pʌblɪk(ə)n] n.酒店老板
appalled [ə'pɔ:ld] adj.感到惊骇
uprooting [ʌp'ru:tiŋ] n./v.连根拔除
egomaniac [,iːɡəʊ'meɪnjæk] n.极端自我主义者
irascible [i'ræsəbl] adj.易怒的
transfix [træns'fɪks] v.刺穿，使呆住
Kung Fu 中国功夫
Glaswegian [ɡlæs'wi:dʒjən] n./adj.格拉斯哥人
Clydeside 克莱德河畔地区，即大格拉斯哥地区
macho ['mætʃəʊ] n./adj.男子汉气概的
Alex Ferguson’s managerial lessons stretch far beyond football (897 words)
When Sir Alex Ferguson arrived at Manchester United in 1986, the club was a bit of a drunken mess. It had not won a league title in 19 years. Its players enjoyed long, liquid pub “lunches” at which hardly a bread roll ever got eaten. Sir Alex, a former publican who like many ambitious Scots had come to regard alcohol as the enemy, was appalled.
After his managerial triumphs in Scotland, he could have decided that Man Utd’s club culture was rotten and in need of uprooting. He could have stormed in like a bullying egomaniac chief executive. But he didn’t. Instead he spent his early months at Old Trafford interviewing people, from window cleaners and supporters to legendary former players, trying to understand the club’s values.
He then set out to personify those values, such as: “United plays attacking football”, and “The world is against United”. Sir Alex always managed with the grain of a football club’s culture. The Scot, explained Jorge Valdano, the Argentine player-turned-football thinker, “bleeds the club’s history, can interpret the sentiment of the support”.
Sir Alex retires from Man Utd this month aged 71, as the most trophy-laden manager in English football history. His career contains lessons for managers in all sectors. But despite his reputation as an irascible dictator, many of those lessons have to do with humility, calm and learning from others.
Despite his success, Sir Alex never kidded himself that he knew everything. He always kept learning. From the French player Eric Cantona, who joined the club in 1992, Sir Alex learnt that British footballers did not take their jobs seriously enough. From Doris Kearns Goodwin’s 900-page biography of Abraham Lincoln, Team of Rivals, he learnt how to manage clashing personalities within an organisation.
Sir Alex spent hours each day on the phone, sucking information from ex-players and fellow managers. His enormous network extended far beyond football. Each contact was nurtured till death. (Possibly nobody attended more funerals, wrote his biographer Patrick Barclay.) When the UK’s minister of sport offended him in a meeting, Sir Alex simply picked up the phone and rang then-prime minister Tony Blair on his direct line to complain.
For Sir Alex, knowledge was power. Nothing moved inside Old Trafford without his knowing it. He knew his players’ pre-match toilet habits (and checked if they were going more than usual). He had long phone calls with fan leaders.
In 2004, one of them told him about a group of Iraqi Kurd refugees living around Manchester. Fans, who kept match tickets and photographs of the stadium as souvenirs, they had been wrongly arrested by police on suspicion of plotting to blow up Old Trafford. Sir Alex quietly arranged for the Kurds to attend a closed team practice. After all, they were club stakeholders, and stakeholders had to be kept happy (or in this case ecstatic).
He was a calm manager, too. Even when a crisis transfixed the nation – Cantona’s Kung Fu kick at a Crystal Palace fan’s head, the boot Sir Alex kicked into the face of his star player David Beckham – he never changed policy. Sir Alex knew that fusses blow over. His eye was on the long term.
He often sold players in their prime, looking ahead. In 2003, for instance, he sold Beckham for £24.5m and bought the unknown Portuguese teenager Cristiano Ronaldo for half that sum. The exchange looked risky; it proved brilliant. Ronaldo, now at Real Madrid, has matured into one of the world’s best players.
In 2004, Sir Alex blew two years’ of transfer budget on the teenaged Wayne Rooney, despite knowing the striker was not yet ready. While nurturing the Rooney-Ronaldo team, Sir Alex went three seasons without winning the league. He knew he was unsackable. His prior success had bought him freedom to think long term.
Being a long-termist, he will have planned his succession. It is no coincidence that Everton’s David Moyes, bookmakers’ favourite to get the job, is a fellow Glaswegian. Sir Alex was born in Glasgow’s Govan district on the last day of 1941, when most Govan men were building warships.
A working-class childhood in the west of Scotland is almost the norm for great British football managers. The three considered the holy trinity before Sir Alex – Sir Matt Busby, Bill Shankly and Sir Alex’s hero Jock Stein – shared it too. “Any success I have had in handling men . . . owes much to my upbringing among the working men of Clydeside,” Sir Alex has written. Industrial Glasgow provided Sir Alex with his core values: group solidarity and macho leadership. To Sir Alex as to Moyes, these values translate into leftwing politics: both men are active Labour party supporters.
But nobody can replace Sir Alex. Stefan Szymanski, economics professor at the University of Michigan, has compiled a “Soccernomics index” of overachieving managers in England: the men who reached the highest league positions relative to their clubs’ wage budgets from 1974 to 2010. Sir Alex ranks second in the index, after Liverpool’s Bob Paisley.
In short, the Scot adds exceptional value to his teams. This became most apparent from 2003, when first Chelsea and then Manchester City began outspending Man Utd on wages. Sir Alex’s team have still won five of the past seven Premier League titles. No successor is likely to match that. Man Utd must now expect decline.
请根据你所读到的文章内容，完成以下自测题目：
1.What do we know about Fergusen's early years at Man Utd?
A. He was an alcoholic back then.
B. He found the club culture rottten and had it uprooted.
C. The club had not won a league in 19 years.
D. The club had a bullying egomaniac chief executive.
答案(1)
2."He always kept learning."
Which of the following is not one of the examples?
A. former players and fans--club values
B. Tony Blair--how to build a network of information
C. his French player Cantona--footballer professionalism
D. Goodwin's Team of Rivals--managing clashing personalities
答案(2)
3.What are the similarities between Ferguson and David Moyes, his likely successor?
A. Both are from Manchester, England.
B. Both are active Labour party supporters.
C. Both have won countless trophies.
D. All of above.
答案(3)
4.What best reveals his style of thinking long term?
A. He sold David Beckham at his prime time.
B. His achievement/wage budget ratio is very high.
C. He invited some Kurd-refugee-fans to attend a closed team practice.
D. He nurtured young Rooney and Ronaldo for 3 years without winning the League.
答案(4)
* * *
(1) 答案：C.The club had not won a league in 19 years.
解释：A说的是曼联当时的球员，整天去酒吧喝酒连饭都不吃。B正确了一半，弗格森是循序渐进地改变球队。D文中并未提到，原意是他并没有像一个自大而独裁的执行官一样暴风骤雨式地开始干。
(2) 答案：B.Tony Blair--how to build a network of information
解释：ACD都是他善于学习的例子。文中可没说打造情报网是不是跟布莱尔学的，也没说是不是跟福尔摩斯学的。
(3) 答案：B. Both are active Labour party supporters.
解释：他们都是苏格兰格拉斯哥人，都具有格拉斯哥戈文区工人阶级的那种精神面貌和作风，都是工党铁杆。 还记得文中他直接打布莱尔的专线抱怨的事情吗？
(4) 答案：A.He nurtured young Rooney and Ronaldo for 3 years without winning the League.
解释：他宁愿用眼前的成绩为代价来进行球队的更新换代，来为长远考虑。His prior success had bought him freedom to think long term.
卖贝克汉姆与买C罗纳尔多两件事加起来才能说明他目光长远。B准确说是说明他精打细算和执教能力高。
