Former Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson has revealed the best players he has worked with during his twenty-six years in charge of the team.
According to him, he only worked with four players he considered to be world class.
The Scot won two Champions League and 13 Premier League titles at the club. From those successful teams, he says midfielder Paul Scholes and attacking trio Eric Cantona, Cristiano Ronaldo and Ryan Giggs were his best players.
“They made the difference and the evidence is there,” he told the BBC’s Dan Walker for Football Focus.
Ferguson, 73, described Cantona, who United signed from Leeds in November 1992, as “the catalyst”, adding “when we brought him in we won the league that season – it was his mere presence and his ability to make and score goals.
“The younger breed like Ryan and Scholes were just fantastic players and the thing about those two was longevity.
“Are there players who have played right through the whole of the Premier League and performed at the level they have? There are none, absolutely none. Of course Ronaldo was just a complete genius of a player.”
England captains Wayne Rooney and David Beckham, Roy Keane, Carlos Tevez, Rio Ferdinand and Peter Schmeichel were all “great players” according to Ferguson. But these players elevated themselves above all that.”
Ferguson, now a United director and lecturer at the Harvard Business School, has released a new book on the art of management called Leading, and in a wide-ranging interview discusses topics ranging from Cantona to the Cuban missile crisis.