Choice quotes from Alex Ferguson’s new book



Ferguson on:

On Mesut Ozil:

“Wayne said that we should have pursued Mesut Ozil, who had joined Real Madrid from Werder Bremen. My reply that it was none of his business who we should have gone for. I told him it was his job to play and perform.”

On Wayne Rooney in 2012:

“I felt he was struggling to get by people and had lost some of his old thrust. As time wore on, I felt he struggled more and more to do it for 90 minutes, and he seemed to tire in games.”

On Paulo Maldini:

“My favourite Italian player is Paulo Maldini. I spoke to his father once about signing him. He gave me a look which suggested that he’d never leave AC Milan.”

On an expected apology from Roy Keane:

“There was no game that week and I was due to go to Dubai to visit our soccer school. That morning Gary Neville called me from the players’ dressing room and asked me to come in. Down I went, expecting Roy to have apologised. I took my seat. Gary promptly announced that the players were not happy with training. I could not believe my ears.

‘You what?’ I said. Roy had a major influence on the dressing room and I believed that he had used that influence to try and turn the situation.”

On the 2009 Champions League final in Rome:

“A major inhibiting factor in Rome, I will say now, was the choice of hotel. It was a shambles. For meals we were in a room with no light; the food was late, it was cold.”

Company Profile 

Founder: Omar Onsi

Launched: 2018

Employees: 35

Financing stage: Seed round ($12 million)

Investors: B&Y, Phoenician Funds, M1 Group, Shorooq Partners

Specs

Engine: 51.5kW electric motor

Range: 400km

Power: 134bhp

Torque: 175Nm

Price: From Dh98,800

Available: Now

NO OTHER LAND

Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal

Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham

Rating: 3.5/5

The specs

Engine: 0.8-litre four cylinder

Power: 70bhp

Torque: 66Nm

Transmission: four-speed manual

Price: $1,075 new in 1967, now valued at $40,000

On sale: Models from 1966 to 1970

In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe

Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010

Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille

Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm

Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year

Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”

Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners

TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013 

The biog

Siblings: five brothers and one sister

Education: Bachelors in Political Science at the University of Minnesota

Interests: Swimming, tennis and the gym

Favourite place: UAE

Favourite packet food on the trip: pasta primavera

What he did to pass the time during the trip: listen to audio books

COMPANY%20PROFILE
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ECompany%20name%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Sav%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarted%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%202021%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFounder%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Purvi%20Munot%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EBased%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Dubai%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EIndustry%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20FinTech%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFunding%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20%24750%2C000%20as%20of%20March%202023%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInvestors%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Angel%20investors%3C%2Fp%3E%0A