金融時(shí)報(bào):弗爵爺傳奇是怎樣煉成的

弗爵爺傳奇是怎樣煉成的

他把一支19年無冠的曼聯(lián)，帶向了長期的競技、經(jīng)濟(jì)雙豐收。Simon Kuper指出，弗格森的傳奇成就是一磚一瓦蓋成的。（盡管有“吹風(fēng)機(jī)”的雅號）爵爺?shù)念I(lǐng)導(dǎo)風(fēng)格是謙遜、冷靜和善于學(xué)習(xí)的，他能夠團(tuán)結(jié)人、激勵(lì)人，也能夠堅(jiān)持己見，目光長遠(yuǎn)。他的影響遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)超過了足球界，他留下了精彩的管理教程，值得各行各業(yè)的領(lǐng)導(dǎo)者學(xué)習(xí)。

測試中可能遇到的詞匯和知識：

Sir 爵士稱號。1999年，阿萊克斯·弗格森率領(lǐng)曼聯(lián)奪得英超、足總杯和歐冠聯(lián)賽三冠王，獲英王室頒發(fā)爵士稱號(knighted)。

Old Trafford 老特拉福德球場，曼聯(lián)的主場。注：在英國，俱樂部教練被稱作manager，除了負(fù)責(zé)競技，也負(fù)責(zé)經(jīng)營。

publican['p?bl?k(?)n] n.酒店老板

appalled [?'p?:ld] adj.感到驚駭

uprooting [?p'ru:ti?] n./v.連根拔除

egomaniac [,i?ɡ??'me?njæk] n.極端自我主義者

irascible [i'ræs?bl] adj.易怒的

transfix [træns'f?ks] v.刺穿，使呆住

Kung Fu 中國功夫

Glaswegian [ɡlæs'wi:d?j?n] n./adj.格拉斯哥人

Clydeside 克萊德河畔地區(qū)，即大格拉斯哥地區(qū)

macho ['mæt???] n./adj.男子漢氣概的

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.

請根據(jù)你所讀到的文章內(nèi)容，完成以下自測題目：

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.

解釋：A說的是曼聯(lián)當(dāng)時(shí)的球員，整天去酒吧喝酒連飯都不吃。B正確了一半，弗格森是循序漸進(jìn)地改變球隊(duì)。D文中并未提到，原意是他并沒有像一個(gè)自大而獨(dú)裁的執(zhí)行官一樣暴風(fēng)驟雨式地開始干。

(2) 答案：B.Tony Blair--how to build a network of information

解釋：ACD都是他善于學(xué)習(xí)的例子。文中可沒說打造情報(bào)網(wǎng)是不是跟布萊爾學(xué)的，也沒說是不是跟福爾摩斯學(xué)的。

(3) 答案：B. Both are active Labour party supporters.

解釋：他們都是蘇格蘭格拉斯哥人，都具有格拉斯哥戈文區(qū)工人階級的那種精神面貌和作風(fēng)，都是工黨鐵桿。 還記得文中他直接打布萊爾的專線抱怨的事情嗎？

(4) 答案：A.He nurtured young Rooney and Ronaldo for 3 years without winning the League.

解釋：他寧愿用眼前的成績?yōu)榇鷥r(jià)來進(jìn)行球隊(duì)的更新?lián)Q代，來為長遠(yuǎn)考慮。His prior success had bought him freedom to think long term.

賣貝克漢姆與買C羅納爾多兩件事加起來才能說明他目光長遠(yuǎn)。B準(zhǔn)確說是說明他精打細(xì)算和執(zhí)教能力高。