United’s Treble: Sliding Doors to Barcelona
It Was What It Was : The Football History Podcast
The Overlap
4.9 • 667 Ratings
🗓️ 4 June 2024
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Welcome to the latest episode of The Overlap’s football history podcast, It Was What It Was.
Jonathan Wilson and Rob Draper delve into the sliding doors moments that lead to the Manchester United treble win in 1999.
In the years leading up to Sir Alex Ferguson's greatest achievement, we take a look at some of the key moments that could have changed the course of history: from Maurice Watkins recommending Alex Ferguson as the manager to replace Terry Venables as Barcelona manager in 1986 to Alan Hansen’s infamous comment on Match of the Day as well as United's youth system and signing Eric Cantona.
It Was What It Was gives a detailed look into the changes that took place at Old Trafford that paved the journey to the treble; including building the squad after the 1994 Champions League loss to Barcelona, new revenue at Old Trafford and the tactical and financial changes at the club.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Jonathan Wilson. I'm with Rob Draper and this is It Was What It Was, the Football History podcast brought to you by The Overlap. |
| 0:13.4 | We've just passed the 25th anniversary of Manchester's treble winning campaign. On Amazon right now, there's an excellent documentary all about that. |
| 0:20.5 | And I'm not just recommending that because it's done by the same people who does do this. |
| 0:23.7 | It really is excellent and well worth downloading. |
| 0:27.1 | So we thought it would be a good idea to look back at not at that season itself, |
| 0:32.4 | but how we got to that season and consider six sliding doors moments. |
| 0:36.2 | Those moments when history teaches on the |
| 0:38.3 | brink, it could go one way, could go the other. Rob, what is your first sliding doors moment? |
| 0:43.1 | My first sliding doors moment is we're going to go a bit left field and we're going to go back |
| 0:46.9 | into deep history because if this podcast is nothing, if it's not about origin stories and not |
| 0:51.4 | about going deep into things. So I'm talking about the moment when Alex Ferguson should have become coach of Barcelona, |
| 0:57.9 | which is a little known fact. |
| 0:59.6 | I don't think people know that. |
| 1:01.1 | So explain how when and how can this have happened? |
| 1:04.2 | Well, this is very recently only come to fruition because Morris Watkins, |
| 1:07.9 | who is a lawyer of Manchester United and he's on the board of Manchester United, and he's on the board of |
| 1:11.7 | Manchester United, and he gets a call from Barcelona as vice president, Juan Gaspur in 1986, |
| 1:17.2 | the summer of 1986, to ask who should he get as manager to succeed Terry Venables, |
| 1:21.9 | who they're thinking of Sacking. We're going to the reasons for that, why that is so in a minute. |
| 1:29.4 | And at this stage, Ron Atkinson is the manager Manchester United. And presumably, United don't have a strong desire to get Ferguson |
| 1:36.5 | because Watkins recommends Alex Ferguson to Joan Guspan. So basically, we've got a scenario |
| 1:43.1 | whereby, by 1986, instead of going from Aberdeen |
... |
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