Sir Alex Ferguson was eager to sign Henrik Larsson to Manchester United.
Then he got the phone call that changed everything.
– I was ready to make an offer, Ferguson himself has said.
Henrik Larsson was at the absolute end of his career when he shockingly chose to leave Sweden and Helsingborg for a loan to the big club Manchester United. It was a three-month loan for Larsson, and a total of 13 games were played – but it still became legendary, and he managed to become a real cult player at Old Trafford.
Ferguson wanted to recruit
But the fact is that there could have been a move to Manchester United much earlier. Larsson was one of Europe’s top goalscorers when he played at Celtic, the club where he had almost godlike status. After the time there there was a move to Barcelona, but if Sir Alex Ferguson had decided it would have been a move to England instead.
It was Sir Alex Ferguson who brought Larsson in on loan, but long before that he had expressed great admiration for the Swede. Ferguson was eager to sign the Swede, and Larsson knew it.
– I heard it because Marc Rieper, who played in Celtic, had received a call from a player in United. Apparently Ferguson had been up to us watching. But I was happy where I was then. I felt at home, scored goals, and we had a good team, Larsson told Sky Sports.
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The words that changed, then
But in his autobiography, Ferguson revealed that he made a real effort to sign Larsson. The only thing stopping him was Celtic’s owner.
“I was ready to make a bid but Celtic’s owner, Dermot Desmond, called me and said: ‘You’re letting me down, Alex, you’ve got loads of players. We need him!”.
And possibly it was those three final words, how much Celtic needed him, that made Sir Alex back down.
Instead it was Barcelona for Larsson, but later also 13 games for United. And Sir Alex Ferguson was pleased, and so was Larsson.
– Getting to work with Sir Alex and the players there was a huge experience. Playing at home in Sweden, sure, it’s professional, but there isn’t that atmosphere, that aura that I felt at United. I felt at home.
When Larsson left, Ferguson summed it up like this:
“The players talked about him with admiration in their voices. For a man who was 35, his ability to take in words from coaches was incredible. Every practice he was alert. He wanted to learn, he wanted to understand everything.”
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