Imagine Sir Alex Ferguson had never won the Champions League as the manager of Manchester United. Imagine there had been no Treble. Imagine he had never said: ‘Football, bloody hell.’
Imagine Bayern Munich had won at the Nou Camp in 1999 and John Terry had scored that penalty for Chelsea in Moscow in 2008. Imagine how that would have affected the way history regards Ferguson.
He would still have been feted and honoured. He won 13 Premier League titles in his 26 years in charge at Old Trafford and that would have been more than enough for some to acclaim him still as the greatest manager of an English club that there has ever been.