It began with alarms going off at Manchester United’s team hotel, then the mischief phone calls to the players’ rooms. When loud knocking could be heard coming through the ceiling in the middle of the night, enough was enough.
‘Choccy (Brian McClair) and Jim McGregor, our physio, went upstairs and found a cleaner sitting there banging on the ceiling,’ recalls Gary Pallister. ‘He just looked at them and walked off. It’s crazy to think that this kind of stuff goes on.’
They say there are six dimensions of hell, and it felt like Sir Alex Ferguson and his players endured most of them on their first visit to Istanbul 30 years ago.