Ryan Giggs was once fined two weeks wages for snapping back at Sir Alex Ferguson. The former Manchester United winger admits the intimidating manager may have punished talking back, but he actually preferred his players to have some bite about them in the dressing room.
The 52-year-old spent over 20 years with the club, making 963 appearances, scoring 168 goals and assisting 271 times. The Red Devils icon won all there is to win in club football, including two Champions Leagues and a whopping 13 Premier League titles.
However, Giggs was once a rising star at the club and faced off with Fergie on a few tense occasions. Speaking to beIN SPORTS’s The Champions Club in 2020, he said: “There was definitely fear, especially early on.
“He mellowed a little bit as he got older, but not a lot. Definitely early on, especially as a young player, he had this cough that you could hear. And if you heard that at our first training ground at The Cliff, you would very often turn the other way.
“You just didn’t want to cross him at 18, 19, 20 because you never knew what sort of mood he was in. So there was definitely that fear but ultimately there was always that respect, whether he had a go at you or you just fell out with him.”
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Reflecting on times he got on the wrong side of Ferguson, Giggs said: “I fell out with him plenty of times. I mean the amount of times I would say over my career, six or seven times where it was a couple of weeks wages I was fined for talking back, for having an argument.
“At the time it’s not very nice, you’re in the dressing room, you’ve just got beat or you’ve had a bad performance. And I just couldn’t help myself have a go back.”
However, Giggs noted that while Ferguson commanded respect in every sense of the word, he appreciated it when a young player would give a bit back in the dressing room. He added: “He actually, later in his career, he told me he liked that, it meant that you cared.
“He’d still fine you two weeks because he wanted to show that he was in charge but he actually quite liked it, as long as it didn’t cross the line or course.
“The good thing is, the next day it was finished. He would fine you two weeks wages, a week’s wages. The next day he’d get you in and it was over with, let’s move on.”
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