Movies you might have missed: The Class of '92
A documentary by Ben and Gabe Turner focusing on Fergie’s finest hour
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Your support makes all the difference.The news of Sir Alex Ferguson’s emergency surgery at the weekend came as a shock to just about anyone with a passing interest in sport. Five years since he last managed Manchester United and just a week after he appeared on the pitch at Old Trafford alongside Arsene Wenger, the single most influential footballing figure of the modern era has been praised by all and sundry as we await further news regarding his health.
In 2013, the same year Ferguson won his 13th title and decided to call it a day, The Class of ’92 was released, a documentary by Ben and Gabe Turner focusing on Fergie’s finest hour.
The film tells the tale of David Beckham, Nicky Butt, Ryan Giggs, Gary Neville, Phil Neville and Paul Scholes and how they went from success at youth team level to European glory in the space of seven years. Ferguson, like his mentor Sir Matt Busby, believed in promoting youth and, for the most part, playing attacking football that could provide a means of escape from the monotonous tedium of everyday life.
No team better highlighted this ethos than the United side that won an unprecedented treble of league, FA Cup and Champions League in the 1998-99 season, a feat unmatched before or since by any English team.
This documentary is about far more than football, focusing on friendship and the strength of the bonds that young men forge in their formative years. In a sense, it calls to mind Rob Reiner’s Stand by Me and the immortal final lines: “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12. Jesus, does anyone?”
Such luminaries as Eric Cantona, Zinedine Zidane and Danny Boyle are on hand to wax lyrical about the players and the vibrancy of Manchester in the years immediately following the resignation of Margaret Thatcher. The city was reborn and regenerated and the glory of the football team, at least in the red half of Manchester, was a source of great pride. The devil is in the details and the Turner brothers turn the stuff of legend into a series of deeply personal reflections.
The Prospero overseeing and manipulating the action, though, is Ferguson. A charismatic, complex and remarkable figure who dominated British public life for two and a half decades and enjoyed the kind of farewell that is usually reserved for Hollywood blockbusters. It seems only fitting that he have the last word, just as he did at the close of that remarkable season:
“Football? Bloody hell.”
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