Inside Sir Alex Ferguson's private meeting with Pep Guardiola over Man Utd manager's job

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Sir Alex Ferguson once tried to persuade Pep Guardiola to take over as Manchester United manager during a secret meeting between the pair. In the 13 years since the legendary Scot retired, the club has attempted - largely in vain - to fill the vast void his departure left behind.

Six permanent managers have come and gone in that time, the latest being Ruben Amorim , who was relieved of his duties on Monday. But much of that upheaval might have been avoided had Ferguson succeeded in convincing Guardiola to take the reins from him at Old Trafford.

The pair met at a restaurant in New York in 2012, ahead of what would be Ferguson's final season in charge of the Red Devils. At the time, Guardiola had just embarked on a sabbatical after a hugely successful four-year spell at Barcelona .

Although Ferguson had yet to formally decide when he would retire, he effectively offered the Spaniard the opportunity to succeed him in the United hot seat. Reflecting on the encounter in 2014, Guardiola joked that he was not entirely sure he had even been offered the job, citing the language barrier - and Ferguson's famously thick Glaswegian accent.

"He invited me to [a] super restaurant and we had a very, very good time," he recalled. "My English [was] not so good [and] Sir Alex spoke a little bit quickly, I sometimes had a problem understanding him.

"That's why I didn't understand if I received an offer or not," he laughed. "It was a friendly dinner, like always with me when I started as a coach, he was so, so gentle, and we spent a very, very good time together."

Ultimately, the offer was futile. In January 2013, it was announced that Guardiola would take over as Bayern Munich boss at the end of the season.

"I couldn't make him any direct proposal to [Guardiola] because retirement was not on my agenda at that point," Ferguson wrote of their meeting in his 2015 book Leading .

"He had already won an enviable number of trophies with Barcelona... and I admired him greatly. I asked Pep to phone me before he accepted an offer from another club, but he didn't and wound up joining Bayern Munich in July 2013."

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Instead, on another of Ferguson's recommendations, United turned to David Moyes , whose disastrous tenure ended in his dismissal just 10 months later. Guardiola would eventually make his way to Manchester after three years in Bavaria - only it was the blue half of the city that secured his services.

Since 2016, Guardiola's Manchester City have run roughshod over the Premier League , collecting six titles as well as two FA Cups and the Champions League in 2023. They also became the first club in the competition's history to win four in a row - and remain the only side to have amassed more than 100 points in a single season.

By contrast, United have floundered throughout the decade since Guardiola arrived on English shores. The club have slipped completely out of the title picture and finished the 2024/25 campaign in a record-low 15th place.

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That dismal state of affairs, compounded by growing tensions between the manager and the board in recent months, ultimately led to Amorim's departure earlier this week. Darren Fletcher has been placed in temporary charge , with former head coach Ole Gunnar Solskjaer reportedly in the frame to take over as an interim successor while the search for a permanent appointment continues.

It means that since Ferguson's retirement, United could, by the start of next season, have cycled through 13 different managers - an extraordinary rate of turnover for a club once defined by stability and long-term vision. Across the city, the man Sir Alex hoped would inherit his throne has instead built a neighbouring dynasty, turning a rival into the dominant force of an era.

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