Leading: Learning from Life and My Years at Manchester United

Once you bid farewell to discipline you say goodbye to success

There’s a reason that God gave us two ears, two eyes and one mouth. It’s so you can listen and watch twice as much as you talk. Best of all, listening costs you nothing.

If I were running a company, I would always want to listen to the thoughts of its most talented youngsters, because they are the people most in touch with the realities of today and the prospects for tomorrow.

In the long run principles are just more important than expediency.

You cannot lead by following.

The experience of defeat, or more particularly the manner in which a leader reacts to it, is an essential part of what makes a winner.

Don’t play the occasion, play the game.

Perhaps the most important element of each activity is to inspire a group of people to perform at their very best. The best teachers are the unsung heroes and heroines of any society,

you learn more from defeats than you do from victories

I always felt that our triumphs were an expression of the consistent application of discipline.

For me drive means a combination of a willingness to work hard, emotional fortitude, enormous powers of concentration and a refusal to admit defeat.

Watching others, listening to their advice and reading about people are three of the best things I ever did.

One mark of a leader is his willingness to share information.

When I was lost in my own thoughts, Cathy would always say, ‘You’re not listening to me.’ She was right.

Eleven Nobel laureates are not going to win the FA Cup.

We had a virus that infected everyone at United. It was called winning.

Losing is a powerful management tool so long as it does not become a habit.

I never had a problem reaching a decision based on imperfect information. That’s just the way the world works.

If you can assemble a team of 11 talented players who concentrate intently during training sessions, take care of their diet and bodies, get enough sleep and show up on time, then you are almost halfway to winning a trophy. It is always astonishing how many clubs are incapable of doing this.

very often our victories were squeaked out in the last few minutes, after we had drained the life from our opponents. Games – like life – are all about waiting for chances and then pouncing on them.

You have to make everyone feel at home. That doesn't mean you're going to be soft on them – but you want them to feel that they belong.

You don't get the best out of people by hitting them with an iron rod. You do so by gaining their respect, getting them accustomed to triumphs and convincing them that they are capable of improving their performance.

Young people will always manage to achieve the impossible–whether that is on the football field or inside a company or other big organisation. If I were running a company, I would always want to listen to the thoughts of its most talented youngsters, because they are the people most in touch with the realities of today and the prospects for tomorrow.

Onde you bid farewell to discipline you day goodbye to success

There are a number of subjective and objective criteria that I use as a way to rank players. The subjective ones include their ability with both feet; their sense of balance; the disciplined fashion in which they take care of their fitness; their attitude towards training; the consistency between games and over multiple seasons; their demonstrated mastery in several different positions; and the way they add flair to any team for which they play. The objective ones that are impossible to dispute are: the number of goals they have scored; the games they have played for several of the best club teams in the world; the number of League championship and cup medals they have won, and their appearances in World Cups. When you employ this sort of measurement approach, it becomes far easier to define the very highest levels of performance. The people who are least confused about this are other players.

The most important aspect of our system was training.

No matter how hard we worked to blood youngsters, Barcelona is still able to do this better than any club. The way they develop boys into some of the best players in the world is breathtaking.

It was to set very high standards. It was to help everyone else believe they could do things that they didn't think they were capable of. It was to chart a course that had not been pursued before. It was to make everyone understand that the impossible was possible. That's the difference between leadership and management.

Leaders are usually unaware, or at least underestimate, the motivating power of their presence. Nobody sees themselves as others see them.

people who feel like outsiders do one of two things: they either feel rejected, carry a chip on their shoulder and complain that life is unfair, or they use that sense of isolation to push themselves and work like Trojans.