Sir Alex Ferguson: Never Give In – A Review – The rare glimpse of a genius!

Dramatic, pulsating, and insightful.  These are the best three words that accurately describe this new football documentary on the life of Sir Alex Ferguson.

Directed by one of his sons, namely Jason Ferguson, Sir Alex Ferguson: Never Give In, is a must watch for any sports fan.

The drama kicks-off right away as we are transported back to the very day in 2018, when Sir Alex, suffered a near fatal brain haemorrhage.  Via a reconstruction and the actual audio footage of Jason speaking on the phone to an ambulance phone operator at the time, this is our chance to live the harrowing experience too.

Due to this film being made by a family member, we thus see Sir Alex at times in both his most natural and most vulnerable states.  He recounts how he did not want to die.  He speaks very movingly of his love for his wife Cathy.  He also touchingly reveals a written note that he wrote to her when he was extremely ill. He stated how he feels this immense sense of guilt at how he never played a bigger part in bringing up his boys due to his football work commitments.

I am a big Manchester United fan, and so you would have expected me to have been most interested in all the stuff discussed about Sir Alex’s Man United years(as manager).  However, as I already knew a lot about these events and footage already (say the 1999 treble year), it was therefore more the recollections of his younger days growing up that sparked my interest the most.

Trying to view this sports documentary objectively though, then you can certainly criticise aspects of it.  It must be asked why certain subjects were covered, but other more controversial ones were not? 

There was no explicit mention of his infamous fallout with unquestionably his greatest ever captain at United, Roy Keane.  He never touched on that big debacle he had that concerned a certain racehorse called Rock of Gibraltar. Furthermore, it also would have been interesting to hear why this great fighter in Sir Alex, finally decided to retire from football?

Sir Alex Ferguson

Overall, it was well edited, well shot, and some of the impressive archive footage of the Govan shipyard gave me goosebumps.

Nevertheless, this is not a faultless sports film due to its formulaic nature in parts, along with the already mentioned omission of certain topics. 

Very enjoyable without ever being amazing, this is the final verdict here. 4/5.