Man Utd: ‘Angry’ Ferguson nearly ‘sacked’ club legend after his ‘head went’ – ‘my biggest regret’

Manchester United legend Peter Schmeichel has revealed that he was nearly “sacked” by Sir Alex Ferguson as he’s revealed his “biggest regret in football”.

The 60-year-old joined Man Utd in 1991 from Danish outfit Brondby and made just short of 400 appearances for the Premier League giants across all competitions.

Schmeichel won the Premier League five times with Man Utd and was part of the famous 1998/1999 treble-winning side.

The highly-regarded goalkeeper left Man Utd at the end of the 1998/99 season as he joined Portuguese outfit Sporting Lisbon. He later had a spell at Aston Villa before he finished his career at Manchester City.

During his appearance on The Stick to Football podcast, Schmeichel recalled when Ferguson threatened to “sack” him after his “head went” during a heated clash involving the pair.

“Sir Alex Ferguson picked on me after a game and the second half was so bad, but I made a lot of saves and I felt like I kept the team in. He blamed me for my goal kicks. I felt really heart done by for him picking on me,” Schmeichel said on The Stick to Football podcast.

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“My head went and that was probably my biggest regret in football and I’m not repeating that. On a Monday morning, he called me into his office and said that he was going to sack me and that we can’t have a player doing this. I accepted that and I apologised to him.

“He had a meeting in the changing room after and it was the worst I’ve ever seen him. He was so angry. He never done that in training before.

“He left and then I apologised to the team. My behaviour was so out of order. There are certain things you can do and certain things you can’t do.

“In the 90 minutes, I feel like you can say whatever because it’s all about winning. Before the game and after the game, you can’t say anything.

“It’s up to the manager or the coach to talk about what happened. You can’t go in and say you played bad, but I did that. I shouldn’t have done that. But he never brought it up again.”

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Schmeichel also claims Ferguson had several players he picked on and he “wanted confrontation”.

“What I learned very quickly was that Sir Alex Ferguson needed an out,” Schmeichel added.

“Very often it was in games where things were going well, or he needed something off his chest. He had certain players that he would do that to. I was one of them, Gary Pallister was one of them and Roy Keane was one of them. Ryan [Giggs] was also one of them.

“It would have been brutal to watch but you were allowed to talk back as a player. He wanted that confrontation because it was shaking things up. He wanted that.

“What I learned from him was that 95% of everything he said was by the sign and he was thinking about it and was waiting for the opportunity to say that. He would pick those moments and once it happened, gone.”