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On May 8, 2013, Alex Ferguson announces his retirement. His final season at Manchester United ends with the league title, the thirteenth under his leadership. A year later the same club finishes seventh. Few stories are told as often when people talk about the Team Principle of Leadership: given equal talent, leadership makes the difference – it ensures that what the team needs right now actually happens. The story is worth a close look. It teaches something about leadership – and something about our tendency to overrate it.
Three and a Half Years Without a Title
Situation
Alex Ferguson takes over Manchester United on November 6, 1986. The club is 21st, second from bottom in the league. Success does not come right away. The first major trophy does not arrive until 1990: the FA Cup, won 1–0 against Crystal Palace in a replay after the first final had ended 3–3. The first league title follows in 1993.
Connection to the team principle
Anyone who judges leadership only by quick results would have seen little here. In a phase like this, a team evidently needs to be built up first; the titles come later. The story is a reminder that “what the team needs right now” is not always what the league table immediately rewards – and that a club has to give its manager that time.
Thirteen League Titles
Situation
Between 1993 and 2013, Manchester United wins 13 Premier League titles under Ferguson. Add to that five FA Cups and two Champions League titles, in 1999 and 2008. In 1999 the club wins the league, the FA Cup and the Champions League in the same season; the final against Bayern Munich ends 2–1. Ferguson relies on homegrown talent, the so-called “Class of ’92” with Gary and Phil Neville, David Beckham, Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt. In all, he wins 38 trophies with the club.
Connection to the team principle
Over these twenty-odd years, the squad turns over several times. The team of 1993 is not the team of 2013. What remains is the leadership. That suggests it contributed something beyond individual players – such as the decision to develop young players from within. Which decision made how much difference cannot be read from the results alone.
The Years That Followed
Situation
David Moyes succeeds him. He starts on June 9, 2013, on a six-year contract and is fired on April 22, 2014. United finishes the season in seventh place. Over the next decade or so, a long line of managers follows, among them Louis van Gaal, José Mourinho, Ole Gunnar Solskjær and Erik ten Hag, along with several interim appointments. League finishes fluctuate between second and fifteenth. The 2024–25 season ends in 15th place, the club’s worst finish since it was relegated in 1973–74. The club keeps winning cups – the FA Cup in 2016 and 2024, the Europa League and the League Cup in 2017, the League Cup in 2023. But it does not win the league again during this period. Of the club’s 20 English league titles, 13 come from the Ferguson era.
Connection to the team principle
The same club, the same stadium, still ample resources – and a markedly different result. As evidence for the principle, that is strong. The number of changes is striking too: where leadership changes often, hardly anything that needs time can grow. This says nothing conclusive about the work of the individual successors. Each of them inherited different circumstances.
Why This Is Not Proof
Situation
After 2013, it was not only the manager who changed. The age of the squad, the transfer policy, the ownership situation and the strength of the competition were all different from before. A before-and-after comparison does not hold these things constant. As early as 1985, James R. Meindl, Sanford B. Ehrlich and Janet M. Dukerich described, under the title “The Romance of Leadership,” how observers tend to attribute organizational outcomes to leadership – especially when results are strikingly good or strikingly bad.
Connection to the team principle
The Manchester United story is exactly such a striking case. It tempts us to credit everything to one man. The more honest view: leadership was one important factor among several. “Given equal talent” is a thought experiment. In reality, talent never stays the same. The principle holds nonetheless – as a statement that leadership accounts for a noticeable share of the difference, not all of it.
Key takeaways
Key Lessons
- Give leadership time. With a new team leader, don’t just ask about the first results; ask what they are building.
- Develop your own young talent. People who come up through the team carry its way of working forward.
- Plan your succession while you are still there. A team that depends entirely on one person is vulnerable.
- Be wary of quick judgments about predecessors and successors. Check what else has changed besides the leadership.
- Don’t credit successes only to yourself or blame failures only on others. Both usually have several causes.
Summary
Under Alex Ferguson, Manchester United won the league 13 times; after his departure in 2013, it did not win the title again for more than a decade. That is impressive evidence that leadership makes a difference – all the more so since the first trophy took three and a half years to arrive. It is not proof, because a great deal else changed along with the manager. If you take the Team Principle of Leadership seriously, you hold on to both: leadership ensures that what the team needs right now actually happens. And it is never the only reason for success or failure.