Sir Alex Ferguson said goodbye and sent off with Trophy from Old Trafford.

In the afternoon gloom and drizzle, the figures “26:38” flashed up to commemorate the number of years spent on that touchline by Sir Alex Ferguson and the number of trophies he reeled in from that command post.

It was tempting to see it as the final conquest for the old firebrand. Authority, and the electronic means itself by which the game measures out the late minutes in which he has secured so much of his watch-tapping success, had succumbed in tribute to his demanding version of chronology.

As he made his familiar progress to his seat in the overcoat and zip-up which has become a trademark look, he was acclaimed with 70,000 red flags declaring: “Champions 2013”.

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There was more, though. There always is. While he addressed the adoring crowd after an unremarkable defeat of Swansea, one last number clicked into place and another way to confirm the breadth of his triumph was being found.

He spoke, in control of his emotions, of how good he believes the current players to be and what Manchester United’s red jersey should mean to them and where it can take them in future. He talked of “the most fabulous experiences” of his life. Across town, the 18th managerial change to take place at Manchester City during Fergie’s long tenure at United was being finalised and Roberto Mancini was preparing to clear his desk.

There will be no joy in the demise of another manager. But he reclaimed the title from Mancini in one of his greatest comebacks and utterly detonated the oil-fuelled challenge which famously made him refer to City as troublesome “noisy neighbours”.

As the occasion of his last home game in charge swept to its raucous apex, City were tearing everything down again. There was a profoundly dramatic way to illustrate that what Ferguson built here – the giant stands as well as the fabulous teams – took much more than money. And the longevity of it all will never be replicated. He will be in charge of United for a swansong at West Brom next weekend. City, in all probability, will be managerless at Reading tomorrow, floundering again like all the other big clubs who took on the Growling General and subsided.

He bowed out appearing to have hurled one last grenade. Wayne Rooney, unsettled and agitating again in recent weeks, was not in the squad.

Ferguson adhered to his stringent managerial code when he demoted Rooney to the bench against Real Madrid this spring. He said yesterday Rooney’s head requires unscrambling after requesting a transfer, but the first interpretation was of a vengeful flex of the muscles by Ferguson and a pointer to where he might expect to stand under the incoming David Moyes.

Rooney emerged in his kit as the Premier League trophy was presented to an audibly mixed reaction. Perhaps it explained why he had been left out too. As he concluded his speech Ferguson said he was “going inside for a bit” before he started blubbing. It was an understated way to describe the end of 26 years of football combat. He was back out in a while, hoisting aloft the big prize for the 13th time. He needs a hip replacement but his shoulders are doing fine, after a lot of exercise.

A sunset would have been nice to frame the last ride of a man who adores the movies of John Wayne. Instead, the sky was of a greyness imported from the Granite City of Aberdeen, where he first made his mark as a coach.

In keeping with so much of the drama he has engineered here, United’s winner came very late in the game; thumped home emphatically in the 87th minute by Rio Ferdinand.

Not long before, Paul Scholes had trotted off, undemonstratively, into his own retirement. Ryan Giggs had come on to join a team which included young men like Phil Jones, to whom Ferguson entrusts his club’s future.

By the end of it all, football’s commander-in-chief was making a stately progress around the clamouring crowds while surrounded by children. Briefly, he looked like any other beaming grandfather. He isn’t of course. He has been The Godfather too. Somewhere in between those lies the secret of the glory commemorated so remarkably on the home turf he made into a citadel of triumph.

Sir Alex Ferguson Goodbye Speech Video

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