Pep Guardiola met with Sir Alex Ferguson to discuss Man United manager's job

Sir Alex Ferguson wanted Pep Guardiola to become Manchester United manager

Sir Alex Ferguson once made an audacious attempt to convince Pep Guardiola to become Manchester United manager.

The legendary Scot met secretly with the Spaniard to discuss the possibility of him taking over, but his efforts were made in vain. In the 13 years since Sir Alex stepped down as United boss, the club have tried - and failed - to plug the enormous gap left by his exit.

Over that period, six full-time managers have been appointed and dismissed, with the most recent being Ruben Amorim, who lost his job on Monday. Much of that instability, however, could have been avoided if Ferguson had managed to persuade Guardiola to succeed him at Old Trafford.

The two men met in a New York restaurant in 2012, shortly before what proved to be Ferguson's final campaign in charge of the Red Devils. At that stage, Guardiola had just begun a sabbatical from football following an extraordinarily successful four-year tenure at Barcelona.

While Ferguson had not officially set a date for his retirement, he essentially presented Pep with an open invitation to take the reins from him. Looking back on the meeting in 2014, Guardiola joked that he was not fully convinced he had actually been offered the position, blaming a language gap - and Ferguson's notoriously strong Glaswegian accent - for the confusion.

"He invited me to [a] super restaurant and we had a very, very good time," he recalled. "My English [was] not so good [and] Sir Alex spoke a little bit quickly, I sometimes had a problem understanding him.

"That's why I didn't understand if I received an offer or not," he laughed. "It was a friendly dinner, like always with me when I started as a coach, he was so, so gentle, and we spent a very, very good time together."

In the end, nothing came of it. In January 2013, Guardiola was confirmed as the manager-in-waiting of Bayern Munich, set to take charge from that summer.

"I couldn't make him any direct proposal to [Guardiola] because retirement was not on my agenda at that point," Ferguson explained in his 2015 book Leading.

"He had already won an enviable number of trophies with Barcelona... and I admired him greatly. I asked Pep to phone me before he accepted an offer from another club, but he didn't and wound up joining Bayern Munich in July 2013."

Instead, acting on another of Ferguson's suggestions, United appointed David Moyes. His spell in charge proved catastrophic and ended with his dismissal just 10 months later.

Guardiola would eventually arrive in Manchester after three seasons in Bavaria - but it was the blue side of the city that secured him.

Since his appointment in 2016, Guardiola's Manchester City have dominated the Premier League, winning six league titles along with two FA Cups and the Champions League in 2023. They also became the first team in the league's history to claim four consecutive titles and remain the only club to surpass 100 points in a single campaign.

United, meanwhile, have struggled badly during the years since Guardiola's arrival in England. They have fallen well away from title contention and ended the 2024/25 season in a club-record low finish of 15th place.

That bleak situation, worsened by escalating friction between Amorim and the club's hierarchy in recent months, ultimately resulted in the Portuguese coach's exit earlier this week. Darren Fletcher has been handed interim control, while former manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is reportedly being considered as a temporary replacement as the hunt for a long-term appointment continues.

As a result, by the start of next season, United may have gone through 13 different managers since Ferguson retired - a remarkable level of churn for a club once synonymous with continuity and long-term planning. Meanwhile, across the city, the man Sir Alex hoped would take over his mantle has instead constructed a rival dynasty, transforming a neighbour into the defining powerhouse of a generation.

Football history is often shaped by narrow margins, brief meetings and chances that slip away. For United, that New York dinner could forever be remembered as the ultimate sliding doors moment.