“Losing out on him was the biggest disappointment of all, and he admits it was a mistake'
In the summer of 1988, Sir Alex Ferguson asked Paul Gascoigne: “Can I go on holiday, knowing that I've signed you Gazza?”
It’s hard to argue there’s ever been an English player in the mould of Gascoigne since and, quite simply, United missed out on a generational talent when Spurs swooped for his signature. “He just tore them apart. When he nutmegged Moses and patted him on the head, I was out of the dugout shouting, 'Get that f****** so-and-so!' Robbo and Whiteside were chasing him up and down the pitch, and they couldn't get near him.”
“People in the game started talking about this young man that had something a little bit special,” Gary Lineker explained in 2015. “I want to be successful and that means leaving,” Gascoigne told a local newspaper just before his Newcastle exit. “I feel it would also do me a power of good to physically leave the area. The pressures have been getting to me.”
“We spoke to him the night before I went on holiday,” explained Ferguson. “He said, ‘Go and enjoy yourself Mr Ferguson, I'll be signing for Manchester United'." “He asked what I wanted in my contract and I asked for a nice house for my family. I rang my dad up and said 'Spurs have offered a house' and he said 'what are you waiting for?'
Ferguson was so aggrieved at Gascoigne's snub that he sent him a letter calling him a “silly boy” while also lamenting him for “turning down the biggest club in the world.” The romanticism around Italia '90 has since survived decades, and Gascoigne has been key to that, playing a pivotal role in providing fans with a summer of highs and lows that they never forgot.
He was ruled out of football for over a year, and that granted him the opportunity to shy away from the “pressure” he had previously struggled with. “Part of his genius, part of his magnificence, is the fact that he was so vulnerable,” Lineker has said about Gascoigne. Ferguson has always suggested Gascoigne may have resisted certain temptations if he had signed for United, but what does the man himself think? His answer has changed over time.
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