- David Beckham’s mentor, Sir Alex Ferguson, praised Warren Buffett in his book about leadership.
- The former Manchester United Manager hailed Buffett’s long-term view and hands-off management style.
- Like Buffett, soccer-club owners should be a source of funding and advice when needed, he said.
Soccer-team owners should lead like Warren Buffett, according to the legendary manager who mentored David Beckham.
Sir Alex Ferguson oversaw Manchester United for 26 years, rearing a generation of superstars and leading the club to 13 Premier League titles, five FA Cup wins, and two European titles. He laid out what soccer teams can learn from the investing icon in “Leading,” a book he cowrote a few years ago with journalist and venture capitalist Michael Moritz.
“I’ve read quite a lot about Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway, and I imagine that the people heading his various companies all think much more about long-term prosperity than the CEO of a publicly listed company who is worried that the investment fund managers will be at his throat if he produces disappointing earnings in the next quarter,” Ferguson wrote, according to a photo shared recently on X by MastersInvest.com.
“If you have owners, or shareholders, who only think about short-term results, it brings about a never-ending cycle of misery for everyone. That’s especially true in football,” he continued.
Buffett famously takes a long-term view when it comes to his company, which he’s run since 1965. He buys businesses with the aim of owning them forever, and encourages the bosses of Berkshire’s many subsidiaries to make the best long-term decisions they can. Indeed, Berkshire bought See’s Candies back in 1972, and has held stakes in public companies like Coca-Cola and American Express for over 30 years.
Ferguson trumpeted several other aspects of Buffett’s leadership in his book.
“Football managers should look for their own modified version of Warren Buffett – people who care about the long term; who provide them with the money they need to build their team; who don’t meddle in daily management; who are available when needed; and who understand that their job is to make two decisions. The first is to replace the manager or CEO; the second is to sell the club.”
Insider has spoken to several CEOs of Berkshire subsidiaries in recent years, and they’ve painted a similar picture to Ferguson. Buffett trusts them to manage their businesses for the long term, but he’s just a call away if they need funding or advice. He and his business partner, Charlie Munger, have also replaced managers who weren’t working out, and disposed of businesses that were burning cash and couldn’t be fixed.
Buffett has structured Berkshire as a web of decentralized, autonomous subsidiaries to suit his hands-off approach. He’s described his management style as “delegation just short of abdication.”
Apple cofounder Steve Jobs once voiced a similar philosophy. “The greatest people are self-managing, they don’t need to be managed,” he said. “What they need is a common vision, and that’s what leadership is.”
Jobs added that a leader’s job is to have a larger vision, articulate it others, and build consensus around realizing it. Buffett has taken the same approach, enshrining his core values and principles in an “Owner’s Manual” then trusting his managers to abide by it while doing what they do best — running their businesses.
As for Ferguson, he clearly sees the value of a club owner who supports a manager’s efforts to inspire, cultivate talent, and unite the team around a larger, long-term mission, without letting ego or greed get in the way.
