It is hard to know exactly what tactics Ferguson is adopting now to motivate the players of 1999. United's dressing room does not leak. Ferguson's players, schooled by him in the art of evasion, say nothing in interviews and take no pleasure in gossip. By his own admission, however, he no longer seeks to mount the barricades against the rest of the world.

"Motivation is a strange subject," he says. "It's not an exact science. Footballers are all different human beings. Some are self-motivators, they need to be left alone, some need to be . . . you know . . . (and he makes a miming action which looks alarmingly like wringing a set of testicles dry). For some you need causes: your country, them and us, your religion. And those causes can be created by the manager. At Aberdeen I did that. But at Manchester United now it's different. We are motivated by the absolute requirement to be better than everyone else at everything."

It has often been said recently that Ferguson has mellowed, that success has brought him contentment and softened the rough edges. Anyone who saw his performance at Liverpool recently, when, after contentious refereeing prevented his side from accumulating yet more points, his face resembled the puce section of a wallpaper catalogue, will appreciate that losing still hurts him. And, like the nuclear deterrent, it is the threat of the temper more than its actual use, that instils respect.

"Oh I still have a temper," he smiles. "It's there when I need it." Rather than simply mellow, what he has done over his decade in charge is adapt. Though he is the last of the managers who were obliged to do a proper job before entering football (men who, having seen the other side, felt, as McIlvanney puts it "blessed that they had escaped a harsher way of earning a living") Ferguson has never begrudged his players their earning power.

More than that, he has recognised that these days he is presiding over a dressing room stuffed with millionaires: it may no longer be appropriate to treat someone like a schoolboy when he has spent yesterday afternoon being talked through a range of investment opportunities by his stockbroker.

Ferguson's motivational method is perhaps best exemplified by the case of David Beckham. How can a man brought up in the hard world of Govan begin to fathom Beckham's lifestyle of first nights and Hello! magazine, of celebrity and sarongs? Yet in this very season, in which Beckham was predicted to collapse under the pressure generated by being sent off in the World Cup last year, Ferguson has nurtured performances which have rarely been less than exemplary.

Exactly how he has done it we will not know until either he or Beckham chooses to tell us. And that may well be the major reason why it works: Ferguson has offered the boy for whom the rest of life is lived in a goldfish bowl, a still, calm, private centre.

In the end, however, one question remains: how does Ferguson retain his own motivation? Why does a man who has won everything carry on wanting to win more? "He has a highly honed sense of history," says his old friend Glenn Gibbons. "He's never said this, but I'm sure that's why he's been so frustrated by United's failure in Europe. Matt won the European cup once with United, Alex won't be satisfied until he's won it twice, three times. Not out of ego, but because he feels a man's achievements are measured in the record books."

To realise his goal of total worldwide football domination, Ferguson may well need to go on beyond even the end of his new contract, which runs until he is 61, way past what is generally reckoned to be football managerial dotage. Generally reckoned, though not in the Ferguson orbit.

"It pisses me off when people say `Oh he'll retire when he's won this, he'll go when he's that age',' he says. "I don't think achievement decides when you go. Or age.

"The important thing is when your energy levels go down, and mine are the same as they were five, six, eight years ago. I still feel fit, I still feel healthy, why should I retire? I don't think the time even to assess it will be until I'm into the sixties."

Meanwhile, he will go on and on, a fixture in footballing life, terrorising the press corps, playing his little psychological mind games with opponents, hugely enjoying himself. He will go on, he says, because he needs to. Because ultimately what drives the country's most successful man-manager is an addiction - Alex Ferguson is a victory junkie.

"The sweetest moment for me is that last minute of victory," he says. "After that it drains away quickly. The memory's gone in half an hour. It's like a drug, really. I need to re-enact it again and again to get that last-minute feeling, when you're shouting at the referee `Blow the bloody whistle'."

It was there for all to see after his team had defeated the Italian champions Juventus in Turin to reach the Champions League semi-final last month. An hour after the final whistle, the United fans were still locked in the Stadio delle Alpi, to protect them from the disappointed locals swarming outside. They were just beginning to despair of ever leaving, when Ferguson ran on to the pitch, punching the air, dancing around like your average 10-year-old United supporter watching on television. More than anything, he seemed anxious to be with people who shared his sense of what his achievement meant. For any observer looking on, this appeared to be a man at the very pinnacle of success.

"This must be the finest night of your career," someone said to him. Ferguson looked his inquisitor in the eye and let the smile spread across his face. "I hope," he said, pausing for dramatic effect, "the finest night's yet to come."