Jose Mourinho has revealed how he has taken Sir Alex Ferguson back into the heart of Manchester United and “made him feel loved again”.
Legend Ferguson became the most successful manager ever in England over a quarter of a century at Old Trafford, before retiring after winning the last of his 13 Premier League titles in 2013.
The Scot then kept a low profile as his successors David Moyes and Louis van Gaal struggled to recapture the glory days he had enjoyed.
But ever since his own arrival as Van Gaal's replacement last summer, boss Mourinho has admitted he has been gently coaxing Ferguson back into the centre of things at United.
“When he left here, he wanted to leave and not come back,” said Mourinho. “I think, perhaps, for his own comfort. Maybe going back is to suffer a little.
“But after I arrived, he came in again. He came back to visit the people he worked with for so many years. And he travelled with us once again.
"And that’s what I said to him, ‘It doesn’t make sense that we’re playing in London and go on a private train and you, Sir Alex, will go by car. You’re not going by car. No. Go by train, with the team’.
“But he is so respectful that he becomes even a little shy in this approach. We have to make him feel loved.
“In our head there are no ghosts, no complexes, no such thing.”
Ferguson, 75, has started travelling with the team for European games again this season, flying in the official party on the team plane and staying in their hotel.
But Mourinho, speaking in a documentary with Portuguese TV channel SIC, has confessed he still cannot get him into the dressing room after games.
He said: “There have been situations at the end of the game where Sir Bobby Charlton comes down, the executive director Ed Woodward comes down, and Sir Alex, who is with them, does not come to the dressing room.
"That kind of situation, I already said that makes absolutely no sense.”
Mourinho and Ferguson always had a good rapport from when the younger man was in charge at Chelsea, Inter Milan and Real Madrid.
“It’s the same relationship we had in the old days,” he added.
“A phone call, an SMS, sympathetic details like we always had with each other. A Christmas, a birthday, a more important game.”
Ferguson oversaw the building of United’s state of the art Aon training complex at Carrington in 2000 – but Mourinho admits since arriving he has updated the facility and even altered some of Van Gaal’s tweaks.
Like the Dutchman before him, Mourinho has made changes to the training pitches, pitch sizes, changing the type of grass and installing more floodlights so the team could work until late in the afternoons during winter's shorter days.
He said: “We tried to improve. We tried to make a personal impression. We tried to modernise a little, even internally, some working conditions.
“You know, a club can be a giant, but when you stop for a couple of years, it’s complicated.”