Ferguson is given lifetime membership Frankfurt, but can you guess the reasons?

Sir Alex Ferguson has bizarrely been given lifetime membership by Eintracht Frankfurt.

The legendary former Manchester United manager, 82, was visited by a delegation from the Bundesliga side after they had travelled to Aberdeen to face the Scottish outfit in the Europa Conference League.

He was also presented with a Frankfurt shirt with his name and No 10 on the back.

Ferguson has tenuous links to Frankfurt from his time as a player and manager in Scotland.

His first game for Rangers, who he joined from Dunfermline, was against the German team in a pre-season friendly in 1967, which they won 5-3.

Ferguson had attended a game between Rangers and Frankfurt in the European Cup seven years earlier in 1960. The Scot was at the second leg at Ibrox as the German side ran out 6-3 winners to complete a thumping 12-4 victory on aggregate.

He later faced Frankfurt as a manager with Aberdeen in the UEFA Cup in 1979, with the Scottish team losing 2-1 on aggregate after a 1-0 defeat in the second leg in Germany - and Ferguson revealed he learnt a valuable lesson from the encounter.

'Frankfurt were the better team, but we saved the game with an equaliser,' Ferguson said in an interview after being given the lifetime membership.

'We had the chance to travel to Frankfurt, where we lost 1-0. Bernd Holzenbein scored the goal in the second game that knocked us out of the competition.

'I learned an important lesson when we played abroad. Some players went out after the game. After that, I made sure that something like that never happened again.'

Ferguson retired from football in 2013 having overseen an unprecedented period of success at United, winning 38 major trophies.

He is still a regular at United matches and was also spotted at Cheltenham last