Rowing guru floats new ideas to Neville
Committed england women’s football coach Phil Neville was on the banks of the thames at Caversham at 6.30am yesterday following the Footballer off the Year dinner.
the early start was so Neville could study GB rowing coach Jurgen Grobler working crews from his bike on the thames pathway.
Neville is keen to learn about the performance environments of successful sports and especially how they keep winning. German Grobler has certainly done that, coaching GB crews to gold at every olympics since 1992.
the rowing experience was set up for Neville by Baroness Campbell, the FA’s head of women’s football and former chairwoman of UK Sport. She intends to repeat the exercise with other sports Neville might want to learn from.
the former england defender, 41, has the same open mind to taking coaching tips from outside football as head coach Gareth Southgate, who has shared notes with england rugby union boss eddie Jones among others.
meanwhile, Neville coped with aplomb at the FWA dinner after finding that the inaugural Women’s Footballer of the Year trophy he was due to present to Chelsea striker Fran Kirby was missing from the stage.
MICHAEL
OWEN played for Liverpool and Real Madrid, but that has not been enough to earn him a place on the BT Sport team for the Champions League final. Owen (right) has fallen so far down the BT rankings that Steve McManaman — who also represented both finalists — and Glenn Hoddle have been preferred as co-commentators in Kiev. Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard and Rio Ferdinand are the pundits. FiFA have declared, in their wisdom, that it is up to the four US-run territories of American Samoa, US Virgin islands, Guam and Puerto Rico to declare whether they are conflicted by voting in the 2026 World Cup hosts election. the USA are part of a joint bid with mexico and Canada. Surely such a blatant conflict should be something FiFA take a decision on. A FiFA spokesman said they were following their Congress vote regulations.
THERE
will be outrage at Manchester City if Premier League-winning boss Pep Guardiola is not honoured by the League Managers’ Association at their awards dinner on Tuesday. City’s concern follows former managers Manuel Pellegrini (2014) and Roberto Mancini (2012) being snubbed by the LMA despite their City sides winning the title. Instead, Alan Pardew and Brendan Rodgers respectively picked up the major award.
FA’s Wembley civil war
A ReVolt by FA blazers over the proposed £600million sale of Wembley to Shahid Khan was expected to break out at the council meeting on may 29 — but it has already kicked off.
FA chairman Greg Clarke tried to pre-empt any trouble by outlining the controversial plans this week to around 80 councillors representing the National Game. And it’s understood there was around 80 per cent opposition in the room to the Wembley plans, with the blazers demanding far more clarity about the scheme and plenty of questions Clarke was unable to answer.
IT
IS noticeable that the ECB are pushing forward Sanjay Patel and Mike Fordham as the main men behind The Hundred. If the concept goes belly-up — which is a distinct possibility given the opposition — then no doubt the pair will be made scapegoats in the bloodletting that inevitably follows. tHeRe is likely to be an extra edge to today’s Championship play-off semi-final first leg between middlesbrough and Aston Villa following claims from the Riverside that Villa players have already been asked how many tickets they want for the Wembley final for friends and family.
Villa deny strongly that they have already started their arrangements for the showpiece match on may 26 before they have qualified.