For England, reality is we had the right players, the right style, the right system — just not the right result . . .
As he reveals he won’t be a coach again, Gary Neville on his frustration that England are still stuck in the same damaging cycle
GARY NEVILLE raised no more than an eyebrow when his name was briefly caught up in the Sam Allardyce fiasco last month. Neville was criticised in the secret recording that cost Allardyce his job, the former England boss disdainful of the fact that a coach could be arguing with manager Roy Hodgson for the introduction of Marcus Rashford in that fateful defeat by Iceland.
Neville does not really deem it worthy of comment, only to point out that Hodgson wanted strong assistants and told Neville, Ray Lewington and goalkeeping coach Dave Watson to voice their opinions when they thought it was necessary.
Perhaps the reason why he is phlegmatic is because Iceland, Euro 2016, Valencia and all that, seem a little remote. Coaching is not now so important in his life. There was a time when he might even have been touted as an England manager. He might have been a candidate when Allardyce fell but Iceland put paid to that. That and a tricky four months in Valencia where he was t recruited and sacked by Peter Lim, the Singaporean billionaire who remains a business partner.
At one stage it seemed Neville might lead a renaissance of English coaching. But the bruising first six months of 2016 with Valencia and England have stalled his progress. And now it seems unlikely he will return to that part of his life.
In Hotel Football, the themed hotel opposite Old Trafford that was his first business venture with Lim, he talks enthusiastically about his forthcoming projects, including hospitality schemes at another Manchester hotel he is building and possible plans for an academy. Most of all, he talks about a new stadium at Salford City, the non-league club he bought with brother Phil, Ryan Giggs, Nicky Butt and Paul Scholes.
In the two years since the former United players took over, Salford have been promoted twice, had a run to the second round of the FA Cup and are challenging for the play-off places just two tiers below the Football League.
NEVILLE remains an analyst with Sky Sports and, even if he wanted to — and Neville says he does not — it seems unlikely there would be time to coach. ‘In the next five years I will be concentrating completely on business, on Salford City, on some education projects and the hospitality projects,’ he says.
‘I’ve committed now. I put two or three things on hold while I was in Valencia and in the summer. And obviously, after the summer I was: “Right these projects go and we go with them now.” And they’re going. And I’m too integrated into them and at the forefront to go and do something else.
‘The new stadium at Moor Lane isn’t just building the stadium: it’s operating it, it’s making sure there is an experience for the fans. I won’t be doing everything but the direction comes from me and the other lads.
‘People will say I’ve chosen punditry over coaching. No. I’ve chosen business over coaching. The reality is I would have loved to have been at Valencia for 18 months and it didn’t work out.’
In recent months, Neville appears to have been dividing opinion again. In breathing new life into punditry at Sky Sports, he appeared to be in danger of becoming universally popular. Yet many seemed to enjoy his struggles at Valencia and then saw England’s failure as his comeuppance as much as Hodgson’s. Some will regret that English coaching is losing another bright young mind, but Neville thinks not.
‘To be honest, I don’t look at it like that,’ he says. ‘There’s was always going to be a decision to be made at the end of the summer. My contract in Valencia was five months, I had five months left with Sky and five months left with England. I had all these businesses coming to a head as well. So the question was: “Do I commit to coaching and put someone in charge of the businesses?” The defeats, what happened in Valencia, what happened with England, has an influence on the decision-making. The businesses would have still carried on and I would still have had an influence, but not to this extent if I had carried on coaching.
‘The best coaches commit 100 per cent and don’t have any distractions. And I’ve got too many distractions to be a coach. That’s the reality. I turned down four or five jobs in the three years preceding Valencia. I went over to Valencia for the owner and because I have a relationship with him and I would not change that experience for the world. I had a wonderful experience, which didn’t go as well in results.
‘What other people might say is a failure, I don’t see like that. I don’t. I see my life as being a road with some obstacles on it and sometimes you hit them.
‘There will be English coaches who are more committed to coaching than I am. Eddie Howe, other people who have committed their whole life to it, every waking minute, and they are the ones who should be believed in. It’s not a shame that I’m not there. The reality is — you can never say never — but I think it is unlikely you’ll see me step back into a coaching role, certainly in the next five years. And beyond that you say: “Well I’ve not committed for five years. How could I just go straight back in?”
‘So the reality is that I probably am consigning myself to no coaching position, unless in five years I wake up and say: “Actually, I’d like to do something
locally and something happens.” But, honestly, at this moment I can’t see it at all. I’m far more passionate about those things I’m doing and Salford City than I am about coaching.’
He watched England’s difficulties against Slovenia against Slovakia with a sense of deja vu, having been directly involved for almost 20 years now. ‘What we saw last week and last month are the players starting off on a journey again and going back to square one in some respects,’ he says.
‘Some players I saw included last week, I thought: “We know about them.” And some players who haven’t been included, I’m thinking: “Why have they
not been included? Because we know what they can do.”
‘We went through that cycle. When you do change and start all over again, the new coaches have to find out about those players. I’ve seen it over 20 years, where new managers give everyone a chance again rather than trust the fact that the previous manager might have been picking the right players, the right system and the right team.’
He would not argue with the judgment though, that whatever went right under Hodgson, ultimately the team failed.
‘Absolutely — and unless you don’t qualify, you’re only ever be judged on a tournament. And the sadness for me watching in the last couple of months and since the tournament is that it definitely was the right direction. But when you lose a game like Iceland, you lose the right to have a say any more.
‘The reality, what people will work out in time, is that the direction of travel was correct, the identification of the right players was correct, the system and the style of players was correct but not always the end result.’
When that end result will finally come is the burning question.
‘You’re talking about making sure you’re mentally strong enough to withstand the toughest situations, the biggest pressure,’ he says. ‘I played in a team incapable of that and I’ve been part of coaching teams which were incapable of that.
‘So the reality is that it will happen when you get a group of players who are not just talented enough but who are mentally strong enough to overcome real difficulties, like penalty shootouts, like the last minute of a game when there’s a chance, real big moment. This is not a current player or a current manager thing. I do believe that it will be overcome and there will be a group of players and a coach who will achieve that success.’
For now, Salford City rather than England is the recurrent theme in his life. Perhaps even Neville didn’t realise when he engineered the takeover in 2014 quite how much it would get under his skin and dominate his life.
But after two promotions, they have risen from the Evo-Stik First Division North to the Conference North, which is the level at which clubs are on the cusp of being full-time professional.
‘The two promotions have caught us a little bit by surprise,’ he says. ‘And there’s no doubt we have the most modest facilities in the league.
‘To think that, two years ago this was just an idea and now we’re talking about delivering a stadium and pushing the club more towards full time in the next couple of years is something that’s really exciting.’
He knows that the new stadium will only give fresh life to the accusations that he and his former team-mates are something akin to the Manchester City of non-League football, racing through the leagues with bigger budgets. It is a point Neville disputes, to the point of being willing to publish his wage bill.
‘There’s no doubt that we have high budgets,’ he says. ‘But it was printed that the players we signed in 2014, Danny Webber and Gareth Seddon, were on £800 a week. They were on half that. The wage never moved in two years.
‘A Halifax player, a gobby little so-andso, came to me last month at the end of the game and said: “Your budgets are scandalous. You’re paying players £1,000 a week.”. Honestly, there is no one anywhere near £1,000 a week.
‘A lot of people work themselves up into a stress thinking we’re paying all this money. And it’s forcing the other clubs to pay more, which is not good. But I’d be happy to sit down with any club in the league, all the chairmen, and say: “Look this is our budget, this is what we’re paying. Please, don’t let the jungle drums dictate and determine what now players can ask for.”
‘We pay well but I don’t think we’d have the highest budget in the league, I think we’d be the third or fourth. I’d publish all players’ contracts. I know people will say that might not help players but I said that when I played. I would publish all wages — to stop agents... and agents’ fees.
‘If you look at the MLS in the US, they do it. It’s just normal. I know there are other clubs paying more because when we were signing players, those players went to other clubs and showed us their contract offers. And we said: “No, we’re not matching it.”.’
SALFORD City are also partly a vehicle for demonstrating how he and his former team-mates believe a club should be run. In the Class of 92 book he berates the FA and the Evo-Stik League for forcing the club to raise ticket prices for cup and play-off games and talks about how English football lost its identity and what needs to be done to recover it. But he also expands on his brief experience in Valencia.
As an exercise in how the world views England it was invaluable. He relates how in passing drills, any wayward, clumsy or heavy pass was scoffed at by players as ‘Pase Ingles’ — an Englishpass; how agents and clubs talk about offloading players to the English, because of the inflated prices paid.
One particular detail bothered him about training. In England, goalkeepers come out 15 minutes before the outfield players to work with the ball, usually pretty vigorously.
In Spain that did not happen. The goalkeepers trained with the outfield players, joined in passing drills and played as a sweeper in mini games. He pulled aside goalkeeping coach Jose Manuel
Ochotoerena, and challenged him. Ochotoerena, explained that it was better for them to work with their hands at the end of training when they were tired to replicate a game.
And he also said that it was more important that they were fresh to work with their feet, because in a game they touch the ball with their feet on average 40 times and with their hands only 15.
‘It’s obvious. But I’d never seen an English team do that,’ concedes Neville.
So, does he feel there is still a deficiency in English coaching? ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘There’s no doubt we’ve struggled in the Premier League in the last four or five years and internationally for many, many years.
‘I believe there will be a successful England, I want there to be. The lines are fine. It’s not as cut and dried that you should rip everything up. We should believe in what we do ourselves.
‘The belief in our coaching is low. It’s low internationally. In Spain, the Premier League is viewed as being a cash cow for the rest of Europe and English coaching is not respected that much and it’s a shame.
‘You could argue that we don’t even respect ourselves as a country because we don’t even have that many English coaches in the Premier League. We don’t have that many English owners. You could argue that we have allowed the global game to infiltrate, which is fine; I believe in the movement of people.
‘We have lost our footballing identity. And I do think there should be a level of control. I do believe in the 50-50 model. There should be 50 per cent English, 50 per cent foreign. That feels right.
‘I’d never say you must have an English manager but maybe you have to have an English coach within your first team staff. British coaching was very well respected 20 years ago with Terry Venables, Don Howe, Bobby Robson, John Toshack and Roy Hodgson. It’s now less respected but it will change.
‘You do pick up things from other cultures, from other countries, that’s in everything.
‘There are foreign dishes here which we would never have thought we’d see 10 or so years ago. We’re influenced by other cultures and football is the same. But I think people say: English football, what is it? Is it a pressing game?
‘Last season was a huge pressing thing with Jurgen Klopp and Mauricio Pochettino, now it’s possession with Pep Guardiola. Jose Mourinho has a more physical and pragmatic style, Leicester counter-attack with Claudio Ranieri.
‘It’s almost like we’re flirting with what we like because we see something coming over.’
For now, Neville will only be playing the role of critic, observing and what is served up. Maybe at some stage he will venture back into the heat of the kitchen. But it seems that vocation has passed him by.