I saw sacrifices my sister had to make, while Gary and I had everything...
Neville vows to fight for equality as he prepares for England bow
THE first letter Phil Neville received upon becoming England manager told him that he earned his opportunity and reminded him not to forget the sacrifices and disciplines he had learned along the way. And that, should he ever need it, the writer was always just a telephone call away for advice.
It was from Sir Alex Ferguson. ‘ First letter, without fail,’ says Neville.
It was on his mind on the day he was to be formally announced as manager of the England women’s team. ‘It’s funny because I wasn’t going to wear a tie because it’s modern day and all that,’ he says.
‘And I remember packing my bag at my mum’s and I had Sir Alex here...’ He points to his head and then mimics that gruff Glaswegian accent. ‘ “Get a tie on, son”. ’
Ferguson is still managing, his reach almost as influential as ever.
Neville flies to Ohio today for his inaugural tournament — the She Believes Cup against the US, France and Germany — and England’ s leading women are presumably about to experience, at least to a degree, the Fergie effect.
Neville says: ‘ If we’re talking man-management, Sir Alex could walk in a room and sense whether you’re happy, you’re sad, you’re having problems at home. He could sense it. It’s a special quality that he had. Little things.
‘ He demanded you said good morning, he demanded you said please and thank you. If your kit man is working every hour that God sends on tour, he was the first person you’d say good morning to.
‘The cleaners in the launderette, he used to go down and say good morning to them every morning without fail and you think to yourself: how did he manage all those staff? I’ve got 15 to manage on my staff at the FA, he had 800 at Manchester United and he knew everyone’s name, everyone’ s family’ s names, mums, dads, wives, uncles. He had a special quality.
‘Did he do much coaching on the field? No, but he was the best manager I worked for because he had that knack of managing people.’
Neville is about to discover just how many of those qualities he has imbibed. It’s all well and good dressing for the job, but England have a World Cup to win next year and, given the furore surrounding his appointment, there is no honeymoon.
Many would have preferred a female coach after former manager Mark Sampson left because of relationships he had with female players while manager at Bristol. Then, he hadn’t applied for the job initially and was only asked to when the two preferred candidates turned it down and FA Head of Women’s Football, Baroness Campbell, decided to lengthen her shortlist. And then there is Twitter. Neville had attempted an inappropriate joke about ‘battering the wife’ (at table tennis) some years ago and made a comment about women preparing breakfast and making beds. He has apologised. ‘ It was wrong. It was wrong in 2018. It was wrong in 2011. So there have been no excuses. It was just wrong.’ All this so soon after Sampson’s resignation, which came to a head because of a prior inquiry into complaints by striker Eni Aluko. It made it seem as though the ‘ impossible job’ cliché could be applied equally across both the men’ s and women’s England teams. Neville, though, is nothing if not an eternal optimist. ‘You know what? It actually excited me, the size of it. Because I thought, “Wow, imagine if we win a World Cup”.
‘There were one or two people who said, “Phil, is it really worth it?” But it actually made me think I was doing the right thing even more because there was so much interest due to the profile of the job. It probably brought home to me that this is a big job.
‘I park next to Gareth Southgate. It is the next biggest job within the FA. I had a feeling of, “This is the big time. This is where I want to be”. And it actually fuelled me a little bit.’
Has he re-thought his views on equality? ‘ It’s not changed me, because as I said at the time, it’s not a true reflection of what I was.
‘It was a difficult three or four days. But I think I dealt with it at the press conference as honestly as I could. I think from then, we’ve drawn a line under it. Have the team spoke to me about it? No. Have I brought it up with them? No. Will I do? Probably not. Because I said to them (at a training camp) in La Manga that if anyone has any problems, they have my number.’
It is perhaps ironic that his tweets saw him caricatured by some as a chauvinist, because Neville has been surrounded by strong, elite sportswomen all his life. ‘My mum was the first girl to play for a town team with the boys at football,’ he says.
‘So the football quality in our family is from my mum, not my dad. That’s what she says anyway.’
His twin sister Tracey won 81 caps for England at netball and is now head coach of the national team. Her support for her brother last month was perhaps to be expected but, in her words, he is a man ‘who has spent his life showing support to me as a sister, athlete and coach’.
There couldn’t actually be a better example of the inequality in sporting opportunities than the Neville twins. ‘She’s probably better,’ offers Phil.
So he knows the struggles sportswomen have often had, including some of this England team.
‘I’m under no illusions,’ he says. ‘I look at my sister and the sacrifices she’s made. Getting up at 3.30 in the morning on Sunday with my mum to go to East Grinstead just for a training session — for a training session!
‘This was at 14 all the way to 18 when every bit of her money had to be counted for expenses, training gear, and me and Gary were at United getting company cars. I’ve seen it in front of me, so I don’t take it for granted.’
Of course, there is one area in which the England men’s footballers constantly lag behind the women — performance.
Neville’s team are genuine World Cup contenders. Southgate’s team aren’t. Hence the pressure on Neville this week and in the World Cup qualifier against Wales at Southampton’s St Mary’s on April 4, when a 20,000 crowd is expected.
Aluko, who has been in and out of the Chelsea team, isn’t back in the squad. If she returns to previous form though, Neville says she will be selected.
Aluko’s Chelsea team-mate Anita Asante, who was frozen out by Sampson and was so critical of the FA it seemed unlikely she would return, is back.
Having negotiated the politics, it will presumably be a relief to coach a football team on Thursday against France. A team who have a realistic chance of emulating the men of 1966.
‘It would be one of the biggest things that’s ever happened to the country if the women could win the World Cup,’ says Neville. ‘It would be my greatest ever achievement.
‘We’ve been to two semi-finals and I have to train them for the critical moments so we are winning semi-finals, winning the penalty shoot-outs. I see this as the biggest challenge I have ever taken on in my life.’