Gary Neville
Aug 9, 2016 9:26:52 GMT
Post by Dave on Aug 9, 2016 9:26:52 GMT
Where's the thread on Nev? For shame..
Anyway here's his interview with The Times.
After struggling at Valencia and with Roy Hodgson and England at Euro 2016, the former Manchester United defender tells Oliver Kay that management can wait.
Whatever the future might hold for Gary Neville — businessman, football club owner, renewable energy guru and now a television pundit again — he believes his days on training pitches and touchlines are over. Never say never, but a brutal crash course in management at Valencia, followed by a chastening experience with England at the European Championship finals, has left him more convinced than ever that the business side of life is “where I feel I’m best” — not least because, with coaching ambitions put aside, he can return to a nice little sideline as English football’s foremost television pundit.
It is not, he insists, a case of choosing the comfort of the Sky Sports sofa over the hot seat and the cut-and-thrust of management (though he does say of the football industry that “I like it less than I used to in terms of what I see and things that happen”). Nor is it, he says, a case of feeling that he lacks what it takes to be a manager. “I don’t judge myself on the Valencia experience at all,” he said yesterday.
The best players in the world are at Barcelona, Real and Bayern and they need to start coming to Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, City
“Better coaches than me have been sacked by Valencia. It’s more that I had been saying for 12/18 months that I had a decision to make this summer. People will suggest I’ve chosen punditry over coaching. That’s not the case. I think what I’ve probably chosen to do is attend to my business interests over coaching. It’s me applying myself to my businesses for the next four or five years and doing some television.”
Pogba, Mourinho and Guardiola excite me
Doing some television? Gary Neville “does” television brilliantly. More on his career path later — including his continued bewilderment about England’s Euro 2016 defeat by Iceland, a performance he still finds hard to comprehend six weeks later, having dared to watch it again — but for now, on his first day back at Sky Sports, he is settling back into the old routine.
The man who won eight Premier League titles with Manchester United is offering his thoughts on the season ahead and, in particular, the news of United’s imminent acquisition of Paul Pogba from Juventus for a world-record transfer fee of £93 million — great news for Neville’s former club and, even as the face of the biggest broadcast rights-holder, for a Premier League that has been crying out for more stardust and certainly more quality over the past few seasons.
“It excites me because for the last three or four years, the Premier League hasn’t been exciting enough,” Neville says of the Pogba deal.
[IMG]
“Not that it hasn’t excited me, but the quality of the football hasn’t been of the highest level. I think the quality has been poor. For all the money that has been spent, we’ve not been able to keep Grade A players or incentivise them to come here in the first place. I feel that, for the first time in a few years, a potential world-class player, who could have gone to Barcelona or Real Madrid, is coming to an English club. That’s good for the league.
“The fact that [Pep] Guardiola is here, [José] Mourinho is here, [Antonio] Conte has come, the fact that we’ve enticed Pogba to come, I think it gives the feeling that something is starting to happen again, that the very best players might be starting to think about coming to England again. The best players in the world are at Barcelona, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich and they need to start coming to Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, City.
“With the money we have in this league we have to be attracting not just the best managers but the best players. They spend an incredible amount of money and, with what the fans are paying, what Sky are paying, we need to be seeing the best players over here rather than watching teams struggle like crazy in the Champions League.
“The idea that we’re actually getting a world-class player rather than paying lots of money for a second-grade player, that appeals to me. I was in Spain for four months and we in England are seen as easy meat when it comes to transfers. They literally see us as ‘We need our coffers filling, it’s ok, let’s go and get some off a Premier League club.’ That’s how we’re viewed. We need to get away from that.”
United have been as guilty of overspending as anyone over recent seasons, but, when it comes to the Pogba fee and the appointment of Mourinho, a manager not quite in fitting with the club’s best traditions, Neville feels that needs must.
[IMG]
“The club is run differently now, but maybe it’s just the fact that they’ve been forced to run it differently,” Neville says. “Sir Alex Ferguson’s model was the perfect model — the same 18/19 players, with a homegrown base, and changing two or three every year — but it couldn’t go on forever. The model has to change according to the circumstances. The requirements are different now.”
Do those immediate requirements — to get back into the Champions League, to win the Premier League for the first time since Ferguson’s retirement in 2013 — mean that some of the club’s values will be sacrificed under Mourinho?
“The priority for United has to be to win the league again,” Neville says. “In a perfect world, the core values of United are to play entertaining football, to bring kids through, homegrown players, and to win things.
“But sometimes one has to be prioritised over the others and the priority at this moment in time has to be win the league, to get rid of the myth that they can’t cope without Sir Alex Ferguson, to stop the years building up so that three becomes six becomes ten, like it has done for United before, like it has done for Liverpool now.
“You’ve got to get rid of that problem and I think that’s where José Mourinho is at now, that’s where the club is at, with the money they’re investing in the team and the squad and the manager. And actually, entertaining football, yes it’s important, bringing kids through is important, but both probably come behind winning at this moment in time.”
I can’t explain that Iceland defeat
There is one game to which Gary Neville struggles to bring his usual razor-sharp insight and analysis. “I can’t explain it. I’ve watched it back and I still can’t explain it at all,” he says of England’s elimination from Euro 2016 at the hands of Iceland.
“It was unrecognisable from everything I’d seen from the players over the previous two years. Even against Russia and Slovakia, when things weren’t always going our way, there was no panic and they kept doing the right things, moving the ball quickly and passing it in the right way, whereas against Iceland it felt that after an hour that something had happened that no one could explain.”
A popular explanation is that, for all the fleet-footedness and technical skill of some of England’s young players, they were found, in a time of error-induced crisis, to be far too soft — lacking resilience, lacking courage, too startled to show their qualities.
I can’t explain it. I’ve watched it back and I still can’t explain it at allNeville on England’s defeat by Iceland
Neville sounds unconvinced by that theory. “For me to sit here now and suggest there’s a collective softness, when I didn’t believe it all leading up to the tournament, would be wrong,” he says. “No. I don’t have one bad word to say about them as a group. I don’t go along with ‘These young players of today, they don’t care about England.’ They were committed, they had the right spirit, but in the last 60 minutes against Iceland, it was like something had happened.
“But it’s not just this squad or these lads. It has happened a lot with England, including back in the 70s and 80s, and I haven’t got the answer unfortunately. That doesn’t excuse what happened at the Euros, but I think there has to be an acceptance that for 40/50 years it hasn’t been right. I wish I had the answer.
“I am protective of these lads that I coached with Roy. I did genuinely feel that with the style of football, the adaption of systems, the players we were picking — investing in Ross Barkley, John Stones, Jack Wilshere, Luke Shaw, Raheem Sterling, even when they weren’t necessarily in the best form, because we felt they were the best young players for England moving forward — we were travelling in the right direction. I still believe the direction of travel was right.
Anyway here's his interview with The Times.
After struggling at Valencia and with Roy Hodgson and England at Euro 2016, the former Manchester United defender tells Oliver Kay that management can wait.
Whatever the future might hold for Gary Neville — businessman, football club owner, renewable energy guru and now a television pundit again — he believes his days on training pitches and touchlines are over. Never say never, but a brutal crash course in management at Valencia, followed by a chastening experience with England at the European Championship finals, has left him more convinced than ever that the business side of life is “where I feel I’m best” — not least because, with coaching ambitions put aside, he can return to a nice little sideline as English football’s foremost television pundit.
It is not, he insists, a case of choosing the comfort of the Sky Sports sofa over the hot seat and the cut-and-thrust of management (though he does say of the football industry that “I like it less than I used to in terms of what I see and things that happen”). Nor is it, he says, a case of feeling that he lacks what it takes to be a manager. “I don’t judge myself on the Valencia experience at all,” he said yesterday.
The best players in the world are at Barcelona, Real and Bayern and they need to start coming to Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, City
“Better coaches than me have been sacked by Valencia. It’s more that I had been saying for 12/18 months that I had a decision to make this summer. People will suggest I’ve chosen punditry over coaching. That’s not the case. I think what I’ve probably chosen to do is attend to my business interests over coaching. It’s me applying myself to my businesses for the next four or five years and doing some television.”
Pogba, Mourinho and Guardiola excite me
Doing some television? Gary Neville “does” television brilliantly. More on his career path later — including his continued bewilderment about England’s Euro 2016 defeat by Iceland, a performance he still finds hard to comprehend six weeks later, having dared to watch it again — but for now, on his first day back at Sky Sports, he is settling back into the old routine.
The man who won eight Premier League titles with Manchester United is offering his thoughts on the season ahead and, in particular, the news of United’s imminent acquisition of Paul Pogba from Juventus for a world-record transfer fee of £93 million — great news for Neville’s former club and, even as the face of the biggest broadcast rights-holder, for a Premier League that has been crying out for more stardust and certainly more quality over the past few seasons.
“It excites me because for the last three or four years, the Premier League hasn’t been exciting enough,” Neville says of the Pogba deal.
[IMG]
“Not that it hasn’t excited me, but the quality of the football hasn’t been of the highest level. I think the quality has been poor. For all the money that has been spent, we’ve not been able to keep Grade A players or incentivise them to come here in the first place. I feel that, for the first time in a few years, a potential world-class player, who could have gone to Barcelona or Real Madrid, is coming to an English club. That’s good for the league.
“The fact that [Pep] Guardiola is here, [José] Mourinho is here, [Antonio] Conte has come, the fact that we’ve enticed Pogba to come, I think it gives the feeling that something is starting to happen again, that the very best players might be starting to think about coming to England again. The best players in the world are at Barcelona, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich and they need to start coming to Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, City.
“With the money we have in this league we have to be attracting not just the best managers but the best players. They spend an incredible amount of money and, with what the fans are paying, what Sky are paying, we need to be seeing the best players over here rather than watching teams struggle like crazy in the Champions League.
“The idea that we’re actually getting a world-class player rather than paying lots of money for a second-grade player, that appeals to me. I was in Spain for four months and we in England are seen as easy meat when it comes to transfers. They literally see us as ‘We need our coffers filling, it’s ok, let’s go and get some off a Premier League club.’ That’s how we’re viewed. We need to get away from that.”
United have been as guilty of overspending as anyone over recent seasons, but, when it comes to the Pogba fee and the appointment of Mourinho, a manager not quite in fitting with the club’s best traditions, Neville feels that needs must.
[IMG]
“The club is run differently now, but maybe it’s just the fact that they’ve been forced to run it differently,” Neville says. “Sir Alex Ferguson’s model was the perfect model — the same 18/19 players, with a homegrown base, and changing two or three every year — but it couldn’t go on forever. The model has to change according to the circumstances. The requirements are different now.”
Do those immediate requirements — to get back into the Champions League, to win the Premier League for the first time since Ferguson’s retirement in 2013 — mean that some of the club’s values will be sacrificed under Mourinho?
“The priority for United has to be to win the league again,” Neville says. “In a perfect world, the core values of United are to play entertaining football, to bring kids through, homegrown players, and to win things.
“But sometimes one has to be prioritised over the others and the priority at this moment in time has to be win the league, to get rid of the myth that they can’t cope without Sir Alex Ferguson, to stop the years building up so that three becomes six becomes ten, like it has done for United before, like it has done for Liverpool now.
“You’ve got to get rid of that problem and I think that’s where José Mourinho is at now, that’s where the club is at, with the money they’re investing in the team and the squad and the manager. And actually, entertaining football, yes it’s important, bringing kids through is important, but both probably come behind winning at this moment in time.”
I can’t explain that Iceland defeat
There is one game to which Gary Neville struggles to bring his usual razor-sharp insight and analysis. “I can’t explain it. I’ve watched it back and I still can’t explain it at all,” he says of England’s elimination from Euro 2016 at the hands of Iceland.
“It was unrecognisable from everything I’d seen from the players over the previous two years. Even against Russia and Slovakia, when things weren’t always going our way, there was no panic and they kept doing the right things, moving the ball quickly and passing it in the right way, whereas against Iceland it felt that after an hour that something had happened that no one could explain.”
A popular explanation is that, for all the fleet-footedness and technical skill of some of England’s young players, they were found, in a time of error-induced crisis, to be far too soft — lacking resilience, lacking courage, too startled to show their qualities.
I can’t explain it. I’ve watched it back and I still can’t explain it at allNeville on England’s defeat by Iceland
Neville sounds unconvinced by that theory. “For me to sit here now and suggest there’s a collective softness, when I didn’t believe it all leading up to the tournament, would be wrong,” he says. “No. I don’t have one bad word to say about them as a group. I don’t go along with ‘These young players of today, they don’t care about England.’ They were committed, they had the right spirit, but in the last 60 minutes against Iceland, it was like something had happened.
“But it’s not just this squad or these lads. It has happened a lot with England, including back in the 70s and 80s, and I haven’t got the answer unfortunately. That doesn’t excuse what happened at the Euros, but I think there has to be an acceptance that for 40/50 years it hasn’t been right. I wish I had the answer.
“I am protective of these lads that I coached with Roy. I did genuinely feel that with the style of football, the adaption of systems, the players we were picking — investing in Ross Barkley, John Stones, Jack Wilshere, Luke Shaw, Raheem Sterling, even when they weren’t necessarily in the best form, because we felt they were the best young players for England moving forward — we were travelling in the right direction. I still believe the direction of travel was right.