Gary Neville: From Football Legend To Building A Business Empire
嘉宾：Gary
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§01Transcript — part 1
The thing I think about most, especially when I'm on the go but also when I'm sat here in the Diary of a CEO studio, is the Wi-Fi and internet that we have to work with. In fact, anytime I'm filming away from the studio, one of the first things I do when I arrive is open up an app and do a speed test to see how strong the signal is.
The number of screenshots I've sent to my team about Wi-Fi signals at different locations is actually pretty crazy. It matters that much to me because it's such a competitive advantage to have fast Wi-Fi. Because on any given day, if I'm recording hours and hours of footage with a podcast guest, I then often have to have my team send that across to our London team who then do the edit.
So, fast Wi-Fi and internet is not a "nice to have," it is absolutely business mission-critical. So, when it came to finding the best provider who could supply internet and Wi-Fi to our new LA studio, which I'm sat in right now, we looked at every single option.
And of all the providers, the one that came back with the steadiest connection, as well as being the cheapest, was today’s sponsor, Spectrum Business. Spectrum Business keeps businesses of all sizes connected with fast, reliable internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, and mobile services. Millions of business owners already rely on Spectrum to keep their operations connected.
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That was making me a little bit upset.
Gary Neville! Fantastic, incredible man.
One of the things that people don't know about you is just the scale of your business portfolio. It's quite honestly mental.
The only thing you can ever do in life is work as hard as you possibly can and never give in.
What is the cost?
I basically collapsed to the floor and had a fit. I went to the hospital, had checks, and then found that I need to slow down a little bit. I'd stopped doing the things that kept me well and I'd just run myself into the ground. So, I knew that at that point then, I needed to see somebody.
Manchester United are failing.
I do feel sorry for the current players. That won't go down well with a lot of Manchester United fans. These players go out onto the pitch now and they feel alone. But that's where I am a little bit critical of Cristiano. You're the star. Now's not the time to be throwing your arms around. Now's the time to make sure you lead those people.
Resilience, robustness, and hard work can be taught and learned. I don't think it's something you're born with. From the minute I joined at eleven to the minute I left at thirty-six, Manchester United got everything out of me. Everything.
Of all the people I always talk about having the influence on my life, I never mention my mom and her mom and dad. They're far better people than I am. That's making me a little bit upset.
So, without further ado, I'm Stephen Bartlett, and this is The Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.
We are a normal working-class family. There are no famous sporting ancestors in our family, yet somehow we won a combined 218 caps for our country at football and netball between us. Tracy Neville MBE, your sister, went twice to the Commonwealth Games and World Championships, representing England 74 times and coached the national team.
How and why is that possible? That three siblings in a family reach sporting greatness when there isn't a long lineage of, you know, "the granddad was at Manchester United, this person was at this club and they opened doors for me"?
I don't know really. I'll start at the end because I was having a conversation yesterday about how long you should take off after you've had a baby as a couple, whether it be the man or the woman. And I was thinking about my sister, and she took like two or three weeks off and then she was back at it.
Also, my father passed away seven years ago. On the morning of his funeral, I went and presented our project, St. Michael’s, at a council meeting and then went and got ready at home and went to his funeral straight after it. And someone said to me, "It's not normal, that."
My sister—my dad passed away in Australia whilst he was watching my sister play for the Commonwealth Games. Me and my brother flew straight over there. My sister was still coaching the team; she never broke stride. He was on a ventilator keeping him alive, even though he'd actually, to be fair, passed away, and they were just waiting for us to get over.
The day after we got there, my sister said, "I've got a game tomorrow. We can't pronounce that he's actually dead until after I've finished the game and I come back to the hospital." When I think of that, in terms of that feeling of just that drive and commitment to what we do, people say it's not normal. Someone said to me, "It's not normal that you would continue your lives irrespective of that."
That probably came from my dad and from my mom. But I think of it as in different layers for me personally. I don't know what it was like for my sister or my brother, but for me personally, I think of it as being: the first layer was my mom and dad, their love for sport, their commitment to get there early to do things. My dad used to say, "Get up early, get there early, get your job done."
And then when I get to United, I'm hit by Nobby Stiles, Brian Kidd—Manchester United European Cup winners in 1968—and then Eric Harrison, a northern, tough Yorkshireman who every single day drilled us about what it was to be a Manchester United player.
And then you're exposed to Sir Alex Ferguson, Roy Keane, Peter Schmeichel, and Mark Hughes. So, these different layers of monstrous mentalities of people who are just massive leaders. I was exposed to them, and that's why I always say that resilience and robustness and hard work can be taught and learned. I don't think it's something you're born with.
And I think when you say, "How did we achieve that?" I just think we're very fortunate with our parents and the exposure that we had to brilliant leaders throughout our career and examples and the standard bearers that were next to us.
Learning through words—those words that your dad would say to you about getting up and getting at it every morning—is a great way to learn, but actions, I think in hindsight, seem to be the best way to really learn those lessons vicariously from observing our parents and how they're behaving in their lives.
I'll never forget the day that I saw my mom—my mom stopped coming home, and then I asked my dad where she was, and he said, "Oh, she sleeps in the back of the shop now," this corner shop she was running. Then going there and seeing this bag of rice that she was sleeping on that had all these rat holes in it from where the mice and rats had been eating it. That visual of her working that hard, even though she didn't have to, to support our family was a lesson that I learned without her saying a word.
What are the lessons that you learned from your dad? Because you cited him there as being a pretty go-getter person. How was he functioning professionally that taught you these lessons?
He was a lorry driver, and he basically worked for Constellation Luggage, which was just luggage, you know, suitcases. He had to do three drops a week at Daventry, which is south of Birmingham, and he just had to get them there basically by the end of Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
But we lived in a two-up, two-down terraced house, and every time my dad got up, you could hear your dad get up. When you're young, you just hear it because obviously the lights come on, you hear the noise, the floorboards are creaking. We always got up early as a family anyway, but at 4:00 or 5:00, you'd hear my dad.
We lived in the back bedroom, and his lorry, his wagon, was parked at the back when he was going to do a drop the next day. And he'd leave at 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning on the Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. He'd take the suitcases, he'd wait for the depot to open at sort of 7:00 or 8:00, drop them off, and he'd be back and have his job done by 11:00.
And then he'd start to go and do what would be his commercial work—the fundraising for testimonials, the thing that he loved for, say, for instance, Lancashire County Cricket Club players. That was his passion, and that's how he got into Bury Football Club as a commercial director. Because he had a sales mentality, my dad.
But he'd get his main job done by 11:00 every single morning. He'd be in Daventry and back in a lorry. And then after school, he'd take us to football and he'd take us to cricket. So, the amount he fit into a day was unbelievable. He'd almost do two jobs: he'd do his main job which was earning him his money as a lorry driver, then come and do the job which would be potentially a side job selling for Lancashire County Cricket Club or the Greenmount Cricket Club.
He organized dinners and events and things like that. And then his family would come after school where he'd put them into sport and we'd go to United in the evening. We were at United from eleven, Monday and Thursday night. So, this constant drive of trying to fit as much as you possibly can in the day—and that's where I sort of get the "attack the day" from. It was from my dad. "Get up, get there early, let's make sure we're there."
Even at United, we'd get there early on Saturday. There would never be any risk with time of being late. I feel sometimes that is a good thing; it's put that into us. But sometimes to live by that now, particularly at the age I'm at, sometimes you sort of think it's hard to keep on doing it. You wonder now, particularly what we know now, whether it's the right thing.
My dad had heart problems at a very early age, at the age of 42. He was a lorry driver, he liked to go for a beer, he liked a night out, he did too much, he got stressed. All the things that I do now. So, you think, there's a lot I can see in my dad of me, but I don't think I can change it really.
What is the cost? Because for everyone, I sat here with Tim Grover, who actually coaches a lot of the young United players now, coached Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant for a span of fifteen-odd years. He was their sole coach. And he said for everyone's greatness, the thing that causes their greatness—in your case, that drive and ruthlessness and dedication caused you to become a Manchester United legend and all these other things—but what is the cost on the other side that people don't see? He referred to it as: we have our light side and we have our dark side. The dark side is a consequence, an unavoidable consequence of the light side. What was that dark side for you and your dad?
Health, I think. And I've seen that in the last couple of years with myself. I think...
Physical health?
No. I've said this, to be fair, on something that I've done myself in the last week on The Overlap. I actually, to be fair, Raheem Sterling scored the goal in the European Championships against Germany a year and a half ago, and I basically collapsed to the floor and had a fit.
And after that, I went to hospital, had checks, and then found that I need to slow down a little bit, basically. And it's similar things to what my dad was told in his 40s. That, you know, ultimately I do too much, I think too much, I need to relax more. To be fair, my wife says it quite often: "You're here, but you're not present."
God, I fight that. Do you get that? Oh my god.
So, you know something that's interesting? I was doing an interview the other day with Geoff Shreeves. Geoff's known me 15-20 years. And he said, "The problem is when I'm asking you a question, you've got my question inside the first two seconds—let's say it's a 10-second question—you've got my question inside the first two seconds, the next eight seconds you're thinking about what you're doing after. I can see it in your eyes already." And he's right.
Even during this interview, I'm speaking, and sometimes I lose my way in an interview and I actually forget what the question was. Quite often I'll say, "What was the question?" If I'm on a stage doing a Q&A: "What did you actually ask me?" because I've actually drifted off whilst I'm answering the question into something that I need to do later. And it's "I'm never present."
So the consequence is that maybe... I remember Sir Alex saying to me he missed his children growing up. I am missing my children growing up. That's a consequence of my life. I've been in London for four days. You know, but what can I do? I come down, do Brentford vs. Manchester United, I then stay down Sunday because I can't get a train back, the trains were on strike, and then I'm down doing Monday Night Football, and I'll go back today.
Last week I was down for another four days, but it's what I do. I love what I do; I wouldn't change it. But this afternoon I'll get back to Manchester, I've got meetings until 6:00, and then tomorrow I'm full all day. Thursday I'm in Glasgow doing a dinner with Sir Alex Ferguson. So, it is a constant sort of every single day that I feel like I'm filling days with things that I love and want to do.
But then you say to yourself, you do have those odd moments more now: "Why am I doing all this?" Why are you doing this now? You love doing it maybe, it's what you enjoy, but you sometimes have those moments, don't you, where I have more of those moments where I think, "Why am I doing those? Why have I got two hotels? Why have I got a football club? Why have I got a university? Why have I built an Overlap channel? I'm already on Sky."
Why am I doing these things? But it's that idea of, I suppose, cramming as much into your life as possible thinking you've just only got this sort of short period time. Brian Kidd used to say to us, "Get your pace early, you can't make it up at the end." And we used to sprint and sprint in our runs and sprint.
And that meant if you collapsed at the end and you didn't quite finish it or whatever, it's better than managing yourself and thinking, "I'll save a little bit." I have to say, the players that I played with at Manchester United, we never saved anything. It was all left out there on the pitch. And I think that's how our lives are since as well—we just leave everything out there on the pitch. There's nothing saved, so we just end up, I suppose, saturating every single second of every single day.
I used to think that I was driven. I used to think that, and that sounds like a very good framing: "I'm driven, I'm motivated." I thought that was what was... because you said, right, "Why am I doing this?" After I do this podcast, there's maybe ten other companies that I'm running, I have zero time in the day, and then I try and cram in my girlfriend and my family and do a very bad job of that.
I used to think it's because I'm driven and I'm just whatever. And then I asked myself a question which, when I met Eddie Hearn, I saw the same thing—his book is called *Relentless*. Are we really driven, or are we being voluntarily driven (as in we're making the choice to drive towards something) or are we being involuntarily dragged by some kind of insecurity or some kind of discomfort with the prospect of not being busy? Because for me, I'm convinced these days that I'm probably being dragged by an insecurity that I developed at a very young age.
Maybe. Maybe. I'm not sure. I don't know. I don't feel... could you stop? I don't feel... not sure. Because this idea that if you stop, it'll kill you and all that sort of stuff—slow down. I do feel like I need to slow down. I read a book, I think, I can't remember what it was, a few years ago where it talked about: you can never really retire if you love work and you are relentless. But what you can have is "mini-retirements" during the year.
And that's what I've tried to do; I don't do it very well. So, for instance, this weekend I'm going to Spain, Friday till Monday morning. I call that a "mini-retirement."
That’s a weekend.
It’s a weekend. It's a mini-retirement. It's where I basically can say for three days, I'm there and I'm basically taking... I don't think about work. Now, I will, but... and sometimes some of my best ideas come when I'm on those types of trips.
But then in six weeks, I'll have another mini-retirement for five days or four days, rather than thinking you're going to stop for six months and sort of have a sabbatical. That's not probably going to happen with people like you or I because we just basically don't work that way.
So, to have lots of mini-retirements during the year is what I've tried to do in the last few years. I'm not sure I'm doing it very successfully. I'm not sure what's wrong with us, if that's what you're asking—"Is there something wrong?" I don't feel insecure or vulnerable. I don't feel insecure or vulnerable at all.
I feel so confident and I feel... not confident, I feel like I've got coping mechanisms to be able to deal with things. So, there isn't any criticism—there's very little criticism that I receive now that even touches the sides of me. And I get criticized heavily on social media through my football punditry, my opinions, whatever it may be, because of what I went through at United.
Losing that confidence at the age of 24 post-Treble, going through that difficult patch where I didn't want the ball, seeing the psychiatrist on my own, only the doctor knew, not talking about it till I was 35. But what that psychiatrist gave me was coping mechanisms and perspective.
And I just ask myself—if I go through a difficult moment now, I ask myself the question: "Will I come out of it the other side? Did I expect every day to be a good day?" No, I don't expect every day to be a good day. So when the bad day comes and it's a really bad experience, or you make a bad business decision—did you think every decision would be a good decision in business? No, it wouldn't. You're not going to make the right decision every single day. You're going to have bad decisions, bad choices, bad days.
So when they come now, I can put them into perspective and move on really comfortably. So, I feel like I'm—I don't feel vulnerable or insecure. I'm not quite sure sometimes... people say I've got a strategy, I've got a plan. I'm not quite sure any of us have really, because the reality of it is we don't know what door's going to open next.
You don't know six years ago, five years ago, that *Dragons' Den* is going to come and knock on your door. You don't know that. You haven't got a clue. Or 10 years ago, certainly. You don't know that's going to happen in your life. But when the knock on the door comes, you think, "I fancy walking through that door."
And probably the same with me, when things have happened in my life where I've thought, "I didn't expect that to come. Yeah, I'll take that." So we are probably being dragged. It's a little bit like jumping off... you go skiing, you're off the black slope. There's no way out of it; you're going down and you can't stop. And it's a little bit like... I feel like, to be fair, my life's a little bit like a black slope in skiing. I've gone over the edge, I've started. What can I do now? Slow down? Say to my businesses, say to the teams that I work with, "Sorry, I don't fancy this anymore"? Well, thanks for that, but you've... we're here still. I've got no choice.
I read this book called *The Body Keeps the Score*. And I was actually speaking to one of my best friends yesterday who was an extreme workaholic, and then he started having panic attacks. He ends up in hospital and he said to me, he said, "I felt fine."
But the body gives out first. The body will, when the mind is telling you, "No, you can cope with this, you're doing fine," the body will show you in a pretty drastic fashion that you're not okay and that you need to listen to yourself. Ever since you collapsed on that day, have you made changes, honestly?
I did. I have, I think. But then it's the actual... it's sustaining the changes and not dipping back into your old habits. That's the problem. So what do I do? I train four or five times a week; I wasn't always training pre-that.
I try... I've got a sleep ring and it focuses me more on the time I need to sleep at night. But then I don't always wear it now. It's a couple of years later; it's in my bag, it's here, I didn't wear it last night and I'm annoyed with myself because I didn't wear it last night because I forgot to put it on when I got back.
So, habits really that you drift back into your old habits. I try not to pick my phone up when I first wake up, but I'm failing miserably at that. I'm failing miserably, but I have taken email off my phone. I've taken WhatsApp off my phone.
Mmm.
Because they're things that I think were... emails, if... I think if you wake up to an email at 4:00 in the morning that's an email that's not a great email—let's say it's something that you think, "I've got to deal with that"—you aren't getting back to sleep. So I've taken email off my phone; it's only on my iPad. It helps.
WhatsApp—I mean, WhatsApp announced last week that they were going to sort of... this idea that you couldn't be joined in groups and people didn't know when you were online. I just felt like it was an intrusion, WhatsApp. I felt like people were attacking me, a constant attack of being added to groups and seeing that I'm online and things like that. And I'd think, "Oh no, get off, get away from me."
So I just do iMessage now. And I say to people, "Ring me." So there have been changes that I've made that are helpful, because I do feel email is... I love speaking to people. See, I lived in a dressing room where the camaraderie... we didn't email each other at Manchester United. Sir Alex Ferguson didn't email me. We had a brilliant team spirit in the club. We were there every single day. We spoke to each other, we socialized with each other, we'd help each other, we knew each other. And that's how you build a team spirit.
And I felt that sometimes email can be—I know it needs to happen in business, I know that you need to see attachments, I know you need to communicate with each other—but I do believe that they can be quite damaging to culture sometimes. Particularly if the wrong tone is on the email—I think you can be misunderstood on email. I think it can come across harsh. I think they can put pressure on people.
And I realized that the first five years out of football. I was emailing people at 5:00-6:00 in the morning. But you imagine, you emailing people at 5:00-6:00 in the morning, the impact that that's going to have on them when they wake up: "God, I've got to deal with that now. He's emailing back." It's like, that's not fair, it's not right. So I have made quite a few changes, but probably not enough.
Yeah, I completely agree. I don't... people... this will surprise people: I look at my emails once a week.
Oh, wow.
So my assistant looks at my inbox and then if there's... she puts them on my list and then I go to my list when *I* am ready. And also with all my WhatsApps and all that stuff, all notifications off. And it's just for me trying to take back control of my time. So I choose when I go to it; it doesn't notify me that it needs me now. And I used to have email dread. Early mornings, especially when you're running a big company—you've got, what, 600 employees or more?
Yeah.
There's always going to be something wrong.
There is.
And it doesn't care what time or occasion, it's going to interrupt you. There's always going to be... and I don't want that anxiety in my life.
Also, if there is a problem and something's gone wrong, then just ring.
They can call you.
Yeah, ring me. Just ring me. Anyone can ring me and just say, "Look, I've got a problem," and then we drop everything, don't we? I always feel like it's the biggest responsibility I have is to the people that I work with. And if they ring me and they're in trouble, they've got a problem, we have to deal with that. That's an absolute immediate.
You always, going back to your early years in football and as you came through the ranks, you always—and I've seen this in multiple interviews—kind of are a little bit self-disparaging about your own ability and talent.
I tell it. Yeah. I just played with brilliant players, didn't I? I mean, if you think about it, just go through the players who I played with: Jaap Stam, Denis Irwin, Peter Schmeichel, Roy Keane, David Beckham, Cristiano Ronaldo, Dwight Yorke, Eric Cantona. Every single one of them had more talent and ability than I did.
You know, they just did. It was just obvious around me. When I got to United—you say about insecurity—the only time that I ever felt insecure was when I got to United at 11. And I joined at 11, and there was a Center of Excellence group and we got retained every single year. But at 14 is where it gets really serious and they sign the schoolboys and the outer-town lads come in.
So all of a sudden, you're exposed to them, to Beckham, to Scholes joined at 14, all these brilliant players. And you think, "How am I going to survive here?" I could just... you... I'm aware. I know my own abilities. And I had to just do things differently.
I was a midfield player, then I was a center-back, then I ended up at right-back. There is an element of truth in what Carragher said: "No one wants to grow up to be a Gary Neville," meaning no one wants to grow up to be a full-back. Everyone when they're a kid scores goals or sets up goals. And then you find out that you're not good enough to do that and you get pushed back the team. That's what happened with me.
I was one position away—that was my last hope, right-back. You know what I mean? If I was out of the team if I couldn't play right-back. I'd gone from center midfield as an 11-12-year-old at United, then center-back from 14 to 18, and then told I wasn't good enough by my reserve team coach to be a center-back at United because Steve Bruce and Gary Pallister were there. And then I go to right-back.
So, you are aware that you're being pushed out of your positions by better players, and that that's your only route to success is hard work and playing at right-back and trying to adapt to that. And then it was good enough for me in the end.
But, no, it's not disparaging. I knew the game, I could organize, I knew the game well, I read the game well. And on the pitch, I would never, ever—I never gave in. So that around me, this idea of being able to organize the team, I could see the game in front of me. So I had an impact—I believe I had an impact on the other players that I played with beyond my talent through my understanding of the game and making sure that I never stopped going and we never stopped going. We keep going, we just keep pushing forward.
So if we're fighting for a goal, I... I never go into this level of detail. I've probably never said this before. When people say, "What's the greatest moment in my life?" I say it's the final in '99 in the Nou Camp when we won the Treble. But that... I made a run from right-back. I got the corner for the first goal because I went over... I sprinted over to the left wing and took the long throw to put it into the box. It came back out to me and we got the corner.
It's not an assist by any stretch of the imagination and typifies my career of seven goals and very few assists. I'm no Trent Alexander-Arnold or even a Denis Irwin. But that—you have to find a way to win. You have to just do everything you possibly can. You cannot leave anything on the pitch. You just sprint everywhere, you just do everything.
And that to me typified what probably I was: that I could see something in that, in terms of how to impact a game, whether it be through impacting someone else by getting them going and giving them the ball and keeping them at it.
And that's why I think he kept me there till I was 36, because it wasn't through ability at the end. He kept me there through 36 just through my influence and my impact I had in the dressing room. I'm pretty certain of that because it wasn't through anything that I was doing on the pitch. So I'm always humble around my own ability because of the talent I had around me. And that's why I get... on Twitter quite often people will say to me, "If it hadn't been... if you hadn't been at Manchester United, you'd been a jobbing right-back somewhere at like Fulham or Bournemouth or..." maybe I would!
I've never heard anyone in a high-up managerial position disagree with the phrase that "hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard."
Yeah, I mean, I could never, ever be accused of anything other than: from the minute I joined at 11 to the minute I left at 36, Manchester United got everything out of me. Everything. And to be fair, the club gave me everything, so we didn't owe each other anything. And that's something I'm proud of.
Longevity is actually probably one of the... consistency and longevity. Being able to consistently work hard every single day at a good level of performance and turn up every single day and be there is underrated, actually. And that's the thing that to me, for surviving 25 years under Sir Alex Ferguson in that environment of excellence and demands that he placed on people, was... it was a great achievement. But I did that with a lot less talent than the other players in the club.
When was the first time you realized that Sir Alex Ferguson was—you felt his influence? You felt his mindset?
Do you know something? In the early days, it was the old school, like, headteacher—not, he's not a headteacher by any stretch of the imagination, but you know that little bit of fear that you maybe have of your father as well if your father sort of gets a bit angry with you? You know that little bit of that dominating male of the '70s, '80s, '90s—probably going back beyond that—was apparent in Sir Alex Ferguson. That you knew when he walked into the room, the room went quiet. There was that presence, that aura: "The boss is here." And so you felt it straight away.
When people say to me, "How did you keep coming back every single year and continue to keep winning? What was the secret of that?" It was by his actions and what he did. I always remember when I was 34, right near the end of my career, we played the Champions League final on a Wednesday, we lost. We got back on the Friday from Rome or Thursday or Friday.
On the Saturday, I had to go and pick up my boots at Carrington, the training ground. So it was a Sunday morning. I had to go pick up my boots at Carrington, the training ground, to go to St. George's Park because I was doing my A-license coaching badge and it was my final assessment. And I went in at 7:00 in the morning. I'd organized to meet with the caretaker who was basically there on-site all the time to let me in.
And I parked on the back, and his office light's on and he's there in his chair. I thought, "Oh no, I don't want to see him. We've just lost the European Cup final four days ago." So I drove back round the front and went in, got my boots, and moved out. But he was there at Sunday morning, half 6:00, 7:00, the only person in the building with his light on, four days after we'd won the European Cup final—and he'd been in his mid-60s.
And I thought, "No one can live with that." That's the reason he's winning. Because no other manager, no other leader that I know, four days after that defeat in his off-time in the summer, is in his office on a Sunday morning at half 6:00. And he didn't know I was coming in, obviously, and he didn't see me either. I just saw him in the distance. I couldn't believe it.
And just all those sort of examples of that work ethic hit you every single day. And he knew how to tap into here; he knew how to get you, no matter who you were in the dressing room. He always used to get me—I always say this—by mentioning my grandparents. "What about your grandparents? Getting up every single day, putting their tie on, the work that they put in. How they never complained about anything, what they must have lived through obviously in the Second World War."
And he would say things like that in his team talks and it would always tap into me because I used to sit with my mom's dad and look at his medals that he'd had during the Second World War. He'd had three or four wounds; he had shrapnel wounds in his shoulders that he could still show me and bits of metal still in his body. And he would talk to me about the medals and where he'd gotten them from and how he'd been in Holland and how he'd sort of had to come back and then he went back over, how he married my nan on one of his returns back.
So that used to get me every single time. So when I used to play for United, when you think about what motivates you, what gets you going, and he used to mention, say, for instance, grandparents, and there's that difficult moment on a pitch where you think, "We're struggling here a little bit."
Now I think of my youngest daughter when I'm training—what keeps me going to the end of that training session? I think of silly things: "If I don't keep going here, someone's going to get my youngest daughter," and there's nothing going to get her, so I've got to keep going. And there it was my grandad, my mom's dad. And I used to think he wouldn't have stopped going. He came back having been wounded twice and shrapnel wounds twice and went back out to fight again. And he had those medals and he would speak to me about it. And I used to think, "How can I stop?"
But he would find that in me. Sir Alex would push those buttons and press those buttons. For someone else, it would become something completely different, I'm sure. It might be talking about the father, it might be talking about him going on strike in the Govan shipyards, it might be talking about another experience that he's had. But he would tap into everybody in the dressing room in some way that would mean they'd find something to mean they would never give in. And that's what... his film's called *Never Give In*. He never gave in, but also the influence he had on others never to give in through finding something in them was incredible.
Rio talked to me a lot about culture, and the culture that Sir Alex Ferguson set. Evra said the same thing. Having left football now and working in the world of business, you must be looking back on the culture he created and in some ways drawing a lot from that in your own businesses, right? What have you learned about the importance of culture?
Because there was this comment Rio made to me on the podcast that I've never forgotten, which is about Sir Alex Ferguson's lack of presence at the training ground. Rio said he only came into the dressing room a couple of times because he didn't need to. The culture was in there.
And then Rio talked about how then when Rio went and moved on to another club, in that same dressing room, players are talking about how much money they're making and all of these other things which would never have happened at United. No. How does one create that culture?
I suppose being grounded. He was grounded, and he believed in sort of the work ethic. Work ethic was everything to him. Being proud to work hard, being proud of the people around you who work hard, being proud of your teammates. He used to say, "Look around the change room. Look around. I'm proud of every single one of you, but look at each other, look at what you each do for each other on the pitch, and how you can't achieve what you're going to achieve without each other."
So he made us respect each other. Not everybody got on in our changing room, but most of us did. But he tapped into those things all the time. It was nonstop. And being grounded, looking after people. Little things like Wendy used to get the charity balls signed. And Roy Keane was like this as well.
So Wendy every Thursday would have 30 to 40 charity balls that we would sign and then they would go to the children's charities or the different charities in Greater Manchester or in the country. And sometimes you're in a rush, aren't you? You're a football player, you're young. "Ah Wendy, I'll sign them after, I'm in a mad rush, I've got to go and do my stretching, I've got to have a massage, I've got to have treatment," whatever it might be that you say on the way in. Some poor excuse that you'd give, or maybe you just genuinely did.
And there was one day where he basically... I think Roy had walked past Wendy and she was a little bit upset, and only five players out of the 23 in the squad had signed the balls. And Roy went upstairs and said to Sir Alex, "It's an absolute disgrace, this has happened a couple of weeks now."
He killed us. He absolutely killed us. The lack of respect to walk past Wendy, who was there to get the charity balls signed, and not sign them for her, for him was a dereliction of duty, it was a lack of respect, it's not what you do. "We're equal in this football club, we treat each other equally, we look after one another, we make sure that we're sort of compassionate."
And the idea of not doing things like that, little things like that, just little things like that stand out in my mind. So now, sometimes I walk into the businesses, and you know what we're like, we sometimes walk in on our phone and we don't say hello to people because we're that immersed in our own blinkered space.
But then I'll walk past sometimes and I'll realize that I've not said hello to someone. I'll go back and say, "I'm really sorry," and I'll, you know, say hi, "Are you okay?" And I do feel like even when in the office, there is no—I sit next to people in the office. I don't sort of have my own...
Glass tower.
Yeah, I don't, I don't. I make sure I go and sit in Cafe Football in the hotel, or I go and sit in the main restaurant at Stock Exchange or at Salford. I'll just go and sit in the main office. Because the idea that basically... he did have his own office and he did have his own space and he did, to be fair, delegate and he would keep his... but I don't think I'm like Sir Alex in the way in which I now look at my businesses, because I do believe it's very different now.
But he was very... the staff loved him. Everybody loved him at the club because he protected them. He knew everybody's name. He asked about their families, he knew the families' names. He was really, really attentive. He was far better at that than I am. Far better in that. But I probably, to be fair, mix with my teams more than he maybe would.
But the work ethic is the thing. Honestly, the only thing you can ever do in life is work as hard as you possibly can and never give in. And he said, "You've got that choice every single day." Really simple. That's it. The talent you've got, you just work as hard as you can every single day and never give in and then you come back the day after and do it again. And that's it.
That's the secret to what he believed, because he said the talent is *his* problem. Forget talent; "I've chosen you to be here, so I'm telling you you've got the talent. Don't you worry about that bit. What I need back in return is that other bit, which is the focus, the commitment, the dedication to make sure every single day you get up and you're here and you give your all and you don't give in."
And that's why I think I stayed where I was, because I believed him. I trusted in him. And now it's the same. If someone comes into our business and they've been selected to come in, that's because I believe they've got the talent, or someone in our senior management team believes they've got the talent. All they have to do in return now is go for it and give their all and be enthusiastic and not give in and then come back the day after and do it again.
And I keep... I try and keep it as simple as that. I know there's a lot more to it than that, but it is—it was that simple for us. I know then there's the tactics, then there's the decision-making, then there's the sort of concentration, all the things that go with it, but that was the sort of heart, I think, of every... all the messaging that we got from him.
They almost seem like old-fashioned values, what you're saying. It almost sounds, and I'm going to be honest, it almost sounds like what the modern-day professional culture might consider to be a little bit toxic. You know what I mean? This drive for hard work. But I have to say, I've never sat here with anybody that's reached the peak of their powers in their career that hasn't said the same.
But now, if I'm in my businesses, so I don't... things like: I never work the first week in January. I think it's the most depressing week of the year. After Christmas, you've had a high, and then you go back, it's dark, it's miserable, that first week. So I always take it off. But I always give the rest of our team in the office that I work in off as well.
So I don't make people do what I'm not going to do. I'm going away, I think in three weeks, for five days. And I said to everybody in the office, "Don't worry about the fact you've got 28 days in your contract. Those five days you're off. Have the last five days off of the summer, then we'll go for it to Christmas."
Also people have flexible working; they can come in Monday, they don't have to come in Tuesday, they can come in Wednesday. I trust them to do what they want. So there is an element of, yeah, I want hard... I do expect hard work, but I also want people to have a brilliant time and share in the success that we have. But also make sure that if I'm off, I would expect that they have those days off as well. I wouldn't expect them to come in.
I don't believe... I hate the idea of a work package that's got like, "You've got 25 days' holiday, you have to book it in." I hate that. I hate the idea of restriction. I hate it. I feel like it's bullying. "You must sit there in the office." I hate it. It's not right. It is not right. Don't tell people where to sit, how to work. Obviously there is a direction and there is a leadership that's needed, but I just feel it's really not acceptable.
And this was pre-COVID. Our office is like, to be fair, this room that we're in here now. So someone could be sat there, someone could be sat there, someone could be sat on the floor over there on a laptop. That's how it should be in an office. It should always be like that, I think. I don't think it needed COVID to make modern business act properly with the teams that they work with.
So I do feel it's very different than how we were at United, which is old-fashioned values. There's still some old-fashioned values—you have to work hard, you have to get the job done. We know that. But why do you have to say that to people? I think people know they have to work hard and get the job done. So why do you have to say that to them? You're looking to tap into them, make something unique in your business that makes them want to stay, really. That's what you want... you want to make it enjoyable. And that can still be enjoyable through hard work. I think it's quite enjoyable working in our...
No, well I know people that work for you obviously because, you know, we've got a colleague that used to work for me that works for you now and they are all very, very complimentary. So that's supported by the evidence that I have. But you're right, I've always found the contradiction there is "trust." You're saying to your team members to trust you, but you're not trusting them. And trust, I feel like, has to go both ways. And there's... and the other thing what ends up happening when you have those, in my experience, those very rigid rules is you'll get compliance, but you won't get like motivation. And as you've described it, you want people to be internally driven, not compliant because of punishment. That gets the best out of people, right?
It's interesting because Valencia taught me a lot, but around that time I was with England coaching with Roy Hodgson. And I'd lived at United where we were fined. You know, Nunez got sent off last night for headbutting Andersen. That's two weeks' wages at Manchester United. I got fined two weeks' wages regularly, four or five times.
It happens, football. It wouldn't happen in a normal workplace, but we know Sir Alex Ferguson's rules: if you violent conduct or chat back to a referee, you get fined. Fact. He won't accept it. People think Sir Alex Ferguson was like "get after the referee," but if we actually got booked for having a go at a referee, we would get fined.
So very much quite a rigid thing. And then Roy Hodgson said something to me when I was with England. I felt as though standards were slipping a little bit one time. I can't remember exactly what it was about. And I said, "We need some rules." Because we'd had a code of conduct at United, I was the players' rep, I knew what the standards were. And he said to me, "We don't set rules." He said, "Be very careful with rules." He said, "Because it's always the people that you don't want to break them that break them."
I thought, "That's quite clever, that." And ever since, there are no rules. There are no rules in our business in terms of "You must be here," "You must do this," "You must wear that," "You must..." you know, I don't expect formality in dress. I expect people to be comfortable. So I don't say you should wear this, or you should be here at that time, or we've got to do that in any part of my business. I don't create rules anymore.
Because once you create rules, for a start, it's rigid. I don't believe it's right. And the rules are there—they're unwritten, actually, the rules of sort of working hard and turning up and doing your job, all the things they're rules that are there, just they don't have to be written down. And you know, he said, "What happens if your star player walks in that's breaking..." because, you know, the ones that we were talking about that were setting the low standards. He said, "What happens if one of the star players walks in and... we need to work with the players to make sure that they understand what we expect of them and the standards. We don't need to set rules, because if you set rules and consequence and punishment, then it'll be the one that you don't want to break them and then you're in a big... you're in big trouble."
So it was a good lesson for me. And in football, it's very much a different place than a normal workplace anyway. It doesn't live by HR rules, a football dressing room. It doesn't. It doesn't, you know. Players are still getting fined. Players still get told where to be, when to turn up, what to wear.
We like it as well. I still like it now, actually. I think I like to be told what to do. I actually like it at Sky when people say to me, "Gary, we're doing this." I like being told what to do. I respond to it really well because I've had it, to be fair, I've been instructed from Eric Harrison, Nobby Stiles, Brian Kidd, Sir Alex Ferguson.
I've been instructed—I lived through the '70s and '80s. You could not live through the '70s and '80s as a child, early '90s, without being instructed because that was the form of leadership. So we still respond to it a little bit in our own lives, but then when I think about my children, I don't instruct them. I like independent thinking. I like them...
So when people talk about social media or when people talk about... you know, I was sat with someone yesterday who said, "I'm fearing my children going on social media." I always say to them, "Your children should get good at social media really quickly because they have to. They have to. They have to be good at it."
So my children are 13 years of age now. They're both obsessed with social media, with the apps, they're on it all the time. And you know, sometimes we'll say, "You know, that's enough tonight," and you know, let's come off it. But I want them to get good at it. I want them to use it and find out what information they can trust and what they can't trust.
I use Twitter now all the time for my—well, one to have a debate, but also to actually... my news, my major source of news is Twitter. It's my major source of news in my life. It's really helpful. I don't think as a sports journalist, broadcaster, I could live without Twitter. Really important to me.
So when people say "Twitter's a cesspit, get off it," there are elements of it that are, but that's a really important thing for me in my life because I find all the sort of articles, all the sort of opinions, you know, all the breaking news is there. How can I live without that? It's what I rely upon to be able to do my job.
So when I come off the pitch last Sunday doing West Ham vs. Man City and I see Manchester United have bid for Arnautović, I used to have to wait till the morning after for the newspaper 15 years ago. Our children aren't like that anymore. They want things instantly, they see things quickly, and they don't like to be instructed. We have to collaborate with them.
There's an inevitability, you're completely right, to social media and the internet and digital that will actually, I believe as well, will serve as a disadvantage to them if they don't keep up. Because you can't think of a profession these days that doesn't involve social media or the internet.
So you're, you know, in an effort to try and protect children sometimes we actually cause them a pretty substantial career disadvantage.
It should be taught at schools. It should be on the curriculum—social media, how to use it, when to use it, what to use it for, how to get good at it, the dangers of it. It should be something that's taught at schools. It's got to be more useful to them than some of the subjects that they're currently being taught in 2022.
You know when—and this is... I mean this is not a nice topic to talk about because we're both Manchester United fans—but through all you've been through in the era you grew up in and all of those famous influences you had that instilled those values in you, and even the early initiations you had in that dressing room from the senior players... when you look at what's going on at the club today, even though you're not in the dressing room, you must have a pretty strong hypothesis as to why Manchester United in 2022 are failing.
Yeah, I think a lack of... it comes down to a lack of leadership and direction from the top and vision, and a deterioration of the sort of beliefs over a long period of time. I said last night actually that a school that's underperforming over a long period of time and getting poor results gets put in special measures by Ofsted and by government.
And they're not blaming the kids. It means that the governors, it means that the sort of the headteacher, the people at the top of the organization at the school have not basically set the standards for those children and they've let the school basically rot and the results become poor. I think that's what's happened at United.
It was a high-performing school. The headteacher has left, the board of the governors left, David Gill. And what's happened since is that they've been replaced with people who haven't got it, and poor standards have just meant that ultimately over a period of time there's become an embedded rot. And that's what's happened.
And also the kids, the players, look now like they haven't got a clue anymore and they're getting poor results. I don't believe all those Manchester United players that are on that pitch are poor players. When they came to the club, some of those players, I was really excited by their arrivals. And I've seen players that weren't as good as them go to other clubs and excel.
So the environment, the culture, the... yeah, the enthusiasm that you need to go into work every single day, I don't believe has been created by the hierarchy at the club. And then there's been a sort of a lack of investment into the facilities, into the stadium, into the training ground.
So now Tottenham, Liverpool... Liverpool now, Liverpool Football Club, I used to laugh when I used to go to Anfield when I used to compare it to Old Trafford. I used to think, "They can never catch up, they're too far behind." They're just building that second stand now behind that left-hand goal where the away fans sit. And we saw it last night towering up. The main stand now is towering up and it holds I don't know, it holds 20,000.
Anfield will be a more modern ground than Manchester United and Old Trafford in 12 months. That is unforgivable. To think where not only they've overtaken us on the pitch, but actually they've overtaken us off the pitch. Manchester City are light years ahead on and off the pitch. Tottenham have invested 1.3 billion in a stadium—have you been to Tottenham stadium?
Oh yeah. It's out of this world; it's a museum. It's the best in the world. I can't believe what I'm walking through when I see it.
And yet if you go to their training ground, which I've been to, it's an amazing, brilliant facility that is far better than Carrington, where we moved to in 2000. So 22 years ago, it's had a bit of investment, but in 20 years, Manchester United have not invested in the stadium, they've not invested in the training ground that much.
And then they've lost the two main people. And before you know it, you've got a club that's really struggling. And I've said that in the last couple of years, the only thing that I really do think can change it now is the ownership. And I say that on here more calmly than I say on Sky Sports, but it's not an emotive subject anymore; it's a very serious issue. There is an embedded rot at the club.
You know that they're walking past Wendy's balls now, don't you? You know what I mean?
No.
As in, like, signing Wendy's balls personified for me. Caring about values in every single touchpoint, even the small stuff. And so I was thinking then, I can almost imagine now those small expressions of "our values." As you said, they come from the top down. They're probably now being missed.
And it's funny because as fans we look at the thing, we go, "Oh, he's not running fast enough" or we'll blame this player or Fred or this player or whatever. But when you've worked—for me, when I've worked in an organization, I realize that the values, the culture, everything starts from the top. And if you bring in great—and as we've seen at Manchester United—you can bring in the best stars into a bad culture, they'll become bad performers.
And I always said in a business context as well, if the culture is strong enough, new people become the culture. If the culture is weak, the culture becomes the new people.
It's why I was kept at the age of 33 to 36 in the dressing room. Because you were a disciple of the culture. Because Rafael da Silva from Brazil comes in, I'm the right-back that's the senior right-back, and who does he look to? He looks to me. He looks to Paul Scholes, he looks to Rio Ferdinand.
And he sees people that are at the very top of the game, they're experienced, they're at the end of their careers. That's why I looked at Steve Bruce and Bryan Robson and Eric Cantona. I had nowhere to go as a young player. I knew I had to do what they had to do, also because they were all doing it every single day and they'd been doing it for 15 years.
I do feel sorry for the current players, and that won't go down well with a lot of Manchester United fans because a lot of Manchester United fans will say they're overpaid and they're chancing it and bluffing it. They're not. They're not. I know some of those lads; they're good lads. If they were sat here now with me and you, you'd be thinking there's an element of vulnerability there, there is a lack of confidence, they're crying out for help.
I wish they had Sir Alex, I wish they had Roy Keane in the changing room with Nemanja Vidić and Rio Ferdinand at center-back and Peter Schmeichel in goal. Because if they did, they would grow, they would thrive, they would deliver.
If the Manchester United team today was: David de Gea in goal, Patrice Evra at left-back, Harry Maguire at center-back with Varane, it was me at right-back, in midfield there was Roy Keane and Michael Carrick, on the left was Marcus Rashford, on the right was Jadon Sancho, up front was Martial with Rooney or Hughes... those same five or six players that we're currently saying can no... are not good enough to play for Manchester United, they would be outstanding if Sir Alex Ferguson was the manager, if the culture was still there.
I honestly... and that might be... I don't even know what I've just said to be fair; I've not said it before. But you know what I'm trying to say? If you surround yourself by those people who've got those standards, who've got that experience, who can cradle you through the difficult moments like we were when we were young players, when we won—when people said we won the league with kids, we didn't. We wouldn't have won the league without the experienced players in that dressing room around us and the guidance of Sir Alex Ferguson.
They've not got that guidance off the pitch, and they've not got that guidance and comfort on the pitch. I used to walk out in the tunnel with Peter Schmeichel in front of me, Roy Keane in front of him, behind me obviously David Beckham always went behind me, but Denis Irwin in front of me. I felt safe. I was 21, 22, 23 years of age; I felt safe. I felt comfortable because I knew I was being looked after by experienced people and I knew that I was... was not alone.
These players go out onto the pitch now and they feel alone. They don't feel like they've got anybody. That's where I am a little bit critical of Cristiano. You're the man, you're the star, you're the best player in the world. Come on. Now's not the time to be throwing your arms around. Now's not the time to be walking off the pitch. Now's the time to make sure you lead those people.
But he wants to leave. He wants to go and play somewhere else, and that might happen, and who could blame him? He wants to finish his career at a club that's achieving great things. But I do think he is the only player in that dressing room that could lead them because he's the only one that's got the inbuilt resilience and mental strength to get through a moment like... it won't be touching him, this, other than on a personal frustration level—the fact that he's playing in a team that isn't giving him the chances, the goals, the success he wants.
But on a point of view of criticism, it won't be touching him. He's seen... he's played at Real Madrid, he's played at Manchester United, he's won five, six Champions Leagues, he's won Ballon d'Ors. He's not... you can't touch him with the criticism or words. It's impossible. So he can withstand all this pressure and protect those players on the pitch. That's what I think Roy Keane did with us, what Peter Schmeichel did, what Cantona did, what Robson did. They protected us.
If I took prime Cristiano Ronaldo when he came in from Portugal and I put him in today's team?
He'd struggle. He'd struggle. I think he really would struggle without Sir Alex's guidance, without the patience of Sir Alex and Carlos Queiroz, who had that patience with him at the time.
Do you think his career would look entirely different?
It would look different. You speak to Paul Gascoigne and ask Paul Gascoigne when he chose Tottenham over Manchester United, and he says that if he'd come to Manchester and worked with Sir Alex, he feels as though his career and his life would have gone down a different path.
And that's why I said at the very start of this interview: why am I like I am? I was very fortunate that I wasn't in the center of London at 22, being led by experienced players who wanted to go to nightclubs or to bars. I was in Manchester with Denis Irwin and Sir Alex Ferguson and Roy Keane and Mark Hughes and Bryan Robson. Who, don't get me wrong, they liked a night out, but they knew also that that had to come at the right time and they would be responsible and make sure you delivered on the pitch.
So I feel blessed and privileged by the influencers that I had in my life. We talk about influencers now in a different way, don't we? But actually we're heavily influenced by the people that we come into contact with, and that's where look comes in in life, because I can't choose who I come into contact with. In life, you walk into a business to take a job; you don't know the other 150 people in the business. There could be some really good people in there that influence you well and make it really comfortable for you, or there could be some bad eggs that mean that you actually have a bad experience and it influences you in a different way.
I just got really lucky throughout my career that I arrived at United when they started winning the Premier League. I then obviously had a brilliant manager, I had brilliant senior players, I had good parents. Everything was right in my life to influence me to be what I am today. Without that, I'm not the person I am. I wasn't Gary Neville: resilient, tough, mentally strong, could handle anything, better work ethic than anybody else when I was 10. I wasn't. I was a kid just, to be fair, going to school like everyone else. But I had exceptional people around me, I believe, that helped me. And I don't believe these lads now in that dressing room have got that around them. Well, they haven't got that around them.
I had a thought cross my mind for the first time ever this week. And as a Manchester United fan—we're going to go down—well, I grew up, my birth year was 1992, so I've only ever known great times at Manchester United pretty much. And it was the first time that I played out the scenario in my head that it's not guaranteed that we return to being champions. It's all I've ever known.
And it was the first time that I started doing the equation of, like, "How do great clubs fall?" And this is one of the years where I've seen one of the real catalysts is: okay, so the brand starts to deteriorate, they lose commercial deals, then great players like Haaland and Nunez don't choose the club, then we can't get great talent, we then don't have the money to get the great talent at an inflated price (which we could have paid in the first couple of years after the downfall).
And then I'm thinking, okay, so this could... there's a chance—and I hate to say it because I'm an internal optimist, it's embarrassing, but every year when we do our little score predictions in my football chat, I'm like, "We're going to win the league every year" for the last three years. I'm deluded. But this was the first time I entertained the thought that we might... it's not guaranteed that we return to the club we were.
I, to be fair, I put us in the top four every year; I did it last week in my predictions. But you know something? I know full well we're not going to finish in the top four, but I have to, just because it's a Manchester United inbuilt thing that you say we're going to finish in the top four.
But that's how our expectations have dipped as well, because we used to say we're going to finish top. No, I'm convinced Manchester United will return. Absolutely convinced.
Why?
It's not arrogance, this, and it's not because I'm biased and it's not because I've gone to watch the club since the age of five. I've traveled around the world with the club for the last 30-40 years, I've seen the extent of the fanbase, the emotion that exists within the fanbase, the scale of the club, and it's too... the foundations are too deep.
But those foundations were created because of, like, generational success.
Yeah, but we had... we had obviously... we had the Busby Babes period with Sir Matt Busby, then we had 30 years, 25 years before Sir Alex brought home a league title. So we've had 25 years before that we've gone through without success. Manchester United is not going away. It is not going away. It's too big. It's too big, it's too magical, it's too good.
That is not... that is not emotion, that. That is just... I feel very, very strongly about that, that it is... there is an element of cycle here, that we get in sort of our down period. But we shouldn't accept that. Because I'm happy to lose football matches; I'm happy to be fourth in the league, third in the league, sixth in the league, *if* we're doing the right thing.
So: have we got a world-class stadium? It hasn't. It should always have a world-class stadium. It should always have best-in-class training facility. It should always have best-in-class fan experience. It should always buy the best—be in for the best players in the Premier League. It should always have young talent coming through and it should always buy young emerging talent from overseas.
It's veered away from all five or six of its key principles and objectives that it's always ever had. Any business does that, then it's in trouble. You've got owners that, to be fair, are now taking dividends out of the club, they're taking big, large payments in debt out of the club or interest payments on the debt out of the club. All the money that the club generates, to be fair, is not going back into the club, and it's now come home to roost.
They only own 69-70% of the club and they need a billion quid to be able to fulfill those infrastructure projects that are needed. Their walls are closing in on them. And they do need to do something big through partnership or through an investor or through a sale in the next, I think, 6 to 12 months. This cannot go on. That was a watershed moment at Brentford on Saturday. What we were all experiencing in that stadium—and I didn't obviously know you were in the stadium at that time, but now I know you were—and you said you were just compelled to stay because you couldn't leave. Everybody that I've spoken to was like, "I've not seen too many things like that in 30 years of Premier League football."
Historical.
And actually, I never want Manchester United to lose. But actually, it could have been an important moment and a big moment where you actually start to think like you're thinking: "Could we..." you know, people have said, "Could we be relegated?" I said last night on television: if we bring poor players in in this next couple of weeks, or don't bring players in, and Cristiano does leave—which I think he may—we could finish in the bottom half of the table.
§02Transcript — part 2
With a 1.25 billion pound transfer spend in the last 8 to 10 years? And finishing in the bottom half of the table. And so we are starting to think that way, but I've no doubt it's going to return. It's too big, it's too good, its fanbase is too great. It's enormous. I go abroad and watch... seen 50,000 people watch us train in Thailand and in Malaysia and in Singapore. And I've seen in Manchester the passion still for the club is huge, and so it's still full now.
Yeah, it's just... I just get concerned that if there's another generation that are growing up without the experience I had...
We'll lose some. We'll lose some. We have to lose some along the way; there'll be some collateral damage. Depends how long we go through this. If this is two decades, then that's a whole generation that never saw what we saw growing up.
But City... City have done brilliant things. Pep Guardiola is a genius. The football is mesmerizing. The operation is slick. But it... I say this because it will bring criticism from probably some football fans and certainly from Manchester City fans: it will never, ever be Manchester United. And that's not arrogance; it just cannot be.
What won't?
Manchester City. It can never replace Manchester United in terms of scale and size. It can win trophies; it can win more trophies, but it can never be bigger in scale and size. It's impossible. It does not have the roots, the history, the tradition... it just does not have it. Manchester United's too set. We'll see. I'm not worried about the long term; I'm very worried about the short term.
One of the things that people don't know about you, I believe—because I'm fairly well-read on what you do, but I didn't realize this—is just the scale of your kind of business portfolio. It's quite honestly mental. I don't do all of the media stuff that you do—I'm not on TV all the time presenting football, I'm not in that arena—and when I look at your business portfolio and mine, I'm going, "This guy does as much as I do from a business perspective."
But you're not known to the world first and foremost as an entrepreneur. Maybe that's the second thing. People know you as a football legend, second thing will be entrepreneur. And the second thing is you don't even like the word "entrepreneur."
No, not really, no. I suppose it's like "broadcaster"—I don't like the word "broadcaster." Maybe that is an insecurity actually, or a vulnerability. People say to me, "You're a broadcaster," but I don't feel like a broadcaster. I don't feel like I've earned... you know, I feel like Martin Tyler or Des Lynam, they're broadcasters. They're journalists; they're experienced, they do it. I don't feel like a broadcaster because I still feel young, but I'm not young anymore, really, in terms of I've been doing it now for 11-12 years.
And same with "entrepreneur." If you... I always feel there's something a little bit... can I swear?
Of course you can, use it all the time.
It feels a little bit wank-ish. To say I'm an entrepreneur. "Gary Neville, CEO and entrepreneur." It's like, "No." "Gary Neville, chairman of the Relentless group and entrepreneur." No, ugh. Makes me sort of skin crawl a little bit.
But I think to be fair, probably I should start calling myself that because I do have... the one constant: they're all in Greater Manchester. Apart from a media career which can sometimes obviously be in London, but they're all in Greater Manchester, in Salford, Trafford, Manchester city center.
And I feel very focused around my investments in that area. Some people would say that's naive; you should expand beyond Greater Manchester. No, I'm passionate about where I come from, where I live, and I want to invest back into that part of the country.
So the two hotels, the football club, the big developments that we're doing, the university, the project management consultancy—all of them in Greater Manchester. And I want to continue to do things. I don't think I'll do many more startups, although *The Overlap* is a startup, but I just... startups are hard. You think startups are hard?
Oh, so painful.
They’re so painful. They're rewarding, but the pain... all of mine have been startups. Apart from Salford, which to be fair is a bit of a startup—it was like 8th tier, had 170 fans. They're all startups. So not one of them has been sort of a business that I've bought into, which I'm not sure that that's the way I like it because we can influence them and we can make them our culture... can come into the businesses.
But yeah, I wanted to do a lot in business but in Greater Manchester, build teams. It's the "teams" part of it that gives me great satisfaction. And then yeah, I love the sectors that I'm in.
And it's crazy because when I look at your businesses, when I've looked closely at them, you run really good businesses as it relates to attention to detail. Your hotel in Manchester, the Stock Exchange Hotel, I have to say, is by far my favorite hotel. It's not even close. When I filmed *Dragons' Den* the first year, all the dragons stayed at the Lowry. Even though it was my first year, I was like, "Please can I stay at the Stock Exchange Hotel?" and I stayed there. It's by far and away... there's nothing close to it in Manchester, in my view.
No, and I have to say, some of my... so the university I think is more of a social project to trying to be more inclusive and sort of remove the barrier to higher education. The football club started off as a more of a social project in terms of bringing young players through and believing in young talent in football like we'd been believed in.
But then I also have this other side of me which is: I want to raise standards. And we wanted hospitality to be at the highest level in Manchester, and the Stock Exchange was my ambition to create the number one hotel, premium hotel in Manchester, luxury hotel. The same with the development St. Michael’s, which we hope to be the new number one hotel in Manchester when it's built—a new five-star hotel.
Manchester only has one five-star hotel in the city center—I know Lowry's in Salford—but they only have one five-star hotel. So then some people will throw at me, "How does that sit with your social conscience that you've got these expensive apartments, you've got these expensive hotel rooms, you charge 40 pounds for a steak?"
And I'm like, "I think it's okay to be offended by Manchester not having enough affordable housing and also not having high-class luxury accommodation and luxury product." I'm offended by both. Why does Manchester all have to be sort of pigeonholed into this three, four-star market?
So this idea that in Manchester is that, you know... and I get called "Champagne Socialist" sometimes and sometimes get criticized for the fact that I have a university that is trying to improve inclusion and access to higher education, but then, "Oh Neville, he's just basically selling developments—he's selling apartments for 500-600 thousand pounds, his rooms are 250-300 pounds at Hotel Football or at Stock Exchange."
But I'm offended by the fact that we can't raise the standards at sort of the highest level and the fact that we can't look after people and make sure that everyone's got a house to be able to live in that's of a comfortable size in the area they want to live.
So I feel that I'm a little bit torn between my projects in what I feel, but I want high standards in our city. I want Manchester... I'm offended that Manchester does not have five-star international standard hotels. It offends me that London always has to have these things, or that Paris... why do people from Manchester have to go to Paris or London to experience five-star hospitality and service? We should be able to get it in our city. So I want to drive investment into our city and raise the standards as... that was what the Stock Exchange was about: raising standards of hospitality. And we got to number one, which was brilliant.
But you're right, because if there isn't that supply there for the high end, then the economy's going to suffer because you're right, it won't attract business, it won't attract investment into the city if...
And that's, you know, I love coming to Manchester because—and you didn't pay me to say this—but I love going staying at the Stock Exchange Hotel. It's better than my house. And the standards there are unbelievable.
Politics—you've become quite political specifically on Twitter in terms of social issues and using your voice to shed light on things that you feel are going wrong in politics. What is the thinking there?
Do you know something? I think it's... look, the thinking is that I don't think it's acceptable to be quiet anymore if you're in a position of influence and if you're seeing something that's wrong.
Like your stance on the Glazers?
Yeah, I think it's got to the point whereby I was quiet when I played at the club and to be fair we were winning, so you think, "Well okay, winning to be fair covers everything." And then when you leave, you think, "Well hang on a second, let's let them have time after Sir Alex Ferguson." But it's got to the point now whereby I can't keep my mouth shut on it. It's wrong. It is just wrong.
Same with Boris Johnson. Eventually his own party got to the same position that I was at, and many others. It's wrong. We cannot have someone like that leading our country. I'm passionate about our country.
Are you ever going to do politics?
No, I won't do politics. And the reason I say that is that you know, sometimes you have this idea in your head, don't you, that you think "Could you go in?" But the reality of it is it would mean that I wouldn't be able to be as honest as I am on television. I wouldn't be able to do the Sky Sports, I wouldn't be able to do the media, I wouldn't be able to do my projects in Manchester because I'd feel conflicted with different things.
And I don't think I can—I think I'm more... I think I can have a greater influence in Greater Manchester and with my voice in the media than I would do being an MP for Bury South. I genuinely believe that. I think I'd get caught up and stuck in the treacle and the mud like everybody else. That's what people say about politics: "Just go in there and you just get stuck."
And I don't want to be stuck. I want to be able to try and influence things in the private sector away from public sector. And we'll get called a "Champagne Socialist" for it, and we'll get attacked heavily in the last 12 months by people from the right side of the country in terms of... regularly every single day we'll get attacked for being a Champagne Socialist when I talk about, say for instance, the Stock Exchange or I talk about, you know, the St. Michael’s development.
And then they say, "Well, how can you be arguing against Boris Johnson and how can you be in the Labour Party?" There's this idea that you can't be in the Labour Party and be entrepreneurial and be successful and earn money. That—the Labour Party have got to change that perception. They've *got* to change that perception.
How is it that you cannot be someone who owns a business, makes profit, hands that profit back to its shareholders and to the teams that you work with, create a great environment for them to work, pay them well, and that you believe everybody should have an equal opportunity? How can you not be Labour and have those principles?
Because we've been basically conditioned to think that it's only the Tory party that is good for business, and the Labour Party has created that.
It’s so true. It’s one of the things that’s really made me feel quite disenfranchised. I grew up in a Labour family that... I mean, I've never voted Tory in my life. But in recent years, as I've become more successful in my career, I almost feel a little bit sometimes by some people—not everybody on the left, but some people on the left—that I'm inherently evil because of my success. Like, I'm inherently a bad person because I'm an entrepreneur or CEO. And that pushes you out; it almost pushes you into this middle. I'm not going over to the right, but I want to belong somewhere. So you're completely right, and I don't think that's talked about enough.
I saw an interview on social yesterday actually in the middle of Monday Night Football, and it was an interview... it was only released yesterday. It was with Keir Starmer, and the gentleman asking him said, "You know, what do you earn?" And he said, "I earn 130,000 pounds a year."
And he was about to start a line of questioning around Keir's position on energy and the fact that, "Well, you can afford the 3,000 pounds, 4,000 pounds energy bills this year." I was offended by that line of questioning. The leader of the opposition in this country, politicians in my opinion, should be the highest quality of business people and entrepreneurs to be able to deliver the plan that we all want.
I think they need to encourage people to go into politics. And the idea that the leader of the opposition was being attacked because he was on 140,000 pounds because he's a Labour politician—it's almost like you're a Labour politician, you shouldn't take the MP salary, you should almost donate that to charity and work for like nothing. I mean, that's just ridiculous.
So the perception of Labour and what people think about Labour is that if you're in the Labour Party, you have to be on minimum wage, you have to be a socialist, you have to think like that. No. You can think in a capitalist way but with some compassion and feel like you can be equal with other people and spread your wealth and that actually you can want people to be able to afford their energy bills and you can fight for people who can't afford their energy bills this winter, just because *we* have a bank account that's more than people would like it to be.
I just don't get that. I don't understand it. It's a weird thing. I don't get it and we have to change that perception. And that's why I joined the Labour Party. To think that actually I can be successful—I'm a northern from a northern family that have done well, have earned good money and continue to earn good money—but my principles where I am now, even though I'm an entrepreneurial individual who to be fair has profit-making companies, I can be Labour, I can think with a social conscience. I don't think that's a problem.
You talked about being attacked. You've talked about this unbelievable relentless work ethic you have. And you've talked about how you had that moment where you collapsed one day. Over the last 10 years, our understanding of mental health and male mental health has risen tremendously. When I was growing up, to have a mental health issue meant that you were crazy. That's what I thought, that was the stigma. We've come so far thankfully from that perception. What has your experience been with understanding your own mental health over the last couple of decades? And have you ever had a moment where you've gone, "I need to put my mental health first now," because... you know, other than that collapse moment where you've experienced anxiety or depression or these kinds of elements?
Yeah, I think that obviously losing my confidence as a football player, being criticized, having to stop reading the newspapers of the day at the age of 24. Didn't read a national tabloid newspaper from the age of 24 through to the end of my career.
Why?
Because they were damaging. If you read something really critical of yourself in a national newspaper and the thought that then millions of people are also reading that, particularly when you're young and you're vulnerable, it impacts you and you lose confidence. And I did lose confidence.
So I lost form, got criticized heavily by newspapers, would read the newspapers and it would have a direct impact on me. It would drain me of confidence and then you almost then lose more confidence. About six months this went on for. I also at the time had lost... I'd come out of a relationship with someone I'd been engaged to and been with for seven years.
So I had two things going on at once: one, I'd lost my form and I'd come out of a longer-term relationship. And at that point I did feel really low. Didn't tell anybody, as you wouldn't do back in sort of... well, what would that have been? 1999-2000. 1999-2000, I'd been 24-25 years of age. Made two big mistakes against Vasco da Gama, played a poor tournament for England in Euro 2000, and it went on for six months.
But went to see a psychiatrist and I got coping mechanisms. I got coping mechanisms, things that basically he taught me about, about how to put things into perspective. And that dealt with my mental health issues at the time, and it also helps me to deal with things that come forward now of a critical nature.
When you say you were feeling low, what were the symptoms of feeling low for those six months?
Not wanting to play, not wanting to take the ball on the pitch and being confident to take the ball and pass it. Hiding a little bit. Fearing games coming forward, anxious about games coming forward. Thinking about my relationship breakup during matches, which is unthinkable for me. I remember playing a European game away, I think it was either in Anderlecht or somewhere like that, and actually thinking in the middle of the pitch about my ex-girlfriend and thinking, "I'm playing for Manchester United. This is not what's going on."
And it impacted me and thinking that... but then that happens I'm sure to every single football player. So I knew that at that point then I needed to see somebody because I wasn't playing well. He subbed me against Real Madrid in the quarter-final of the European Cup, and I had a nightmare. Absolute nightmare. And I thought, "Ugh."
I remember we won the league that year at Southampton away, and I remember jumping up—there's a picture of me jumping up on the pitch with the rest of the players—and me feeling empty and not even feeling like celebrating it. I always remember that, and it was the worst league that we ever won for me. But for others it might have been a great league, but for me, I just hated that league. I didn't enjoy it at all.
I feel like I just needed to stop and get off. I felt like I was spinning on a roundabout and I couldn't get off it. And I remember saying that to the psychiatrist at the time. And then he started to put these little coping mechanisms in place. So if I get nervous before a game: think about what you're going to be doing later on that you're going to enjoy. If you have a really bad day: think about something simple like—I asked myself a simple question like I said before—"Did you always think you were going to have a good day every day?"
I love that question. "Did I think there was a good chance in my life that my dad would die before me? Yeah, I was prepared for it." And that's not right, but that's how I dealt with it. Really simply. There was always going to come a point where my parents and grandparents were likely to die before me and I would have to deal with that.
What we can never, ever comprehend is obviously losing someone that's younger than you in your family. We can't comprehend that; that's the unthinkable. That's the one thing if you said to me that sort of breaks me, that you know I think would break me completely. But then on the other side, we know that, you know, my grandparents lived till they were in their 80s. My dad lived till he was 65—I thought... I'd love him to have lived another 10-15 years, of course, but he didn't.
But I was able to deal with it through the idea that he lived his life to the full. He didn't make those changes that I'm probably not making now; he carried on going out with my sister and her mates till 3:00-4:00 in the morning having a drink, traveling to Australia watching her play, and you know, living life to the full, watching United every single weekend, doing the things that he loved. And you know, his life was taken away at the age of 65, so I could almost explain that to myself and deal with it in a pragmatic way.
Some people say, some people close to me say I've still not dealt with it five, six, seven years on because I've not probably shown the proper emotion and grief that I should have done through it. But I feel like I *have* dealt with it. I feel like I have dealt with it just through being able to put those coping mechanisms in place.
So I always feel we all need those simple coping mechanisms. For others it might not be the same as me. One of the big things, I think, for me is definitely training. So I blew up at Sky one Boxing Day where I'd just run... I always got the sprint to Christmas where everyone tries to get everything in before Christmas and then you just collapse when you stop. Boxing Day one year, the only time I've ever missed a Sky game—Everton v Hull Boxing Day—I was going to Hull, I woke up in the morning, I couldn't get out of bed.
And I'd just run myself into the ground. I'd stopped training, I was eating too much, I put weight on—you'll have seen in the first few years after Sky. And I'd stopped doing the things that kept me well. So training now—if I don't train for a week, I feel terrible. Not just physically, I feel it up here.
I've got one of those bodies because I've been a football player—I know when I've put... I feel every chip. So I can feel it here, I can pinch myself. We're all the same as footballers: we had our body fats done once a week, we're weighing ourselves every day because we know that's a big part of our performance—hydration, nutrition, weight is a big part of our performance.
And so I know it; I've lived it for 15-20 years. But then I stopped doing that for the first five, six years out of football. And then you blow up and then you feel awful, you look awful. And you've got people on Twitter sending you: "Jesus, you're carrying a bit."
"Stop eating the chips, choose the salad."
All those things get sent to you on Twitter, you know what I mean? And you look at yourself in the mirror and think, "They're right, aren't they?" And then you start to think, "Oh, I've got to change." So you eat a little bit better, you eat a lot better, and then you train. And training for here is... it just frees me. I don't... no one likes it. I do it first thing in the morning, but once I've finished it, I feel like I can go. And I wasn't doing that. So that's an important part of my mental health strategy now is just to feel better by...
And the one thing I need to deal with is alcohol. Because I like a glass of wine. You know, I can drink one or two glasses of wine. But COVID, I was drinking one or two glasses of wine every night. And then now even now... I'm at home tonight, Salford are playing at home, I can't wait; it's one of the greatest moments in my life now. Tonight, you will get nothing out of me between 7:45 and 10:00. Salford are playing away at Newport, I'm not going, but I'm going to put the feed on, on my telly. But I'll have a glass of wine. And it's a magical moment that I don't need it. So I've got to stop doing that.
2015, your dad passes away. When I was reading that in your story upstairs and the age he passed away, it struck a little bit close to home because I feel like in my life my dad has had a tremendous influence on me and I feel like my relationship is not as close as it could be with him. And he has outlived all of his siblings but in my view had a much more stressful life. And he is 65. And I guess the question I had for you is, like: what advice would you give for me? And is there anything that you wish you had said or done whilst you all behaved differently whilst that person was here that you now know in hindsight?
He's the only person... I don't ring people. I don't speak... I don't ring my brother every day, I don't text my sister every day, I don't ring my mom every day. I rang my dad every day, three or four times a day. He's the only constant in my life every single day, my dad.
Advice, looking after things, "What are you up to?" He loved picking the kids up. So I put his office next to our house as well so that you know, because basically he looked after my stuff as well. So for me he was the constant in my life every single day and that constant's gone now.
And I always say this: I've still got him at the top of my favorites in my speed dials and I never move him. And it freaks me out sometimes, you know when you're clunky with your fingers and you press the button just by mistake because my mom's underneath him and you go to ring him and sometimes—the odd time, once a year maybe or whatever—you press, you know, "Dad Mob." And it freaks me out a little bit because I think... and it makes me get well up a little bit because I think I used to ring him every single day, three, four times a day and it just went overnight. I couldn't ring him anymore.
So the constant has gone. So in terms of advice, obviously I don't know your relationship with your dad. My dad's relationship with me was so influential, but it would be to... I say that I think this sometimes with my mom: what excuse have I got not to ring my mom every single day? I've got no excuse not to ring my mom every single day for two or three minutes and ask how she is. But I don't. My brother does, my sister does, but I don't have that relationship with my mom. I had it with my dad.
So for me, just speaking to him every single day... I wish... you couldn't tell my dad to stop going out with my sister and the mates, to stop going out with his mates, to stop going to the football, to stop traveling away to watch United in Europe. All those things that may have taken years off his life. Because when people say to me, "Do you miss your dad?" I say I do. But what I miss most is what he's missing with my children and my brother's children and my sister's little boy.
That gets to me, because I know how good he was with them. I know, I saw it for six, seven years. It was unbelievable. He adored them. And he was starting to slow down because of them; he was starting not... he was starting to make decisions to stay at home to look after them rather than going out. But he'd gone out for 15 years and he'd had a brilliant life, did everything. You know, he did absolutely all those sort of things that you read out at the beginning of the 218 caps and the tournaments for my sister. He was at every single one of them.
He was at every single one of them. He didn't miss a Manchester United game. I walked out onto the pitch 602 times for Manchester United and I waved at my dad 602 times there in that spot every single time. Or in the away end, I'd have to try and find him, but that was easy because he was 6 foot 2 and he had a massive big white head of hair.
And I waved at him every single game. And if I didn't wave to my dad, I couldn't... till I'd found my dad. Some the odd game in the away end—you know, Newcastle away? You've seen that you where you sit sat up in that top bit? You're like, you were looking for ages, and I couldn't settle until I'd found him. I couldn't settle; that was one of the things. Like a superstition, whether it's a routine. So to miss that from my life, I miss that idea of he was just there and then I feel comfortable. He's there. Right, I'm okay. "Dad, anything happened?" "No, no, everything's good. Okay, bye."
Just speaking to him... it's that. So maybe speak to your dad, maybe ring him every morning, maybe make him your first text.
When you... you know I read that you when you look forward at your future, you kind of plan in 10-year cycles. So the obvious question is: what is the next 10 years about for you? Because, you know, I don't feel like I believe that you're doing what you're doing because there is some finish line in sight.
No, that's... you know something? It was like when we set up a university. I remember the Vice Chancellor of Lancaster said, "You do realize you're entering into something with no exit?" I like the idea of that. No exit. You can't sell UA92. How can we? We *are* UA92. You can't sell your own university. You can't... in my opinion, you just—it's what we... that to me is perfection. There is no finish line; things should go on forever that you've created.
So we don't think short term. I never think short term. But like I say, I think I came out of football thinking the next 15 years were critical to establish myself in business and to try and remove that tag of "Gary Neville, ex-Manchester United football player." That was my target, that was my plan. So whether that be media, whether that be business, whatever that might mean.
So I'm three years away from that. I do feel like there are bumps in the road—there always are with businesses—but I feel like I'm on track. I need to continue to work hard and focus, but I wanted from 50 to 60 to be laser-focused and try and work on one particular thing. And that would be a result of my previous 30 years in work: the football experience, the business experience, the media experience, and bring it together into something that I can go and do that's special. I want to do something special in my life. Special to me. Not necessarily special in sort of a greater sense, but special to me.
I wanted to ask you a question that I've asked pretty much I think the last 10 guests as well, which is: if you were to view your own personal happiness and fulfillment as a recipe of ingredients, and these ingredients come in different quantities, but together they make you happy. When you look at that list of ingredients, what do you think is missing from that recipe for you to be completely happy?
It's a good question or a difficult question. It must be a good one if I can't answer it.
I remember interviewing Tyson Fury and he said—I asked him what success looks like for you or what does the future look like for you—he said, "Just to be happy." I thought, "How simple's that?" I never think like that. Even with football, I never enjoyed it while I was doing it. Because I just felt so intense.
So I don't feel like I'm ever assessing what makes me happy or what... why am I doing what... like you said before, "You're just doing it." You're being dragged. Yeah, there is an element of that. What makes me happy? Watching Salford and winning makes me happy. Spending time with my children when they're in their good space makes me really happy.
But what would make you more happy? That's what I'm getting at. Is there an ingredient that is potentially missing or out of balance in that recipe?
I know others would say to be present more. But what would *I* say? To be on a mountain in a ski lodge, isolated away from everything. It's weird, isn't it? I don't know, I feel free on top of a mountain. Obviously I found skiing after football. It feels really sort of basic what I've just said when you're asking me something really deep.
No, there's something profound in that solitude and space.
Yeah, solitude and isolation and not... you put that helmet on, the mask on, I'm up on that mountain and I'm free. The air's fresh and I feel like, wow.
Free from what?
From this. Having to talk all the time. I think I'm quite... I think I'm a little bit tired of hearing my own voice. I think the next thing that I do at the age of 50 has to be something that means that Gary Neville doesn't speak as much.
So, the closing question that's been written for you from our previous guest is: "What are some words you've not said to somebody? Why haven't you said them and who should you have said them to?"
I think it would be to my mom. That her and her mom and dad... of all the people I always talk about having the influence on my life—Sir Alex Ferguson I mention all the time, I mention my dad a lot, I mention Eric Harrison a lot, Nobby Stiles, Roy Keane—I never mention my mom. And without a shadow of a doubt, she's the best person that I've ever met in my life. And her mom and dad were the best people I've ever met in my life.
That's making me a little bit upset. And they were the people who I think keep me grounded every single day because they're just good people who do the right things, who look after their family, who put their family before everything. And I don't do that.
Why does that make you upset?
Because they put their family before everything and would drop anything for anybody in their family—their immediate family—but I don't. And to be fair, Emma is similar. Emma is similar. They're far better people than I am. I feel that, you know what I mean? And I never tell them. Because they're that traditional: you do your job, you get up, you work, you look after your family. The responsibility's to the family. Whereas I'm floating around. So, yeah, it would be that, I think, for them to know that I don't take it for granted, I understand the importance of that in my life and in our lives.
The most I've ever grieved in my life was when my mom's dad died. It was the first person that had ever died—I was lucky to have my grandparents until I was 30. And my mom's dad died and I came home two days after my honeymoon started. He died two days into my honeymoon and we came straight home; I didn't even break, I just got on a plane from the Seychelles because I had to, because he deserved that. He deserved that sacrifice for me to give up the honeymoon—and Emma was fine with it—because he had such an incredible influence on my life. Gave up all his time for me, took me everywhere, cooked for me, was there three, four nights a week. And he didn't need to do that.
So, they're those three people. And there are others obviously, but I think those three people... and Emma is very similar.
Gary, thank you so much. I've watched you for my entire life on TV as a huge United fan growing up, and then obviously even to this day on The Overlap and what you do across broadcast television. And I think it's amazing. And I've, after this conversation, I've figured out why you've managed to sort of grace so many different industries and reach the top in all of those endeavors.
And it's because of that set of values that were instilled in you and that you clearly exude today: your relentlessness, your focus on hard work, and all of these kind of old-school values which I think are a little bit lost in our generation. Thank you for the inspiration; you've inspired me so tremendously. And your vulnerability and your willingness to be open in that regard, I think is going to create a better future in many respects for young men that are driving towards their ambitions and young women, but also as it relates to politics and what's going on in our society. So you're in a very important person, and it's unbelievable that a Manchester United right-back has gone on to do all of these things. It's a huge inspiration for me and many people that are listening, I'm sure.
Thank you. No one wants to grow up to be Gary Neville.
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