Red: My Autobiography

by Gary Neville

  The great imponderable of my international career is what might have happened had Terry Venables been allowed to lead us after Euro 96. The simple fact is that we haven’t been as close to winning a tournament since.

  But back then, as a twenty-one-year-old, I didn’t know this was going to be as good as it got for me, as Stuart Pearce had predicted when we were sat on that coach together. He said it just after the Spain game when there was national euphoria, with fans dancing in the fountains at Trafalgar Square. I thought I had all the time in the world. I thought I’d soon be back contesting another tournament, perhaps even winning one. Why not?

  Au Revoir, Cantona

  ‘TOGETHER, WE WILL win the European Cup.’ It was quite a promise to make, but this wasn’t coming from just anyone. The man saying it across the pub table was Eric Cantona.

  We were in the Bull’s Head in Hale on a team day out. It was December 1996, and our Frenchman had pulled up a seat with me and Becks. The young lads had always been in awe of him and Eric was a quiet man in the changing room. But this time we got chatting properly. Over a drink, Eric told us we were going to become kings of Europe.

  It was a big claim given the club’s record. Conquering the continent was obviously the challenge for us now that we’d won the title, but the task loomed as high as Everest. More than a decade had passed since any English club had won the European Cup. As a country, we’d endured the post-Heysel exile. The stars of the game were still being drawn to the big clubs in Italy and Spain. At Old Trafford, you had to look back as far as flared trousers and George Best in 1968 to remember the last time we’d reached the pinnacle in Europe.

  The previous year we’d been knocked out of the Uefa Cup in the first round by Rotor Volgograd. We might be champions of England but this wasn’t form to terrify the rest of the world, especially when in the autumn of 1996 we stumbled through the Champions League group stage. We lost the club’s 40-year unbeaten record at home, defeated by Fenerbahçe, and went down in both games to Juventus – the European champions, and one of the best teams I ever faced.

  Juventus were unbelievably good, so big and powerful as well as packed with talent. Just standing in the tunnel next to them was intimidating. I’d never faced such a formidable team: Ferrara and Montero in defence, Deschamps, Conte and Zidane in midfield, and Del Piero with two big and dangerous strikers in Boksic and Vieri. Big names, big players, in every respect. We lost 1–0 to them in Turin, but it could have been 10–0. It was the biggest battering I’ve ever had on a football pitch. They took us to school, boys against men. We didn’t have a proper chance in the whole match. Manchester United played ninety minutes without a shot, without a sniff of a chance. It’s the only time that happened in my 602 games.

  Del Piero was a class act, so sharp and elusive and intelligent. There’s a lot of thick footballers out there, players with huge talent when the ball’s at their feet but no real understanding of where to move or how best to link with their teammates. That is a criticism you’d never make of Zidane or Del Piero, and Juventus had both of them. These were the guys who made the Champions League such a massive test. They knew how to play and they were streetwise, too. They could handle themselves, and if anyone did have a go they had tough nuts like Montero to offer protection.

  That defeat was as bad as it got, and Giggsy probably had the worst night of all. As the manager was dishing out his half-time criticism, Giggsy bit back. The boss was never going to let that pass, and his response was instant. He hooked Giggsy straight away.

  That was a big call for the boss, who was rarely that re-active at half-time, throwing all the plans in the air. You think of Mourinho making early changes all the time, but the boss is generally more patient, more trusting. He’ll certainly let you know what you are doing wrong. If we are being dominated by a particular player, he’ll come in, look around and say, ‘So-and-so is having a nice game isn’t he? He’s having a lovely time. Did I not mention him in my team talk? You two, get up ten yards. You two, midfield, close him down.’ He’ll deal with things and dole out whatever criticisms are necessary – ‘Gary, you haven’t passed to a red shirt yet’; ‘Scholesy, watch those tackles’ – but he doesn’t want to spend the whole of half-time hammering people and he doesn’t like to throw a game plan out of the window. But having a go back at the boss, as Giggsy discovered that night – and as I’d find out later – was met with zero tolerance.

  So Giggsy watched from the sidelines as the spanking from Juventus continued in the second half. I walked off at the end thinking, ‘We’re a long way off yet’.

  Still, Eric seemed convinced that good times were around the corner as we sat in the Bull’s Head. Becks and I left the pub invigorated – and not just because of the beer. For Eric, there wouldn’t be many chances left to prove that he could dominate in Europe as he had done so majestically in English football. The rest of us weren’t to know it, but Eric had staked everything on winning the Champions League.

  None of us got to know Eric well, although there was a vast, unspoken respect for him. In training, if the ball didn’t get played to him as he wanted he would look at you like he was going to knock you out. He had massively high standards; he was a perfectionist. But because it was Eric, you didn’t feel belittled, it just made you strive to do better. We were desperate to impress him.

  Respect for him contained a little dash of fear because we had all seen how he could erupt, even though we knew he’d never take it out on us. There’d been the kung-fu kick, a string of red cards, the punch-up at Galatasaray. We found incidents like that amusing – after the event, anyway – because Eric was so mild-mannered, quiet even, the rest of the time. He wasn’t arrogant at all but polite and considered. He always remained real. He drove a modest car, lived in a modest house in Salford. He’d turn up at all the team evenings, the Christmas parties, the nights out with the wives, but he’d be quiet, a bit like Scholesy or Andy Cole – not in a way that excludes you from the team, you’re just accepted as being a quieter participant, just like there are louder types.

  Eric did things his way and no one interfered, not even the manager sometimes. When we turned up at a civic event at Manchester town hall to celebrate the Double, Eric wandered in wearing a denim jacket instead of a blazer. We looked him up and down and wondered how the boss would react when he arrived. Surely he’d go berserk. The press were there and all sorts of VIPs. But the manager just shook his head and smiled. ‘Eh, lads,’ he said. ‘Some man, that Cantona.’

  Eric could get away with it, as Gazza did with England, because he combined his talent with being a committed team-man at heart. He trained as hard as lesser players and strived for improvement. And in that 1996/97 season he was striving, like the rest of us, to win the Champions League.

  One problem was that, as a young team, we were still plagued with inconsistency. We thrashed Newcastle United, with the newly signed Alan Shearer, 4–0 in the Charity Shield but then lost 5–0 at St James’s Park in October on one of those days when you just want to disappear off the pitch. Everything Newcastle tried came off. I backed a few yards off David Ginola at one point. I should have been tighter, and I managed to get on the wrong side. He turned inside and smashed a shot into the top corner from thirty yards. It was a great bit of skill to buy himself a yard and to finish like that. The minute a player of that quality does you on the turn like that your heart sinks because there’s the feeling he’s going to pull off something special. I was left praying that Schmeichel would get me out of trouble. This time even Peter couldn’t get a hand on it.

  It was a great goal, though not the best bit of skill ever done on me. That has to go to Jay Jay Okocha. One moment he was standing in front of me and the next thing I knew he’d disappeared the other side of me, and the ball too. It’s probably on YouTube somewhere. I still don’t know how he did it.

  The Newcastle defeat was a horror, and we let in six at Southampton a week later. Beaten 6–3 at Southampton – it was a bad moment, that, a
nd we had to learn to cope with such set-backs. You’d get them in every season, and that’s when the manager came into his own, keeping up morale, maintaining focus and making sure we didn’t get distracted by all the noises outside. He had belief in us, and on another day we’d play like world beaters.

  In Europe we were proving just as unpredictable. We’d needed victory at Rapid Vienna in the final group match to qualify for the knock-out rounds. Eric’s idea of proving ourselves the best team in Europe was looking ambitious, to say the least.

  We dared to believe a bit more when we blitzed Porto 4–0 in the first leg of the quarter-finals. We ripped into them on the counter-attack, flying forward at 100mph to score fantastic goals through Giggsy and Andy Cole. We were through to our first Champions League semi-final and felt we had nothing to be scared about facing Borussia Dortmund, even if they were the champions of Germany.

  In the first leg in Dortmund, we had the three best chances. Butty hit the post, Eric shot wide from fifteen yards, and Becks had a chance cleared off the line. We deserved better than to lose 1–0 to a deflected shot off Gary Pallister. Still, all to play for, even if Keano was suspended back at our place after a booking in Germany. In his absence, we’d go front foot with Eric behind Andy Cole and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.

  The game had barely started when Lars Ricken put them ahead with their first attack. Now we needed three goals, but we kept at it and created an unbelievable number of chances. The best of them fell to Eric. A cross-shot from Cole was pushed out to him inside the six-yard box. But, as the goal gaped, Jurgen Kohler slid into his path and Eric shot at him. Two 1–0 defeats.

  It was to prove the final blow for Eric, even after we went on to win a second championship in a row, celebrated in style at the Hacienda, the nightclub made famous by the Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses. That’s my type of music, though hanging around with Giggsy, Becks and Ben Thornley we probably looked more like Take That.

  At the weekend we’d drawn 3–3 at Middlesbrough, which included my first goal for United. I’d like to tell a story of great attacking adventure, but truth is I was knackered after a run forward and ended up staying up the field. The ball came across to Eric and, inevitably, he played the perfect pass to slip me in. I remember really concentrating as it came across my body and I just struck it absolutely perfect. It went in, and what a feeling – the greatest goal of my career. Sad, really, that there were only seven of them in 687 games for United and England. That’s a crap total by any standards. Sometimes I have thought, ‘Christ, is that all I contributed in all those years?’

  Anyway, when Liverpool lost and Newcastle could only draw the following day, we’d clinched the championship. ‘The goal that won us the title!’ I joked to the lads when we danced around the Hacienda with a room full of ecstatic United fans.

  We celebrated in style, but Eric’s thoughts were elsewhere, as they’d been since our European exit. We’d soon discover that losing to Dortmund, and the way we lost the games, must have had a massive effect on Eric. We hadn’t been beaten by a great team, we’d just not taken our chances. Tiny margins. There were several factors, and no one inside the dressing room blamed Eric, except perhaps himself.

  But as I knew from that chat in the Bull’s Head, he’d set his heart on Europe that season. He’d dominated the English league and he’d wanted to take us to the next level. We’d fallen short, and while there were no recriminations, at the age of thirty he’d decided that he’d given it his best shot. He’d had enough. Time to quit.

  A week after our final game, I saw on Teletext that there was going to be a big announcement by the club. I assumed we must be signing someone. Instead Martin Edwards, the chairman, told the world that Eric Cantona had retired. One of United’s greatest ever players had decided to walk away while still in his prime.

  The news came as a shock to all of us. I’d played with him in a testimonial for David Busst just a few days earlier and he’d got off the team bus and told us, ‘Have a good summer, see you later.’ But the way he left was typical Eric. There would be no diminishing of his legend, no slide into mediocrity. He’d finish at the top, or as near as he could make it – captain of a club that had won the Premiership. He certainly left us wanting more, which isn’t a bad way to go.

  I wished he’d stayed because I believe he could have been part of the European Cup-winning team. Failure hadn’t been down to him; it was because we were a young, inconsistent side still exploring our potential. His departure means that he fell short of achieving his dream of conquering Europe, but it doesn’t lessen his status in my eyes. I played with him for two full seasons and we won a title both times, the first of them almost single-handedly down to him.

  He will always have a place in the hearts of the fans because of his charisma and his daring. That temper is part of the legend. People loved him because he did, and said, things they would love to have got away with.

  People talk about money and fame affecting footballers, distorting their characters and warping their judgement. And in many cases that might be right. But that wasn’t the case with Eric. As with Keano, what you saw was what you got. They’d have been the same fiery individuals whether they were footballers or electricians.

  Some players, some people, are capable of counting to ten when they are wound up. Others, like Roy and Eric, are incapable of taking a deep breath. That’s not down to the fame or the money. They are firebrands by nature, and I loved having them on my side.

  Eric’s retirement caused shockwaves in English football but it didn’t send the club into meltdown. That’s probably the greatest strength of the boss’s era. You can be one of the greatest legends United has ever seen – and I was lucky enough to play with a few – but you leave and the club moves on without so much as a glance back. You walk out the door and you’ll be lucky if you get a mention. There’s never a leaving party, except when a member of staff leaves. There’s always someone to fill your boots, and another trophy to be won. It keeps everyone humble, and hungry.

  With Eric gone, in the summer of 1997 the boss brought in the experience of Teddy Sheringham. I knew his class on the pitch from my time with England. And you should have heard Scholesy drool about him. He loved playing with Teddy because he recognised another player who had eyes in the back of his head. He’d still be talking about Teddy years after he left – about the awareness, the ability to take a ball in tight areas, the vision. Teddy didn’t have the aura of Eric but he was equally good at drawing the best out of his teammates.

  Teddy was the significant signing of the summer, but Phil and I were also ready to update our contracts on the back of our success. Wealth has been a happy by-product of my career, but the one thing I always craved was security. So when the club intimated that they would offer us seven-year contracts we couldn’t scribble our names quick enough, even though others counselled against it. The negotiations lasted about fifteen minutes.

  My dad was on a European trip, and he bumped into Terry Venables. He’d read about the new long-term deals and, in the age of Bosman, of free agency and huge signing-on fees, asked why we’d signed away our futures for as long as seven years. ‘Because they wouldn’t give us ten,’ my dad replied, and he wasn’t being sarcastic.

  Losing Eric would hinder any team, and then two months into the 1997/98 season we lost our new captain, Keano, to a serious knee injury. We had a terrible time with injuries that season. Another player we lost for a long period was Denis Irwin, after a scandalous tackle by Paul Bosvelt in a Champions League game at Feyenoord. It was a horrible night, with Feyenoord trying to kick lumps out of us, one of those games when you end up going in for every tackle with your own studs up out of self-protection. Julio Cruz, their Argentine striker, spat straight in my face and offered to meet me in the tunnel. When I walked off he wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

  A young squad was exposed. We had an average age of twenty-three in some matches, and at one stage our oldest outfield player was Andy Cole at twenty-six. We
were depleted, but nothing should detract from the Arsenal team that won the championship that year, the best domestic opponents I faced. The best of the bunch, better than Chelsea under Mourinho and Arsenal’s Invincibles.

  Arsène Wenger had been appointed the previous season. We hadn’t known much about him then, but we’d witnessed the coming together of a formidable opponent. That Arsenal team had so many gifts. They were experienced and strong, both mentally and physically. They were tough. They didn’t have the touch of arrogance that would come in the Henry years when their attitude was ‘you can’t touch us, we’re French and we’re brilliant’.

  From back to front, it was hard to detect a weakness. Modern football is a squad game but you know a team is really strong when you can rattle off their first XI without pausing: Seaman, Dixon, Winterburn, Adams, Keown, Vieira, Petit, Parlour, Overmars, Anelka and Bergkamp. If they were fit, they played.

  I’ve rarely come across a physically stronger team – perhaps only Juventus. Arsenal had a top goalkeeper, a fantastic back four, a central midfield pair that could pass, move and never be intimidated, and a hard-working right-midfield player in Parlour who could tuck in complemented by an out-and-out flyer in Overmars on the other flank.

  Of all my regular left-wing opponents, Overmars must go down as the toughest I faced.

  Ginola was another tricky one, not least because of his physical stature. For a winger he was a big man. But he was never going to run in behind you. He was a lazy winger. He wanted the ball to his feet so he could turn and run. If he did that, if he got his tail up in the first twenty minutes, he could make life a nightmare. That happened one time at White Hart Lane and I was sent off by half-time. But if you nailed him with a few early tackles, if you snapped at him like a terrier, he’d think, ‘I’m not having much joy here, I’ll go drift inside or see what it’s like on the other wing.’