Red: My Autobiography

by Gary Neville

  With this new line-up we beat Colombia 2–0 in our final group game, Becks nailing a free-kick. We’d progressed to the last sixteen but – and this set a pattern for much of my England career – we’d made life hard for ourselves by not finishing top of the group. Finishing second behind Romania set up a massive do-or-die confrontation with Argentina.

  We knew it was going to be tough against a team featuring Batistuta, Simeone, Ortega and company, but I was confident. We had big players of our own; Shearer, Campbell and Ince were in their prime. It was all set up for a titanic clash.

  Our first challenge was getting to the ground in St Etienne on time. Glenn never left anything to chance in terms of preparations but we were late because so many players were having injections. Glenn had been having our blood checked for months before the tournament for vitamin levels, iron levels, and so on. We’d taken a lot of pills every day – so many that it felt like a meal in itself. There were all sorts of different-coloured smarties. I know that creatine, the muscle-building protein, was included, along with antioxidants. When the tournament started, some of the players started taking injections given to us by Glenn’s favourite medic, a Frenchman called Dr Rougier. It was different from anything we’d done at United, but all above board, I’m sure. After some of the lads reported that they’d felt a real burst of energy, I decided to seize any help on offer. So many of the players decided to go for it before that Argentina match that there was a queue to see the doctor.

  Eventually we raced into the ground, and Glenn did his usual pre-match routine of moving around the players, shaking their hands and touching them just over the heart, a little pat on the chest.

  As well as injections, Glenn believed in alternative methods, including Eileen Drewery, the faith healer, who’d visited the camp a few times before the World Cup. As a bit of a sceptic, I’d never gone to see her. If I had a bad leg, I wanted to see a doctor. I remember Scholesy having to brush off the manager when he tried to push him into seeing Eileen about a dodgy calf, but he never raised the issue with me. As long as it stayed that way I was happy to let Glenn believe in anything he liked.

  We’ll never know if the faith healing had any positive effect. But one of the masseurs told me after the Argentina game that Glenn had asked the staff, including the physios, to walk around the pitch anti-clockwise during the game to create positive energy for the team. Sadly it didn’t do us much good on an epic evening.

  We did well in the first, blisteringly quick forty-five minutes. We exchanged penalties through Batistuta and Shearer right from the off. Then Michael’s sensational run from the halfway line put us ahead. In the maelstrom of a big match, you don’t celebrate the brilliance of a goal. That’s for later. I just felt a surge of belief that we could hurt Argentina if we kept running at them.

  We might have done but for two horrible set-backs. First we were pegged back to 2–2 just before half-time. Fair play to Argentina, it was a brilliant free-kick routine, Javier Zanetti breaking off the end of the wall, and one that caught us completely cold. I don’t know if they’d saved it for a special occasion but, for all our attention to detail, we’d been caught unawares.

  We’d just lifted our chins from the floor when, two minutes into the second half, Becks was sent off after a tussle with Diego Simeone. ‘Oh no, he’s kicked out,’ I thought. ‘He’s going to get sent off.’

  There was no time to analyse it. You briefly go into shock, then you put the ball down, roll up your sleeves and get on with it. And we were magnificent as the game went into extra-time. I thought we’d won when Sol stuck in a header. So did several of the lads, who ran off to celebrate on one side of the pitch. But the referee had disallowed it for a push, and with half our team out of position I was on my own as Argentina’s cavalry came charging back. It was four against two but somehow I got a tackle in and hacked the ball away.

  We’d never formally practised penalties under Glenn, which some people felt was a mistake. All I’ll say is that I’ve also been part of an England squad that did practise penalties every single day, at the 2006 World Cup, and still missed. Practice can help, but only so far.

  Glenn came over to tell us who the five takers would be and asked me if I was happy to be the sixth. I nodded. ‘Just concentrate, pick your spot and whack it or place it. Just don’t change your mind.’ It never came to that. When David Batty missed our fifth we were out and I never did get the chance to see if I could have kept my nerve.

  Off we trooped to one of the quietest dressing rooms I have ever known, with Becks staring at the floor. I sat next to him on the coach as we drew out of the stadium. He had no idea about the brewing storm, and, to be honest, nor had I. We were just gutted to have been knocked out of the World Cup, and he was particularly upset because he’d been sent off, though I don’t think anyone seriously thought it was a red card offence. He was daft to raise a foot but it was petty and hardly an act of violence. It simply didn’t cross my mind that one player would be held up as a scapegoat, that he’d be vilified for months to come. But that just shows the mood in the country at the time. We didn’t go for Simeone, who’d gone down like he’d been shot. We didn’t criticise the bloke who’d play-acted and ended up getting Becks sent off. We didn’t say, ‘Get up and be a man.’ Instead we hammered Becks for one silly mistake.

  A few things conspired against him. There was all the anti-United stuff at the time, all those idiots singing ‘Stand Up If You Hate Man U’ even when we played for England. We’d all had it at Wembley since we’d started playing for our country. Our last game there before we left for the World Cup training camp, a friendly against Saudi Arabia, had been one of the worst occasions. Just to wear a United shirt was to be vilified.

  Glenn had made things more difficult before the tournament when he said that David lacked focus, and this was now to become part of the vilification. With so much abuse coming from outside the squad Becks now needed people to rally round, but there wasn’t a lot of support from anyone around the England hierarchy.

  The trouble with England and the FA is that in times of trouble there is a rubber-dinghy management system: they chuck you overboard and look after their own. The attitude is ‘as long it’s not me, we’re all right’. So Becks took all the flak. All the frustration that England had failed to win a tournament – again – was dumped on him, which was ridiculous.

  We had a decent team in ’98 and the biggest error had been a collective one – failing to finish top of our group and make life easier for ourselves. Whether we’d have had the class to beat Brazil, France or Holland, all very good teams at the time, is questionable. But why have that debate when you can dump it all on one player?

  Becks would bounce back soon enough, showing immense resilience, just like I knew he would. He’s incredibly stubborn and single-minded is Becks. The word ‘courage’ is maybe overused in sport, but he showed plenty of it in the way he answered his many critics. He has incredible focus when it comes to achieving his goals. He’d worked so hard to get where he was and he wasn’t going to be deflected by abuse after the World Cup, however bad it got. He also knew he could depend on 100 per cent backing from the manager and everyone at United.

  But Glenn was on the back foot, especially when we lost the first of the Euro 2000 qualifiers in Sweden, which I missed. I returned for the next game, the horrible 0–0 draw at home to Bulgaria.

  People said at that time that Glenn had lost the players. I wouldn’t agree with that, but it wasn’t a happy squad. As I said, I think that if Glenn had had five or even ten years’ more experience in club management and Champions League football, he could have been one of the best England managers. In hindsight, it all came too quick for him, and I think he’d agree with that.

  Results were on the wane, but, in true FA style, his sacking came as the result of a newspaper interview that had nothing to do with football. It was typical FA: the football’s not going great, the media are up in arms, throw the man overboard. If they’d wanted to m
ake a change, they should have had the courage to do it on football grounds. Glenn’s comments about religion were nice and convenient for them.

  The Treble

  EVERY PLAYER, COACH and United fan will have their own highlight of the Treble season; there were enough unforgettable moments to share around. There were so many epic contests in that 1998/99 campaign, including the greatest game I ever played in – and I’m not talking about the Nou Camp where we clinched the European Cup so dramatically.

  It was a ten-month period packed with spectacular football, but if I had to select one instant to take with me to the grave, it isn’t anything that happened on the pitch. No, it’s the memory of turning into Deansgate, on our triumphant bus ride after the Champions League final, and seeing a few hundred thousand people in the city centre. That was the moment when Manchester became my heaven.

  I can still see the face of one United fan among the many thousands who lined the road. This guy was screaming so hard that the veins were popping out of his neck. This was joy that came from deep inside. The best moment of his life had arrived; all his dreams had come true. All our dreams had come true that season. Alongside him were others, blokes from Salford, Trafford, Middleton and Wythenshawe with tears streaming down their faces. I guess for the older ones, who remembered 1968, this was a return of the Holy Grail. For the younger fans it was sheer euphoria that we were kings of Europe at last. We’d been striving and failing for long enough. Now, finally, we’d reached the summit.

  I had barely been to sleep. I was shattered at the end of a long season but the whole experience of moving slowly through the throng gave me the most amazing shivers down my back. People were hanging off lamp-posts, and out of office windows. This was euphoria. There was something special and shared about that bus ride. The glory was for anyone and everyone who loved United.

  I wouldn’t presume that holding those trophies mattered more to me, a home-grown lad and United fan, than to someone like Jesper Blomqvist or Ronny Johnsen. Winning the European Cup as part of a Treble is a wonderful achievement for anyone. But this was a day when I realised how blessed I was to have played for the club of my boyhood dreams. As a supporter, I’d sat and watched enough poor United sides down the years. Now, as a player, I’d been part of a team that had put us back on top. Now we could stand comparison with any United team in history.

  And the greatest thing of all was that we deserved it. There’d been some unbelievably tense matches, some moments when it might have gone wrong, but this wasn’t a streaky season. This was the culmination of all the hard work since we were kids, all the toil by the manager; the result of years of learning and improving and sometimes failing. We’d sweated hard for it.

  It was even more special because if you’d asked anyone at the start of that campaign whether they expected history to be made, they’d probably have said yes – by Arsenal. They were champions of England. Real Madrid were champions of Europe. We’d not won a thing.

  There were reasons to think we’d be more competitive. We’d bought Jaap Stam, that great hulk of a centre-half, from PSV Eindhoven. Roy was fit again after his bad knee injury. Dwight Yorke arrived from Aston Villa in September. They’d all prove to be world-class performers.

  But not on the day we were stuffed by Arsenal in the curtain-raiser, the Charity Shield. We lost 3–0, and I was as bad as anyone. Overmars destroyed me. It was boiling hot and Petit just kept dropping the ball over my head on that big Wembley pitch. Even before half-time I was desperate for the final whistle. I looked over at Becks and said, ‘I can’t wait for this to fucking end.’ I meant it. Jaap wasn’t any better against Anelka. A lot of us were still unfit after the World Cup finals, but there were no lingering effects on Arsenal’s players, and some of them had gone all the way to the final in Paris. We were terrible.

  We started off the league season sluggishly too, with a couple of draws. I was so knackered that I ended up coming off at half-time against West Ham. The manager sent me off to Malta for a week and I lay there and did nothing. The campaign was only weeks old and already I needed a time-out.

  We lost badly at Arsenal in September, another 3–0, with Nicky Butt sent off and the manager going crackers afterwards. There was no denying it: domestically, Arsenal were the team to beat.

  It was in Europe that we were starting to show our true capabilities, even though we’d been drawn in a group of death that included Bayern Munich and Barcelona. Even against top opponents we were starting to show a cutting edge to complement what we’d always had at United, an attacking spirit.

  Yorkie took to Old Trafford like he was born to play there, and with Coley, Teddy and Ole already on the books, we could score goals whoever was paired together up front. And we scored them by the dozen, including eleven in two matches against Brondby.

  We went through scoring twenty goals in six games and without losing a match, knocking out a fantastic Barcelona team that boasted Cocu, Luis Enrique and the flair of Rivaldo, Luís Figo and Anderson. Our two 3–3 draws against Barcelona were fantastic games. At Old Trafford it was like the Blitz. In addition to Figo’s class, Rivaldo was on top form, and I don’t know how we kept it down to three.

  Figo was a great player. I was established, I’d been to a World Cup, I’d won championships and I thought I could cope with pretty much anything thrown at me – and then he came along. He took me down the line on his left foot and when I went to block he pulled it back and left me on my arse. It was effortless and graceful, even though he wasn’t a small guy.

  The next time he ran at me I thought, ‘I’m not going to buy it this time. I’ll stop him turning back on to his best foot.’ But he just ran past me and whipped in a perfect cross with his left. So he could go both ways, cross with both feet, and he was quick, strong and perfectly balanced. Ginola and Del Piero were similarly two-footed but, of that bunch, Figo was the pick.

  Six group matches, twenty goals scored, eleven conceded. Whatever happened that season, we weren’t going to be boring. We were letting in plenty in the league as well – fourteen conceded in a run of seven games at one point. We lost 3–2 at home to Middlesbrough a week before Christmas – 3–0 down at half-time at Old Trafford – when the manager was away at a funeral. Eric Harrison had been drafted in for the day as assistant manager. Aside from the boss, Eric could make the most brutal comments of any coach I’ve come across. At half-time he turned to the defence and said, ‘We’ve had to stick three in midfield because, by fuck, don’t you lot need protecting.’ It felt like we were back in the youth team being bawled out, but it had the desired effect. We wouldn’t lose another game between then and the final day of the season.

  Plenty of times we cut it desperately fine. Facing Liverpool in the FA Cup fourth round, we were 1–0 down at Old Trafford in the eighty-eighth minute. We were on our way out. We’d hit the post, we’d hit everything except the back of the net. Then Dwight got one back for us, and seventy-three seconds into injury-time Ole Gunnar bagged the winner. Two goals in the dying minutes to rescue a match that seemed dead – and not for the last time.

  Being a cup tie, there were about eight thousand Liverpool fans at Old Trafford who’d been singing songs about me all afternoon so I ran over to their fans to celebrate – it wouldn’t be the last time that happened either.

  The FA Cup was the least of the three trophies in terms of prestige but it gave us momentum. After beating Liverpool, in March we drew at home to Chelsea in the quarter-final and beat them 2–0 away in the replay. These games, particularly coming sandwiched between huge European ties, helped boost that sense of invincibility.

  It was all coming together, and that spring we began to sense that we were creating a rare opportunity to pull off something special. Little things were clicking into place. Momentum continued to build.

  Behind the scenes, Kiddo had left for Blackburn Rovers, which could have been disruptive given that he was an excellent coach and had such a strong bond with those of us brought through the youth
ranks. For a while the manager was forced to take a more active role in training. We never ran so many laps mid-season.

  In early February, as we prepared to face Nottingham Forest in the Premiership, this bloke walked into the hotel restaurant the night before the game. Like everyone else, I thought, ‘Who’s that?’ I’d never seen him before, never heard of him. It was Steve McClaren, and the next day he led the warm-up on the pitch.

  By the end of the afternoon we’d won 8–1, with Ole scoring four times in twelve minutes.

  I’m sure Steve wouldn’t claim credit for that, but he fitted in seamlessly. He was lucky to take charge of a squad blessed with great players and great hunger, but there’s no doubting his coaching skills. He put on great sessions, some of the best I’ve been involved in – sharp, intense, full of purpose, but also fun. Tactical plans were important, but he also knew how to lighten the mood as we moved from one massive game to the next. We used to play the Rest of the World against Britain on a tight pitch. They were fantastic, fiercely competitive matches. The spirit and intensity around the club was unbelievable.

  Peter didn’t get on great with Roy, Roy and Teddy were hardly best pals, and Andy Cole and Teddy didn’t speak because of some old feud. But they were men and it never came between them on the pitch. If anything, it created a positive edge in training. The five or six of us who had come through the youth ranks probably knitted it all together. I’m sure a successful team can be built without a gang of close mates – there are enough examples – but it was a massive factor for us. We weren’t a clique but a focal point for the dressing room. There was just a great sense of camaraderie.

  In his first season, Yorkie was a big influence in terms of morale. He was new and had this carefree attitude which was at odds with how we’d been educated, but it made for a good mix. We knew he’d go out and have a drink. He’d be out until three a.m. Yorkie wasn’t exactly the most invisible bloke in the world, wearing his baseball cap back to front, balancing cocktails on his head and leaping behind the bar to help the waiters. With his network of contacts, the manager would hear things. ‘I know where you were last night,’ he’d say. But in that first season even the manager turned a blind eye to it as long as Dwight delivered.