Red: My Autobiography

by Gary Neville

  At the moment it happened, in March at home to Bolton, I couldn’t have known how bad it was. I just knew it hurt. Early in the game, Rio played a ball behind me and I dillydallied getting it under control and had to take a couple of touches. I could feel Gary Speed coming at me fast so I went to play it down the line. Bang! That’s when he nailed me.

  It wasn’t the best of tackles – more man than ball – but he was only doing what a lot of us try to do: put in a hard tackle early on, particularly away from home. But the full weight of his body landed on my ankle. I knew straight away that my ligaments had been damaged.

  It was my wife’s birthday that evening and we were due out for a meal, but I couldn’t move. I felt terrible. I had ice on to reduce the swelling but the ankle seemed to be getting bigger and more painful. In the end I called the club doctor and asked him to bring some painkillers. ‘I think my ankle’s going to explode,’ I told him through the pain.

  I still thought it would be a case of ten to twelve weeks out, not seventeen months before I started to play regularly again. I was even trying to get back for the Cup final, the first game at the new Wembley, when we’d lose to Chelsea. In early May I went out to try and train with one of the physios. I lasted about three minutes.

  There was something wrong inside the ankle so I went for an operation to wash it out. They removed some floating junk and shaved two bones. Eager to get back for the 2007/08 season, I worked every day in rehab. Even on holiday I was in the gym.

  But when we started pre-season, something still wasn’t right. I felt I was running differently and I kept picking up all sorts of problems – in my calves, my groin, my thighs. It was one problem after another. I’d get fit enough to join the reserves but then something else would go.

  When I was younger, I used to look at David May or Ronny Johnsen or Louis Saha and think, ‘It can’t be that bad. Can’t they just run it off? They look fit to me.’ Now I was the one with the ice pack after training, in an ice bath, or asking the doctor for a trolley load of anti-inflammatories.

  I’d never been particularly sympathetic to players who were ruled out but now I began to realise that it’s hard work being injured. It’s a strain on your time, your confidence. While everyone else is in a good mood going into a new season, an injured player is lonely in the gym. And then there is the constant risk of set-backs.

  Just before Christmas I played a few reserve games. I’d been training properly for several weeks. Carlos saw me one morning. ‘Great to have you back, Gary.’

  We were training one Sunday morning, a practice match. I felt a bit odd for the first twenty minutes. Then I went to do some running and my calf just pinged. A muscle tear. That was another five weeks, but it was the damage to morale that was worse. It was another five weeks on top of eight months.

  People would try to cheer me up. It’s only a little strain. But I’d just be thinking about how I hadn’t recovered from the first injury yet. It was two steps forward, four back.

  It reached the point where I actually thought I didn’t want to come back in 2007/08, even though I was close by the spring. The lads were enjoying such a great season and I didn’t want to be a risk. No manager in his right mind was going to disrupt a team going for a Treble, and that’s what we were chasing.

  I was thrilled for the club. I don’t doubt there are some players who’ve been dropped or injured and hope the team gets beaten, or the player selected in their position has a bad game. With England I’d be certain that has happened. But I think the manager knows the sort of characters he has at United, and there have been very few bitter, jealous types. Don’t be feeling sorry for yourself, we’d been told since we were kids whenever we were dropped or injured. I was chuffed to see the team thriving without me.

  I really wasn’t sure I was ready to come back when the manager stuck me on the bench. It was April 2008, fully thirteen months after the injury, when I came on in the European Cup quarter-final second leg against AS Roma with the tie well won. ‘You’re going on in central midfield,’ the manager said. I hadn’t expected that, or the standing ovation as I ran on to the pitch.

  I was embarrassed as much as overwhelmed by the reception. All this fuss for me? I just wanted to get stuck in, to get hold of the ball, to calm my nerves. But it was a lovely thing for the fans to give me such a welcome back. It had been a long slog, but that one moment justified all those long, lonely hours in the gym.

  Those nine minutes were all I played in the entire season as, wisely, the manager decided to stick with the players who were carrying us towards a league and European Double. If it hadn’t been for a silly home defeat to Portsmouth in the FA Cup I might have been forced to revise my opinion that the Treble would never be repeated.

  After beating Roma, we were through to the semi-finals to face Barcelona – and what a test this would be with the talents of Eto’o, Iniesta, Deco and Messi. Credit to Carlos. Beating Barcelona was his finest hour as the manager’s assistant. This was when his technical expertise, the way he’d taught us to be a more adaptable European side, paid dividends.

  For years, training had always been based around how we’d play, but this time Carlos was obsessive about stopping Barcelona. We’d never seen such attention to detail. He put sit-up mats on the training pitch to mark exactly where he wanted our players to be to the nearest yard. We rehearsed time and again, sometimes walking through the tactics slowly with the ball in our hands.

  The instructions were simple enough. Ronaldo up front tying them up, Carlos Tevez dropping on to Yaya Touré every time he got the ball. Let their centre-halves have it. They couldn’t hurt us. With Ji-Sung Park and Rooney out wide, the full-backs had two hard-working wingers to help shackle Messi and Iniesta. But the really complex part was for Scholes and Carrick. Carlos had worked out precise positions for each of them, depending on the other’s whereabouts. They’d have to pivot in tandem. It would require huge concentration but it was necessary to stop Deco and Xavi feeding the ball through to Eto’o.

  Barcelona were such a complex team to counter, and we had to close down all these potential lines of attack. They were a better footballing team than us. Suffocation was a necessary tactic.

  The hope for the first leg in the Nou Camp was that Ronaldo could catch them on the break, but it didn’t work out that way after he missed an early penalty. Instead it was a defensive masterclass, orchestrated by Carlos.

  The second in command can have a great effect on the team. The manager puts a huge amount of trust in his coaches. We learnt from Brian Kidd, from Steve McClaren, and from Carlos Queiroz. We suffered in the periods when we didn’t have coaches of that calibre. Carlos could come over a bit dry at times, but we learnt to control games under him.

  After a 0–0 draw in the Nou Camp, we came back to Old Trafford in good heart. The return was a nail-biter but then Scholesy hit a wonder goal into the top corner. A great strike from a great player at a vital moment. Sheer class. We’d stopped Barcelona from scoring in 180 minutes which very, very few teams have done over the last five years. And we were back in the European Cup final for the first time in nine years.

  The night before we played Chelsea in Moscow I had that feeling of magic in the air. Thinking it might be close, I went through our penalty takers. I fancied our chances; though, with hindsight, I know things might have been very different if John Terry hadn’t slipped.

  I felt sure we were going to win and I couldn’t have hand-picked a more fitting player than Giggsy to score the decisive penalty on the night he made his 759th appearance for the club and surpassed Bobby Charlton’s record. Like the 1999 final taking place on Sir Matt Busby’s birthday, the wonderful thing about United is that you are always surrounded by this incredible history.

  Later that night we presented Giggsy with a watch to mark his appearances record. Part of me wondered whether he should walk away from football there and then. How could you beat the perfection of an occasion like that? He’d become United’s most decorated pl
ayer, the club’s greatest servant, and taken the winning kick in a European Cup final. How could you possibly top that?

  But the reason he is a legend is that he never thinks of quitting. He was still in love with the game, and why give it up if you are playing brilliantly week after week?

  It’s been an incredible career, a one-off in English football. Everyone the world over rightly hails Paolo Maldini for his class and his incredible longevity. Well, Giggsy is our Maldini.

  The only thing lacking in his CV is an appearance in a World Cup finals, but there’s not a lot he could have done about that. Understandably, he used to get very ratty when people came up to him saying, ‘Come and play for England.’ There was this hope that he might switch because he’d played for England Schools, but Giggsy was born in Wales and is a hundred per cent Welsh.

  There have been other long-serving players, but to have done it in his position, with the bravery to take the ball and to keep taking players on, is something extra special. He’s been so intelligent, adjusting his game. He’s learnt to play central midfield, second striker, even full-back.

  You look back on how he began, as this flying winger right out on the touchline, and then think about how he managed to control matches from the heart of the pitch twenty years later. He’s managed to remain relevant, and brilliant. Partly that’s by being tough. He’s got a steely way about him, Giggsy, on and off the pitch. I’ve hardly ever heard him raise his voice, but he doesn’t need to. He’s slight, but people know he’s not to be messed with.

  Anyone who plays until he is thirty-seven needs a bit of luck with injuries, but Giggsy has taken incredible care of his body. Me, Giggsy and Keano took up yoga together but Roy and I managed to fall out very quickly with the teacher. She got tired of me talking all the way through the classes. Giggsy has kept going, and he’s looked after himself.

  You talk about the great legends of United and Giggsy’s up there with the very best. Busby, Ferguson, Charlton, Giggs – that’s the quartet who sit at the top of this club. You can separate them from everybody else, with their longevity, their games and their medals, but also the way they embody everything that’s great about United.

  United is a club that values people and understands the importance of loyalty. Like any player Giggsy had his downturns, his losses of form and confidence, but he always came through. The club always backed him to come good. And he always did.

  Our success in the Champions League was a monkey off the manager’s back, too. This accusation that we had underachieved in Europe had stalked him all his career, before and after 1999. But in 2008 he joined that very select group of managers who have won the European Cup twice. Only Bob Paisley had beaten that. And while it had taken nine long years, the manager deserved every tribute.

  We would go one better by winning the Fifa Club World Cup, too, in Japan, to become the best team in the world. It’s a trophy that matters to the players, but I wish there was a format that worked better for the fans. In 1999 we beat Palmeiras, the champions of South America, in a one-off game, the Intercontinental Cup, but it felt strange playing it in Tokyo on neutral soil. It would have been a far better experience to play two legs, one at home and then the great experience of a truly hostile crowd in South America. Football is now a truly global game and I can understand why Fifa want to include teams from Asia and elsewhere, but maybe the tournament has to move around the world so that fans of every continent learn to love it. European supporters don’t really get it, partly because it’s screened out of their time zone, which is a great shame because to become the best team in the world is the highlight of a club career. For the players it is a massive achievement. You’ve had to win the Champions League just to qualify.

  What made the 2008 triumphs so special was how the boss had moved with the times. If the 1994 team was obviously British and muscular, and the 1999 vintage a little more refined, by 2008 we’d taken on a continental feel. We might still play 4–4–2 at times but there was no comparison with a decade earlier. We had so much more variation. Sometimes our opponents wouldn’t know who was centre-forward. Accused in the past of fielding a naive, gung-ho team, the manager had embraced new ideas.

  A regular criticism from people who didn’t understand how we’d evolved was that we lacked a warrior, particularly in midfield. I’d hear the question ‘Where is our Robson, our Keane, our leader?’ But where is Barcelona’s warrior? The idea that you need some battle-hardened hero does not stack up. What you need is good footballers. We had plenty of bite in players like Fletcher and Hargreaves and match-winning power in Scholes, Giggs, Rooney, Ronaldo and Tevez.

  Of course we’d have loved another Keane, Ince, Robson. But it had become a different game, full of rotation, different strategies, more sophistication. We had a strong squad, good competition so that the players were all on their toes, and the spirit of adventure that runs through all the great United teams. And in Carlos the manager had found a coach whose knowledge (even if at times he bored us with his tactical talks) he could plunder and combine with his own natural aggression and boldness to build another great team.

  There was no Treble, but comparisons with 1999 don’t show much between the two sides. If I had to choose, I would say that the 1999 squad had a greater ability to pull off results through sheer force of will. But 2008 had more flair and versatility.

  We could win playing our way but we could also stop the other team. We could adapt, which is what Arsenal have failed to do. After 2005 we never feared them because we knew exactly what to expect. The manager’s approach to them was always the same: stop them, match them, then the football will come, and their heads will go. It was exactly what happened in the European Cup semi-final the following season. We frustrated them and then, bang!, on the counter. They are just too naive. They won’t win trophies unless they wise up.

  We had learnt, and in 2008 we were European champions again. That night I recalled a text Roy had sent me about six months after he left the club. ‘Rooney and Ronaldo will win you the European Cup,’ he wrote. Not a lot of people were giving us a prayer at that time. But he knew, as the manager did, that we had a squad full of outstanding players. And one borderline genius in Ronaldo.

  Steve

  I PLAYED IN five tournaments for England, which is something to be proud of, but there have been times when I reflected on my international career and just thought, ‘Well, that was a massive waste of time.’

  Sorry for sounding sour, but my best mate got butchered in 1998, then my brother in 2000. The whole lot of us got it in the neck at other times. Sometimes we deserved it, but playing for England was one long rollercoaster: some ups and downs but also quite a few moments when you’re not really sure if you are enjoying the ride.

  It should be fantastic. Representing your country should be the best moments of your life. But there is no doubt that too many players spend too much time fearing the consequences of failure when they pull on an England shirt. The best managers – Terry, Sven in his early years, Capello in patches – have banished those fears for periods, but it doesn’t take much to go wrong before the dread comes flooding back.

  I was really struck by one meeting Steve McClaren organised with Bill Beswick, the sports psychologist, and the whole squad. I saw young players really affected, terrified of what was in front of them. A few of them were saying they weren’t enjoying England at all. The team wasn’t winning and they were getting slaughtered by the fans and the media.

  Many supporters will argue that players need to be stronger than that if they want to play for their country. And perhaps they’re right. But after my fourth international against Norway, I picked up the Sun and saw I’d been given 4/10. ‘Nervous wreck,’ it said. ‘Totally out of his depth.’ I actually thought I’d played well! I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t start doubting myself after that, particularly as a young player. Terry Venables rang me up and said, ‘Honestly, Gary, I don’t know how they’ve seen that. Don’t worry about it.’ But it’s n
ot easy to shrug off when you are inexperienced and haven’t developed a thick skin.

  You can’t overestimate the impact the media can have at the national level because you’re far more exposed playing for England than for your club. The criticism can eat into your confidence, and then the fans get influenced by the media. I’ve seen the cycle at work. You are loved at first, a fresh face on the scene. Then they start finding flaws. Then you are OK again, then you’re past it, then you’re valued for your experience, then you’re finished. You should be tested playing for England, but some players struggle to get through that first dip. Have a bad start and they’re on to you. And every time we don’t win a tournament, it becomes a disastrous failure. We can never just lose. Someone has to be blamed.

  This lurching rollercoaster was most violently demostrated with Becks. From one year to the next he could be superhero or arch villain. Boo him, love him, boo him again. Make him captain, strip him of the armband. It was like a soap opera in the national jersey. It was embarrassing. You might get the odd bit of dissent at United but never the crazy hysteria.

  A healthy edge of nerves at club level would become fear at national level – a fear that if we lost the world was going to end. Too many players were frightened of what would be said or written about them, of making a mistake. And in my time we never got together a group of players who could quite cast off those inhibitions.

  We got closest at Euro 96. We were a whisker away. We played close to our peak and had a squad, and manager, capable of winning a major tournament. Perhaps in 2004, too, but were we ever really a Golden Generation? We had some good players, and a few great ones. Cole, Rio, Becks and Gerrard could have played in any international team.