Gary Neville: thoughts on English football

At a recent fund raising dinner for the Football Beyond Borders charity, England’s assistant coach and former Manchester United legend, Gary Neville, was asked why the Premier League clubs, particularly in Europe, were not going through the best of eras.

“It’s never easy to put your finger on just one thing in particular. I think it’s a number of things. It’s always difficult to keep Barcelona and Real Madrid off the top.”

Less than a week later Gary Neville was appointed as the new boss at Valencia. Just HOW difficult a task, is something he is almost certainly going to find out over the next six months.

Comparisons may well be odious, but his time at the Mestalla, however long it may last, will at least give him the opportunity to discover at first hand just what the major differences are in that perennial discussion that compares the qualities, and lack of them, between the English Premier League and Spain’s La Liga.

With eight Premier League, three FA Cup, and two Champions League medals to his name, no one in English football is better qualified to offer an opinion on the perceived malaise afflicting the game both at home and abroad, than the country’s assistant coach, now beginning a new chapter in what has been an eventful and varied footballing life.

As a player, either on or off the pitch, Neville never fitted into the box marked shy and retiring. Bullish, confident, fiercely loyal, and a man for whom the epithet ‘doesn’t suffer fools gladly’ could have been invented, retirement was followed by a successful move into the very media world that he had so frequently locked horns with during his playing career with Manchester United and England.

And despite misgivings and doubts and an admittance that “we are definitely nowhere near the level we should be,” not even his harshest critic could accuse him of not being passionate and ultimately positive about the national game that he graced with such distinction.

“We’ve become very good at battering ourselves to the point where now we have 25% of players in the Premier League who are English. So if that is the approach we are going to have, we might just as well give up, if we’re going to think that everybody in the world is better than us.”

“I am not going to subscribe to that feeling. I still believe that there are values that we have.”

“What we failed to do was maintain our own identity, evolve it, we’ve lost confidence, we’ve lost self-esteem and we’ve allowed an infiltration of people that tell us we’re garbage, and the reality is if you’re surrounded by negativity, you will become negative, you will become poor.”

“That is a fact of life. We need to be surrounded by people telling us that they are good and there is no one in English football – either foreign or English – telling them they are good. It is a massive problem.”

But it is not all doom and gloom.

Talking about his role as England assistant coach he says, “England is a pot shot, like a coconut show that people think they can just throw balls at.”

“But I remember a time when we played Spain and thought they were not very good. So we hold out the hope that although England have not been as good as we would like, one day we will be.”

“Against France we had the youngest English team for 60 years and I’m proud of that whether we win or lose because ultimately I think we have to move forward that way.”

“Hopefully we will have a good summer and we surprise a lot of people, but the most important thing is that we pick the right players that have actually got a future with English football.”

But this optimism does not preclude the dose of realism that is ever-present in any of Neville’s analyses.

“At the moment we are going through a very bad cycle in terms of the highest quality. We are nowhere near the top and haven’t been for three, four or five years.

“We can’t be complacent, we have a lot of money in the Premier League and we should have better teams for the money that is being spent and at this moment in time we haven’t.”

“I don’t think our model is right at the moment in England, and although it’s a generalisation we do believe that throwing more money at it is the right way forward.”

One of the main accusations levelled at the Premier League is the ever growing number of foreign players an argument that he obviously has some sympathy with although he is keen to emphasise he is not against foreign players playing in England.

The all-conquering Manchester United side he represented would, he says, never have been the side they were without great foreign players like Japp Stam, Eric Cantona, Cristiano Ronaldo, Carlos Tevez and many more.

“This isn’t a rant against foreign players but just the fact that the balance has tipped too far. We’ve lost identity of what we ought to be.”

But he adds, “I think there was a weekend three weeks ago when 26% of the players who played in the Premier League were English. I think in Spain it’s more like 50 to 55% an din Germany about 50%.”

“I believe in the 50/50 approach. Never exactly, but I think in this modern world that is just about the right mix.”

“If you go back to the best teams in history…over the last 30 or 40 years most of them have a core of players who believe in that club, who come from that country, who believe in the strength of team spirit and togetherness, heart, soul, all those things that fans value.”

“The idea that you can buy that is impossible.”

“The strength of Barcelona in the last five or six years as one of the greatest teams, possibly the greatest team we have ever seen is not only are they great players but a lot of them have come through together and understand the culture of the club and the importance of the badge, the passion of the fans.”

They live in the city, they love the city and they are not going to move out of the city when they finish playing. That counts for a lot.”

Neither, he says, is it as simple as labelling someone as a ‘foreign player’ because, he points out, there are many English players ‘adopted’ by Manchester although not from there originally.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be a local boy. Michael Carrick, Rio Ferdinand, Wayne Rooney are not Mancunians but they immersed themselves in to the city. You don’t necessarily have to be a local boy but it’s about whether you can understand the passion and the culture.”

He also bemoans a system where managers are little more than disposable commodities brought in to obtain sure fire and rapid success.

“How can a manager who has on average about 13 months in the job think about an 18-year-old kid who might be good in two years, or a 12-year-old kid who might be good in seven years.”

“Sir Alex Ferguson knew every single player from the age of 11 to the age of 18 from the minute he came into the club because he believed he would be there for a long time.”

The Ronaldos and the Beckhams of this world, he concedes, were always going to be great players, but other players like Nicky Butt, the Nevilles, John O’Shea, Darren Fletcher and the Wes Brown’s of this world became great players because of the time and belief invested in them by the former Manchester United manager.

But there are shining lights on the horizon, he feels.

“In England there are managers and coaches who believe in bringing players through. I think Pochettino believes it at Spurs and I think Southampton believe it and have done it over many years and do it really well.”

“Manchester United, historically over 60 to 70 years have believed in it and even Louis Van Gaal now with Paddy McNair coming on against Watford and Jessie Lingard starting, so there are still young players being brought into the first team.”

“We’ve got to believe. We’ve got a lot of good players, we should have more, but we’ve got a young squad and we hope they can get the into the Premier League and get that exposure to European football to get better.”

English football will now watch with interest to see if Gary Neville’s latest exposure to the demanding cauldron that is Valencia football club can also help him to get better.