The former Manchester United defender has been campaigning to improve the national game for quite some time – now, talking exclusively to FFT, he outlines his seven-point plan. The first priority? No more herding cats…
Words Andy Mitten
Gary Neville is a man on a mission. We see him on Sky Sports, see his Overlap videos, hear his podcasts, read about his business dealings. We can stay in one of the hotels he part owns, eat and drink in Cafe Football. We can watch his Salford City team play football in League Two. We can even watch a skyscraper he’s behind going up amid Manchester’s myriad other towers, or study at his University Academy 92 near Old Trafford cricket ground.
This man of the red left has firm political convictions and expresses them in his latest book called The People’s Game, with the journalist Rob Draper.
It’s his view from a front seat in football – 300 cogent and truly impassioned pages with chapter titles such as ‘Power to the People’. ‘This is How it Feels to Be City’, ‘The Fairer Sex?’, ‘The Forlorn Fourteen’, ‘Fit and Proper’ and ‘Vanity Project’.
It starts on April 18, 2021, when Neville heard the news of the proposed European Super League. Anyone watching Sky Sports at the time would have seen his reaction, his opposition and vehemence to it. “The final straw,” declares Neville. “Some people might think that my interest in the governance of football, and the anger I felt, began that day. But the reality is that it was just a catalyst.” The European Super League was dead within days – at least for now.
In an exclusive interview with FFT, Neville defines the seven areas where he wants to see change in football. He’s been a match-going Manchester United fan, a player for the club from schoolboy level right the way through to first-team captain, an England international, an England coach, a manager at Valencia and an owner at Salford. He knows the media, and his family were deeply involved at Bury FC. His siblings were also heavily involved in top level women’s sport – sister Tracey played for and coached the England netball team, brother Phil managed the Lionesses. Few are better placed to understand all the issues involved in football.
This is Neville’s plan to save it…
1 INDEPENDENT REGULATION
In April, the government announced initial plans for a new independent regulator for football, following a review chaired by former sports minister Tracey Crouch. Neville has long since publicly lobbied for such a move.
“The need for an independent regulator hasn’t just come from me,” he explains to FFT. “
