Wasn't aware he had a book coming out. Couple of excerpts...
Quote:
Those 'monster' WAGs just had to be stopped
It's gutting to look back on the 2006 World Cup finals as my last international competition, a tournament that will always be remembered more for the wives and girlfriends than football.
How we allowed the WAGs stories to dominate I will never understand.
It was the one farcical issue of Sven’s reign.
What people overlooked was that this situation had been brewing in 2004. WAGs had been regular visitors to the team hotel in Portugal. If it was a minor irritation then, it had grown into a monster by 2006.
The whole issue of celebrity wives was something I couldn’t get my head around. There were people who saw a tournament not as a series of matches but as a photo opportunity.
The more I saw, the more annoyed I became that my own family were there. I made them aware of my concerns, and my reservations about the motives of quite a few of the travelling party.
As the manager, Sven had to take the blame for allowing this situation to get out of hand. But it didn’t say much for the players, or their families, that it had gone so far. It’s hard enough playing for England without distractions.
It’s not a bad life with all the perks that come with the job. There are downsides, and one of those is spending a lot of time away from your family, but the rewards are huge for the top players.
It put me in a bad mood every time I heard players talking about how they had to catch up with their wife or girlfriend or kids. I hope many of them are embarrassed looking back.
One player a few days before the quarter-final against Portugal said it was his daughter’s birthday and he had to go to the family hotel because she’d made a cake.
Two or three others took that as an opportunity to sneak out, too. It got so bad that a couple of us went to see Sven and said: ‘Look, we’ve got to stop this.’
The mentality was ridiculous. It would never have happened at United.
WHY I DIDN'T SING THE NATIONAL ANTHEM
The FA can help far more than they do. I don’t want to damn an entire organisation, but take Geoff Thompson, the chairman during most of my England years. He only ever sought out one conversation with me.
Did he want to pick my brains on World Cup preparation? Or ask how the FA could help behind the scenes? No, Mr Thompson wanted to know why I didn’t sing the National Anthem.
‘Gary, we’d rather appreciate it if you joined in,’ he said. I had to politely explain that no disrespect was intended, I preferred to spend those few minutes, as I’d done all my career, focusing on the match.
And that was the extent of my dealings with the chairman of the FA.
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http://www.amazon.co.uk/Red-My-Autob...3921152&sr=8-1
Re: Gary Neville
21-08-2011, 11:28 AM
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