Gary Neville stopped speaking to school friends after night at pub: "I had to get away"

Gary Neville was so dedicated to making it as a professional footballer with Manchester United that he decided to shun his school friends to avoid any distractions

Gary Neville shunned his friends from school because he was so laser-focused on being a successful footballer with Manchester United.

Neville made 602 appearances for United between 1992 and 2011, spending his entire professional career with his boyhood club. The 48-year-old won 20 trophies with the club, including eight Premier League titles and two Champions League trophies.

He was known for his reliability at right-back and that characteristic only came because of hard work. Neville was renowned for his dedication to Sir Alex Ferguson ’s training regime – but that approach came at a cost, with his personal life taking a back seat.

“When I left school at 16, I never spoke to my friends from school ever again,” he said on the Stick to Football podcast. “I look back at it now and it was terrible. I just thought that if I don’t put everything into football, then I’d regret it.

“I knew my school friends would be going out and having a good time, but I had to get out of this. My leaving do at school was at a pub surrounded by people drinking and doing all sorts and I had to get away. It was one of those things that I needed 100 per cent focus – I never went out or anything for four years and Phil Neville was the same.”

Neville went on to tell an anecdote which highlighted his relentless focus on his job. “I remember being late once when I was coming into Carrington, once in 20 years,” he said. “I got stuck in horrendous traffic; I was never late. I was ringing up, I was frantic, I was absolutely devastated.

“Just the standards that I set, just if anyone else was late I’d criticise people, because that is the most disrespectful thing you can do, making your teammates wait. Working hard goes without saying, but if everyone is waiting for you, you can’t be that person in life.”

His approach was very different from his United team-mate Paul Scholes, who revealed his hectic personal life in an interview with Neville in 2022. Speaking on the Overlap, he said: “That was my lifestyle – I was raised around pubs as a kid. Wherever we went, my mum and dad, it involved a pub. And I was outside there, kicking the ball against the wall because kids weren’t allowed inside, just outside waiting for my mum and dad, really."

He added: "I remember once when I was 16 or 17 and playing with the youth team." he explained. "And Eric Harrison [the then-youth team coach], and he rang my dad and said ‘we are worried about Paul’s drinking’.

“Whether someone grassed me up or something, I don’t know. But that’s the way I was brought up - Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, perhaps on a Monday - it was going out. I was just around the pub all the time. Used to go and watch my mates play on a Sunday morning.”

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