Gary Neville ‘hid’ from Sir Alex Ferguson after Man Utd Champions League heartbreak
Former Manchester United captain Gary Neville once hid from Sir Alex Ferguson, as he couldn’t bare to face him after losing the Champions League final.
Neville wears his heart on his sleeve, and is never one to shy away from tackling a problem at United, especially now he’s a pundit after hanging up his boots in 2011. Neville has been critical of United’s stars in recent years for hiding during the big moments, but has revealed that he was also once guilty of shying away.
United won two Champions League titles under Ferguson, but lost 2-0 to Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona side in 2009 after lifting the trophy the season before. They still won a domestic double that season, but a then 34-year-old Neville was still scared to face Ferguson.
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After the season ended in 2009, Neville made one final trip to the Carrington training complex before heading to St George’s Park, where he was preparing for his final assessment to earn his UEFA A-License coaching qualification. But what seemed like a simple Sunday morning venture suddenly took a turn.
Neville revealed all on the Diary Of A CEO podcast, as he explained: “I’d organised to go in at seven in the morning to meet the caretaker, who was basically on site all the time. He let me in, I parked on the back and [Ferguon’s] office light is on, and he’s there in his chair.
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“I thought, ‘Oh no, I don’t wanna see him, we’ve just lost a European final four days ago’. So I drove round the front, went in, got my boots and got out.”
Neville got out unsighted, although Ferguson’s former stars have always claimed that the boss knew everything that was going on at all times. But this moment has stuck in the mind of Neville, and it’s only added to the respect he holds for his former manager.
(Image: The Diary Of A CEO/Youtube)
“To be in on a Sunday morning at half-six, seven o’clock, the only person in the building with his light on, four days after we’d lost the European Cup final – and he’d be in his mid-60s. I thought, ‘no one could live with that, that’s the reason he’s winning’,” Neville added.
“There’s no other manager in no other league that I know of, who four days after a defeat would be – in his off-time in the summer – in his office on a Sunday morning at half-past six. And he didn’t know I was coming in, obviously. He didn’t see me either, I just saw him in the distance. I couldn’t believe it.”
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