‘I left Man Utd and thought Gary Neville was an fool for what he did to me reside on TV’

A former teammate of Manchester United legend Gary Neville has labelled the Sky Sports pundit an “absolute idiot” for embarrassing him on live TV

Phil Neville hasn’t forgotten what his brother Gary did to him on television before a match.

The brothers played together at Manchester United, they became the first brothers to play in an FA Cup winning side for over a century and were also both picked to represent England together.

Despite their clear success as a pair, the two were still brothers at the end of the day, and that comes with a unique rivalry. The relationship became awkward when Gary moved to punditry and had to talk to Phil in a professional sense.

However, the most infamous moment between the two happened when Phil, who turned 48 on Tuesday (January 21), moved on and captained Everton while Gary held the armband for United.

When they stood shoulder-to-shoulder in a tunnel before playing each other, it got frosty. “I was speaking to him about it the other day,” Phil told MUTV. “It was one of the early games, and I went down the tunnel, and you just think he’s going to say hello. And he didn’t. He’s going to say something.

“I turned around. Giggsy said hello, Scholesy said hello. I think Wes [Brown] was there and said hello. And then there’s a camera right in front of where the captains are, and I thought, ‘Typical Gary he’s playing to the cameras, playing for show.’

“The minute we went past the camera, seriously, he went, ‘Alright Phil, how’s it going?’ What an absolute idiot. For the cameras, for Sky Sports and his image, he thought, ‘I’m not saying hello to him.’ I thought, ‘Nah, that’s not for me’.”

Gary later recalled the incident.

He posted a clip on TikTok and said: “I sometimes think whether I should have said hello to him really. But if you played for United you didn’t say hello to anyone in the tunnel. You just didn’t do that.”