Gary Neville lashes out at criticism of Keir Starmer over soccer freebies

Gary Neville has lashed out at Keir Starmer’s critics after he accepted free tickets to Premier League matches – branding the backlash “absolutely incredible”.

The former Man United and England defender said he was “struggling” to understand the anger around it. Neville, a passionate Labour supporter who worked with the now-PM ahead of the General Election, pointed out Mr Starmer already holds an Arsenal season ticket – but can’t use it because of security worries.

He told a Labour Party conference fringe event: “I’m struggling with the free football tickets one quite a bit, to be honest with you, when I look at the absolute corruption we’ve seen in the last five, six, seven, eight years with people getting billions of pounds worth of contracts in VIP lanes.”

He added: “Keir Starmer’s paid for his season ticket to go with his family to watch Arsenal all his life and he’s now being told he can’t go to that same seat, when I’m sure he would – you know he would, everybody knows he would – he’s been told he’s got to go in a hospitality box, a private box.

“To be fair, a lot of the people complaining about him will end up in those types of boxes themselves, including myself at times.” Neville continued: “I find it absolutely incredible that this level of attention is now being paid to a Labour Prime Minister when I look at the absolute cronyism we watched for years under that lot.”

The footballer-turned-pundit went on to accuse the Premier League of acting like a “bully” and “scaremongering” over plans to bring in an independent football regulator. He branded the league “entitled” and “selfish”.

Neville said: “We have a Premier League that’s entitled, they feel entitled. I’m not going to use the word greedy, but I just have. They are selfish and I can’t understand that way of thinking. It’s almost like they’re the big brother that sit there and distribute scraps of food to the little brothers round the table. It’s not what you do when you’re in a family.”

His intervention comes following claims English teams could be barred from European competitions such as the Champions League because of Uefa rules against state involvement in football governance. These have been dismissed by the Government, which says the regulator would be independent.

Mr Neville said: “Their mindset is such of a bully. Their mindset is such that they think they can influence the regulator once the regulator’s introduced and they can get a better deal potentially the other side of the regulator. And what they’re applying is their soft power and their influence to try and create scare stories and scaremongering, like we had a couple of weeks ago.”

Culture, Media and Sport Secretary Lisa Nandy said the claims about being barred from Europe were “ridiculous” and “really disrespectful to fans because it caused a lot of alarm which was really unnecessary”. She said the Government won’t be “heavy handed”. But she said ministers also want to “deal with the lack of sustainability in other parts of the pyramid”.

A new Bill that would see the new watchdog created is expected to be introduced to Parliament in the coming weeks.