“They always came back a mess.”
Manchester United’s ‘Class of 92’ were central to the club’s success in the 1990s and 2000s. Gary Neville, Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt, Phil Neville, David Beckham and Ryan Giggs were all key players or valuable squad members for United during their trophy-laden years. The five English players also performed key roles for their national team.
Between them, Beckham, Butt, Scholes and the two Neville brothers earned 364 caps for England. However, Alex Ferguson wasn’t always keen on them joining up with the national team.
Butt recalled a few years ago that Ferguson just informed him one day he wasn’t joining up with the national team, and the former United midfielder didn’t have much say in the decision. “He’d never pull you out over a fake injury,” Butt said.
“It was a case of, ‘You’ve got an England game coming up – you’re not going’. And that was it. He was honest to the FA.”
During a chat on Joey Barton’s podcast The Edge with Joey Barton, Gary Neville expanded on Ferguson’s reasons for not wanting his players to join up with England.
The former United captain said that Ferguson found that the pressure of playing for England, and the scrutiny that came with it, would often affect his players and they would come back less focused than when they left.
“I remember my first England away game was in Norway,” Neville said.
“And Brian Woolnough, who is no longer with us, was the main, powerful journalist for The Sun. He gave me a rating of four out of 10, (writing that Neville was a) ‘nervous wreck and totally out of his depth’. That was my first-ever England away game. But, do you know what? I played quite well. Terry Venables (the then-England manager) rang me two days later and said, ‘Look, I don’t want it to affect you’. I was okay with it, but that’s why Alex used to always say, ‘I send my players away with England, and they always come back a mess.”
You can listen to a clip from Barton’s chat with Neville here:
A clip from ep4 of my podcast ‘The Edge with Joey Barton’.
Gary Neville talks about the problem @ManUtd Alex Ferguson had with releasing his players for @England. #NervousWrecks#TheEdgeNeville #ThreeLions@GNev2 @theedgepod_jb#MUFC
Full podcast:https://t.co/I9U5YGigm6 pic.twitter.com/fCBEUGuFMl
— 👑 Joey Barton 👑 (@Joey7Barton) February 25, 2018
In his second autobiography, Ferguson revealed that he was twice offered the England job, in 1999 and 2001, but turned it down on both occasions.
“There was no way I could contemplate taking the England job,” he said.
“Can you imagine me doing that? A Scotsman? I always joked that I would take the position and relegate them: make them the 150th rated country in the world, with Scotland 149. The England job requires a particular talent – and that skill is the ability to handle the press. Steve McClaren made the mistake of trying to be pally with one or two. If you cut 90 percent out, the others are after your body. If one person gives you favourable coverage, the others will hound you. No, it wasn’t a bed of nails I was ever tempted to lie on.”
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