David Beckham, owner of Inter Miami CF, was furious when asked if he had signed his former Manchester United teammate, Phil Neville, to coach the team, given their friendship for many years.
Neville, who was hired to coach Major League Soccer on Monday, played for Beckham at United from 1994 to 2003 and the England team from 1996 to 2007 and is the fourth co-owner of the Salford City division of England. Neville coached the English women’s team from 2018 until this month, and the Three Lions lost to the United States in a semifinal of the 2019 World Cup.
However, when asked at the new coach’s introductory press conference if friendship was a factor in Neville’s employment, Beckham insisted that employment had nothing to do with it.
“Of course, people will always come back and say, ‘Ah, it’s because he’s your friend.’ It has nothing to do with the fact that he is my friend, “Beckham said Friday.” Our group of owners doesn’t just hire friends. We hire the best people, either on the field, off the field, in the staff of our staff, the staff working in our training facilities, on the stadium.
“We run a serious football club here. And I think at the end of the day, we hire people who we think are the best for the job.”
Neville said he is aware that many foreign coaches have struggled in MLS with salary caps, artificial turf and extreme weather conditions, except Gerardo Martino, with Atlanta, in 2018 and Gary Smith, with Colorado, in 2010. He remembered spending eight weeks observing how the coach worked Bruce Arena with Beckham during his time with LA Galaxy at the end of his career.
“The biggest challenge for me as a coach is to come here and show people that foreign coaches can come and be successful,” Neville said. “There will be things about travel and different time zones that we will have to adapt to. But, in the end, I think that in my career as a footballer, in my short career as a coach, I had to adapt to different situations such as travel, weather, etc.
“I have a good experience with this. We went out to America every pre-season when we were in a different city every two or three days. We had to adapt. And I did. We play a game on the East Coast, the coast. West, every two or three days. So I look forward to the challenge. “
Neville inherits a list that includes striker Gonzalo Higuaín and midfielder Blaise Matuidi, both 33 years old.
“I think these players know there are injuries. They’re a little scared now of last season’s performance,” Neville said. “They want to come back this season and show everyone how good the players are. So there’s that appetite, that determination that we saw this week, that I’m sure we can incorporate into the season; a lot of quality in terms of the players we want to bring in, I think we will become a really strong team. “
Neville was assistant coach at Valencia in 2015-2016 during his brother Gary as technical director. Phil Neville was too nervous to answer questions in Spanish on Friday, but plans to start after his first game of the season.
Neville anticipates a smooth transition from training women to men.
“The sessions I did at Manchester United and the sessions I did at Valencia were no different from the sessions I did for my women’s team last year,” she said. “It’s a football that is played on the same field, with balls of the same size, with a referee, with the fans in the stadium and, in the end, the same goal and that wins.”