Gary Neville: Jamie Carragher forces Sky Sports pundit to wear Liverpool Shaqiri shirt

The pair made a bet on Sky’s Premier League Preview Show on the eve of the season over a penalty shoot-out with the loser vowing to wear the shirt of the winner’s former club live on television.

And after Liverpool legend Carragher saved Neville’s spot-kick and dispatched his own penalty, the ex-United defender was told he would have to wear a Xherdan Shaqiri shirt.

Carragher said: “I’ll buy it, No 23 Carragher on the back. No, no, I’ll tell you who we’ll get, No 23 Shaqiri on the back. He hates Shaqiri!” 

Neville – who was heavily critical of Swiss winger Shaqiri during the World Cup – initially appeared to suggest he would go back on the idea due to a previous bet between the two which Carragher failed to fulfil.

That involved Carragher supposedly declaring that the Brazilian would score 15 goals in a single season for Spurs and that if he didn’t, he would wear a United shirt. The Brazilian did not meet that target but Neville said via Twitter that his fellow pundit did not keep his word.

But the pair put their pasts behind them in the name of charity to wear a Liverpool top and a United shirt respectively on Sky’s coverage of Liverpool’s 2-0 win at Crystal Palace.

“There’s no way Shaqiri’s fitted in that! Shaqiri’s got in this?!” joked Neville as he struggled to get the top over his head while Carragher wore a United shirt with ‘Neville No 2’ on the back.

Neville even wore the shirt backwards to avoid having the Liverpool badge on his chest and was pretty quick to take it off with his dislike of United’s bitter rivals clearly having not subsided.

Monday Night Football host David Jones confirmed that the shirts will be auctioned off to chosen charities of both Neville and Carragher’s choosing.

The money raised from Shaqiri’s shirt will go towards Fans Supporting Foodbanks with Neville’s funds to be sent to the Greater Manchester mayor’s homeless fund.

“Look out for these two’s social media and we’ll get that auction started to raise loads of money for a good cause,” Jones said. 

The Shaqiri shirt that Neville wore was even signed by the Liverpool winger himself, who wrote: “To my No 1 fan Gary, please don’t track back – sorry, back track – on this bet.” 

That followed comments that Neville made as a pundit on Shaqiri for Switzerland in Russia earlier this summer.

He declared: “I’m not a fan of Shaqiri, to be honest with you.

“I think that was, to be fair, worse by the fact that he distanced himself from his team-mates as Stoke.

“They were unprofessional last season, Stoke. There’s no doubt, and he epitomised it.

“He could score the goal of the tournament and he could have the most amazing game.

“But he could also be there for three matches, do nothing and just amble and wobble around.

“To be honest with you, with him, players like that I can’t have. I struggle with it.”

Neville’s brother Phil followed that up with similar scathing criticism days later, branding Liverpool’s £13.75million summer signing “a disgrace”. 

But Shaqiri bit back a few days later, joking: “They [the Neville brothers] were Manchester United players. Maybe they don’t like Liverpool! 

“Some people like you, some people don’t like you. I don’t want to comment on what is said by people I don’t know.”

Liverpool beat Palace 2-0 at Selhurst Park with James Milner netting a penalty and Sadio Mane scoring a late goal on the counter-attack.