Gary Neville has warned football still needs to take a giant leap forward to tackle “the distress and discrimination that we don’t see” – and urged the game to deliver real structural change and not just lofty words and campaigns against racism.
“Forget campaigns. Forget words. It has to be actions,” Neville said. “It has to be demonstrative, it has to be real and happen. We need to take a giant leap rather than minute steps each year. We know the obvious discrimination, the obvious abuse – it’s easy for us to see that – but we need to talk about equal representation in boardrooms, on the coaching side up and down this country.
“I’m not going to hide away from it. We need education, we need protocols and processes in place which basically reverse what’s been happening in our country.”
The former Manchester United and England defender also said he was ashamed he had not done more to confront racial abuse during his playing career – including not sticking up for Ashley Cole when his teammate was abused by Spanish fans at the Bernabéu. “The reality is we put racial abuse in the same category as the abuse we would receive for playing for Manchester United or England. We didn’t think. We just got on with it. It’s appalling and I’m ashamed of the fact for someone who was on the PFA management committee and fought for players’ rights at nearly every level, I didn’t fight hard enough on this.
“I didn’t demonstrate anything and it’s not good enough. It’s not me. But what we’ve seen in the last few weeks has been enlightening. I felt warm and tingly watching the protests. The passion, the feeling, the intensity of it.”
Neville, who was speaking ahead of the Premier League’s return to Sky Sports with a double-header on 17 June, followed by a further 20 matches in the opening two weeks, said the channel had also asked Troy Townsend, Kick It Out’s head of development, to speak to its pundits and presenters about racism. “The idea of having a Kick It Out T-shirt on once a season as a football player doing a picture in front of a flag and then going training and basically not seeing it again for another 12 months is not enough. It feels like there needs to be huge change not just in football but in society in these next few months.”
Neville, who is also a co-owner at the League Two club Salford City, also warned the hit football had taken from the coronavirus pandemic could lead to clubs going under as well as a massive hit to players’ wages. And he admitted he might be tempted to vote for a salary cap – even if it was to Salford’s detriment. “Wages will reduce. I know for a fact that will happen in Leagues One and Two and the Championships by about 20%-30%, maybe even up to 35%-40% at some clubs. We’re quite obviously against the salary cap in the sense that we want to basically get into the next league as quickly as we possible, but that doesn’t mean to say we won’t vote for it if we think it’s the right thing for the league.”
Neville said he was looking forward to the return of the Premier League – 64 of which will be exclusively shown on Sky Sports and Now TV. However, the presenter said the financial damage to the game caused by the lockdown would lead it to make fundamental changes for the better.
“I would hope football uses this as a chance to reset – reset the pyramid, distribute the wealth more, give grassroots more and give the lower league clubs more. Make ourselves still the best league in the world but make it more affordable for fans to get into a stadium, make it more accessible, all the things that we know are right.
“There isn’t one single person in football or one single person in this country who wouldn’t believe that they are the right things in my mind, apart from potentially 14-15 Premier League owners. We have got to change.”
Sky Sports returns to Premier League action with a double-header on 17 June and will show 64 matches, including 25 on its free-to-air channel Pick. It will show all 20 teams in the opening two weeks.