Beating the Invincibles
THERE ARE ALL sorts of ways to win a football match, and there were plenty of occasions when Manchester United, for all our gifted players, relied on a bit of brute force. Physical toughness is an essential part of the game, though you wouldn’t have thought so sometimes when you heard Arsenal’s bleating.
Arsenal’s ‘Invincibles’ were a truly brilliant football team but their attitude wound me up. They acted as though the rest of the world was meant to sit back and admire their beautiful football. Sorry, count me out. Some of us had a mission to stop them by all legitimate means.
At Aston Villa last season Robert Pires did an interview and he was still banging on about how annoying I could be. He talked about me tripping him, insulting him, standing on his feet, and being a general pain. ‘I thought more about having a row with Neville than playing football,’ Pires said. Music to my ears.
What did he expect? When Arsenal were in their pomp, I had him and Ashley Cole rampaging on the left flank and Thierry Henry doing those blistering runs from inside to out. It was like marking the Red Arrows.
Stopping Arsenal was a job that required a defender to reach for all the tricks. Especially on the afternoon in October 2004 when the Invincibles rode into Old Trafford, hoping to notch up their fiftieth league game unbeaten.
We were under massive pressure. Arsenal had stolen the title back from us in 2003/04 with their incredible run, finishing fifteen points ahead of us. They’d not lost a league game; we’d lost nine. We’d finished in third place behind Chelsea.
We’d won the FA Cup thanks to our 3–0 victory over Millwall in Cardiff, and we’d celebrated properly, as the manager always told us to do. A trophy was a trophy. Most teams in the country would have killed to be in our boots. But even when Wayne Rooney rejoined us after his Euro 2004 injury it was clear we were on the slide and the fans were growing agitated.
It went without saying that we had something to prove when the Invincibles came to Old Trafford. We couldn’t bear another humiliation. The idea of Arsenal celebrating fifty Premiership matches unbeaten in our back yard was unthinkable. It was all set up for the match forever to be remembered as Pizzagate, or the Battle of the Buffet.
It’s the only match when I’ve ever been accused of brutalising an opponent. So let me first make it clear that in almost twenty years at United the manager never asked me to kick anyone. I’ve no idea if other managers have issued instructions to ‘take out’ a player, but I can promise you that wasn’t our boss’s style. But did he tell us to get tight, put a foot in and let Arsenal know they were in for a battle? Of course he did.
The manager’s belief was that too many opponents had stood off Arsenal. They had allowed them to play, to strut around. I’m not taking anything away from a great team. They were brilliant. Technically they were as good as anything we’ve seen in England in my time. But there are all kinds of attributes that make up a football side and they didn’t like it when the contest became physical. You could never say that of the 1998 Arsenal side. We knew the Invincibles had all the skill in the world, but they also had a soft centre.
‘If you let them play they’ll destroy you,’ the manager told us in his pre-match talk. ‘So you’d better be right up against them. It’s a football match. You’re allowed to tackle. And no other team tackles them so let’s make sure Mister Pires and Mister Henry know that today’s going to be hard. Today’s going to be different.’
That didn’t mean going over the top. It didn’t mean reckless two-footed challenges. Who wants to get sent off? That would be self-destructive. But we knew a lot of them hated aerial challenges, so what did we do? Clattered them in the air at every opportunity.
My job was to nullify the threat of Antonio Reyes. My thought process was simple: ‘He’s a great player, a pacy, tricky winger. If I stand off him and don’t tackle, he’ll run rings round me and made me look an idiot. He’s got more skill, he’s got more speed. I might have more stamina but that’s not going to be much good if he’s ripped me apart in the first thirty minutes.’ You are like a boxer trying to work out whether to jab and run or get into close contact. And while I could try to intercept, using my experience and my positional abilities, I knew that above all I had to get tight, get physical. I had to makes Reyes lose his confidence. If there were question marks about him – justified by what turned out to be a short spell in England – they were over his temperament. It was my job to expose that weakness.
Some say I crossed the line. How? Reyes was subbed after seventy minutes, and it wasn’t for his own protection. He didn’t have a mark on his leg. Yes, there was a time in the first half when he knocked the ball through my legs and, chasing back, I went through him and tripped him. It wasn’t pretty, but it’s something any defender does dozens of times a season: you concede a foul high up the pitch rather than risk worse trouble around the penalty area.
People said we ganged up on Reyes, but Phil’s collision with him was a nothing tackle. He got there a bit late and pushed Reyes off the ball, which wasn’t hard to do. I’m not going to deny an element of intimidation, but only because Reyes wasn’t tough enough to take it. Cristiano Ronaldo would get that sort of treatment all the time, until defenders realised it didn’t put him off, it just made him more determined. That sort of courage is part of being a great player. Ask Diego Maradona, Pelé; they had the physical courage to withstand being kicked. Reyes couldn’t properly handle the rough and tumble, which is why Wenger ended up selling him back to Spain. He had the skills but he fell short of being a top player because he couldn’t take a bit of stick.
Brilliantly talented as Arsenal were, there was a mental fragility about quite a few of their players. Still is, to be honest. Wenger is always liable to start complaining about a physical approach, but it’s sour grapes because his skilful players have been outfought. He described Darren Fletcher as an anti-footballer once, which couldn’t be more ridiculous.
Physical toughness is part of the game, and our boss has always known it. At Old Trafford we couldn’t believe the naivety of people complaining about Stoke and Blackburn having a physical approach to the game. Anyone who talks like that is advertising a weakness. We learnt right from the days of Nobby Stiles and Eric Harrison that the first lesson of football is that you compete. We had obvious tough characters, like Sparky and Keano and Butty, but the whole team has always been able to handle itself. How many defenders do you see rough up Giggsy? He’ll get kicked but he’ll never get physically dominated by a defender. He’ll simply not allow that to happen. The manager won’t allow that to happen. Look at the way Giggsy went through Lee Bowyer at Birmingham last season after Bowyer had put in a bad tackle. It was a challenge that carried a message: ‘Don’t think we’re gonna get bullied.’
Every team can be outplayed, but the idea of walking into the dressing room if you’ve been pushed around – well, that’s just unthinkable. Our early games against Juventus were hard in that sense. I think of the 1998 Arsenal side and Chelsea under Mourinho as big and powerful. Strength isn’t enough on its own, but there’s no doubt Arsenal have underestimated the importance of being able to compete physically.
Rough up the Invincibles and they’d act as though it was an affront. They believed – and this must have come from their manager – that their beautiful, intricate passing game deserved to be admired, not challenged. They had a superiority complex. Henry would look at you as if to say, ‘How dare you try to tackle me!’
United have never really tolerated prima donnas. You get kicked, you get up and get on with the match. Look at how Ronaldo cut out a lot of his histrionics – that’s because we told him to stop rolling on the floor. He benefited massively from the toughening-up process that came with playing in England.
In the end we beat Arsenal 2–0, with a bit of help from a dubious penalty when Wazza went over Sol Campbell’s leg. But we deserved it because we’d thrown them off their game. And the way they reacted afterwards told you everything about their inability to see football as a battle of skill and courage. They had become bad losers, and they threw a really big tantrum.
I was still walking off the pitch when it all went off outside the dressing rooms. I’d wanted to savour one of the best atmospheres I’d known at Old Trafford so I was clapping the fans when the pizza was lobbed from the away changing room, one slice landing on our manager and splattering his jacket with tomato and pepperoni.
Apparently it had all gone off in a hail of pizza and sausage rolls, but I missed the fun. When I got to the dressing room, a few of our lads were arming themselves and planning to launch a raid back. The manager quickly put an end to it.
It was all set up for a feisty return at Highbury four months later, and the contest lived up to expectations. This time there was almost a fight before kick-off. I’d been out for the warm-up and was heading back to the dressing room when I heard Patrick Vieira running up the tunnel behind me. I don’t know if he’d been waiting for me, but he wasn’t in the best of moods.
‘Neville, you won’t be kicking anybody out there today.’
‘What the fuck are you on about? You need to calm yourself down, pal. The game hasn’t even started yet.’
The next thing I knew he was coming at me, looming over me. A policeman stepped in to separate us.
I went off to the dressing room where I was sat next to Roy.
‘Fucking hell, Vieira’s wound up,’ I said. ‘He’s just come at me in the tunnel.’
This got Roy’s juices flowing. He couldn’t stand Vieira anyway. So when we got out into the tunnel ahead of the game and Vieira started on at me again, telling me who I was allowed to tackle, it all got very lively. A policeman tried to intervene again, and when Roy saw what was happening he was straight back down the tunnel into the thick of it.
‘You, Vieira, come and pick on me.’
That’s when Vieira squirted him with water out of his bottle. And that’s when Roy got seriously angry.
I know we are grown men, and this was now a water fight to go with the pizza-throwing of a few months earlier. You’d shout at your kids if they behaved like that. But we were revved up before a massive game and we weren’t going to back down for anyone.
Roy started jabbing his finger at Vieira. By now the temperature in the tunnel was at boiling point. Wisely, Graham Poll and the rest of the officials stepped in to stop things escalating. They pushed us back into line, ready to go out on to the pitch, but Roy was still giving Vieira stick. He started laying into him about his split loyalties, about how he played for France even though he was always talking about his charity work back in Senegal.
Out we went on to the pitch, and when Vieira walked down the line to shake my hand I made sure I looked him right in the eye. Playing for United had taught me not to be intimidated.
And we weren’t going to be cowed by Arsenal, even when they raced into an early lead through Vieira – a goal that prompted Ashley Cole to run past me, screaming in my face. They were wound up beyond belief.
It made it all the more satisfying when we hammered them 4–2, even though Mikael Silvestre was sent off twenty minutes from the end. Defeat must have hurt them double. To be honest, I think they’d lost it even before the game. There’s a fine line between being wired up for a match and losing the plot. As far as I was concerned, Vieira had crossed it.
I’ve had my own red-mist moments, but, whatever Reyes might say, I’ve never been a dirty player. In February 2004 I was shown a red card in the Manchester derby for a supposed head butt on Steve McManaman, but I didn’t even mean to nut him.
He came towards me shouting his head off, calling me a diver after I’d gone down in City’s penalty area. He was raging and I was convinced he was going to shove his face in mine, the way you see footballers banging foreheads. We’d never been mates. I shoved my head in first thinking he was coming for me. Unfortunately he’d pulled out so it looked like I’d done him. I couldn’t blame the referee for sending me off, but at least we won the game.
As a team, we’ve had our tantrums and our losses of control, but the way some people talk you’d think United have been a disciplinary nightmare under the boss. Our record is not bad at all. There have been a few high-profile cases, and I’ll accept we overstepped the mark when we hounded Andy d’Urso on that infamous occasion. It was bad behaviour and it looked terrible. The boss told us we’d gone too far, and rightly so.
But it’s inevitable you’ll lose the plot sometimes playing top-level sport. Everyone wants this perfect world, but the mentality you’ve been engrained with is to fight and scrap for everything, to win every little battle and every little decision. Especially when you are young, you feel like you are fighting against the world. Occasionally you lose your head, even if you wish you wouldn’t.
I’m sure if you ask a lot of referees, they wouldn’t have liked me during the earlier years of my career. I was gobby. It landed me in trouble when Paolo di Canio scored a ridiculous goal to knock us out of the FA Cup in 2001. He looked about half a mile offside, everyone stopped, and he rolled the ball past Fabien Barthez. In my mind I saw total injustice and had a right go at the officials afterwards. ‘A fucking disgrace’ is what I think I said to them. I thought they’d made a shocking call, made worse by the FA’s decision to ban me for two matches and fine me £30,000. That was totally over the top, and it was reduced to £7,000 on appeal.
Eventually I’d ease off refs, especially with the responsibilities of being captain. I also think the referees improved, or at least they got rid of the worst ones.
These days players are increasingly aware that there’s a camera on them all the time and every little incident is going to be picked up. I can see it reaching the point where players won’t be allowed to talk to refs at all, and maybe that isn’t such a bad thing. I can say that now I’ve finished playing, but, I’ll be honest, it is hard for a lot of players to stay level-headed when they’re fighting for their lives on the pitch.