Gary Neville blasts ‘biggest betrayal’ of Manchester United dressing room after ‘unforgivable’ details

Nemanja Matic, a former Manchester United player, recently stated that Paul Pogba and Jadon Sancho were frequently late for practice when he was a member of the team.

Former Manchester United player Gary Neville (Image: Sky Sports / Stick to Football podcast)

After Nemanja Matic claimed that Paul Pogba and Jadon Sancho were frequently late for practice while he was a player at Manchester United, Gary Neville declared that being late for training is “the most disrespectful thing a player can do.”

Even though Matic left United, Neville still chastised the midfielder for his “unforgivable” violation of dressing room privacy. Last week, Matic spoke with YuPlanet in an interview about the standards he experienced at United.

Matic, who left Roma to play for Rennes in France, stated, “At Chelsea, players acted professionally, they were punctual and were never late for training but at United it happened almost every day.”

Paul Pogba, Jadon Sancho, and a few other players were among those who were notoriously tardy. Feeling enraged, the rest of us who were consistently punctual formed an internal disciplinary committee, of which I would be the president.

“I pinned a sheet of paper to the wall and wrote down the names of people who were running late. In one season in particular, we received about £75,000 in fines. Due to the Covid outbreak, we were unable to hold the party in London that we had intended to host with the money.

In response to Matic’s assertions, Neville declared that such player behavior is completely intolerable. The Serbian player came under fire from the former United captain for disclosing the information to the public.

Neville said on the Stick to Football podcast, “I remember being late once when I was coming into Carrington, once in 20 years.” “I was never late; I got caught in terrible traffic. I was calling, desperate, and utterly heartbroken.

The only rules I had were that if someone else was running behind schedule, I would hold them accountable because it is the most impolite thing you could do to make your teammates wait. It should go without saying that you should work hard, but you cannot be the person in life who has everyone waiting for you.

“I have been soft on the [Manchester United] players for the past 12 months because I have concentrated on the ownership’s rotten environment, and there are challenges at the club for players to succeed just with everything that is around them,” the speaker continued. There are many issues with the club, which hopefully the new ownership will resolve.

However, Nemanja Matic’s comments regarding tardiness over the past week really irritates me. When players or their representatives go to the media to disparage the manager and other players in your dressing room, that is the biggest betrayal that can occur in a football dressing room.

To be honest, that is not excused. When I heard stories like “here we go again, they’re going to try and get another manager sacked” or “another group of players thrown out,” I focused on them because I knew that they were true and that they had been fed.

“I decided to just stop winging, close your mouths, work as hard as you can, and then come back the next day and repeat the process. I feel some sympathy for them right now because of the club’s ongoing issues with bad hiring practices, hostility, and a dearth of athletic departments. I’ve given them a fairly easy ride, but if they leak information or are late, I don’t feel sorry for them at all.

Since a falling out with manager Erik ten Hag, Sancho has remained out of the first team at United. In contrast, Pogba left Old Trafford in 2022 to rejoin Juventus.