Gary Neville had an illustrious career playing for his boyhood club Manchester United and he was one of those famed players to have come out of the ‘Class of 92’.
And after hanging up his boots, the former England International has gone on to become a football pundit and he is currently one of the best analyzers of the beautiful game.
Yes, Neville has his inclination towards Manchester United but there’s no denying that the way he post-mortems a match – not many people in the business can do that.
And there’s no denying that despite the poor run of form, Manchester United still run one of the most successful academies in England and players like Marcus Rashford and Jesse Lingard are big examples of that flawless system.
Recently Neville was back to his roots to provide some words of advice to the Manchester United academy players which we feel every young footballer should try and incorporate to their lifestyle.
Gary Neville laid down 14 points which are as follows:
1. Choose who you follow.
2. Give 100 per cent all the time. You have never arrived at Manchester United so you must maintain a high standard all the time, every day.
3. Always remember why you began to play football — you loved it for its own sake and not as a means to get money, fame, girls, cars etc.
4. Ownership and responsibility — take care of your own affairs thus learning to do things for yourself, and not relying on others to do things for you: bank accounts, passports and so on. Make your own decisions!
5. Analyse and assess your own performance — be your own coach.
6. Have a strong work ethic — work harder than anyone else and you’ll overtake players with far more talent than you have.
7. Give the profession all that you have got, and you’ll have no regrets.
8. You have to have character and personality to play for Manchester United which you can develop over time.
9. Be a risk taker because it is a different kind of leadership.
10. Success and failure are two sides of the same coin, and you have to deal emotionally with both experiences. Remember that if you win or lose you can still have that Chinese on a Saturday night — keep things in perspective.
11. Learn more about yourself and what works for you.
12. Don’t leave anything to chance.
13. There are different routes to reach the top and very few players go ‘route one’ — like [Ryan] Giggs or [Wayne] Rooney. The challenge for you is to find the right pathway because we’re all different.
14. The ability to deal/cope with injuries is vital and should be approached with a strong mentality. See injury as an opportunity to develop body strength, and ‘reset’ your mind (refresh) for the various challenges ahead.
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