Gary Neville has recently explained why he disliked rooming with fellow Manchester United alumni David Beckham, the legendary midfielder.
He has told Sky Sports: “I spent about six months rooming with David Beckham and then the entire rooming with players stopped completely because everyone was going into their own rooms. I think they’ve worked out that players aren’t compatible with each other, and that at different times each went to bed.”
Neville is referring to his time back in the 90s playing for Manchester United. United players in the early 1990s would share hotel rooms on away trips and Neville was paired with Beckham for about six months. However, from his extraordinary 19-year career at Old Trafford, it is not Neville’s fondest memory, as he says rooming with Beckham “didn’t work at all.”
Elaborating on this, he says, “Two big issues I had with Becks (well, he had with me!): I used to go to bed at 9 o’clock and wake up at 5 o’clock, he’d stay up until 11 o’clock and want to wake up at 8 o’clock so essentially he kept me up from 9 o’clock until 11 o’clock and then I got him up at 5 o’clock in the morning so it just didn’t work.”
Not everything is Beckham’s fault, though. Neville goes on to say, “Again, he is the cleanest person. He gets into his room, lights candles, puts up pictures- everything has to be perfect, it’s been the same since he was 18 years old. [On the other hand,] I just throw everything around so it just didn’t work out at all.
“I always talk, always argue and he was the complete opposite. He’d listen to music, he’d want peace, he’d want to be chilled and it’s just the entire opposite end of the spectrum I’ve been to.”
Neville and Beckham have been team-mates for more than a decade at Manchester United and have helped the Red Devils win six Premier League titles before Beckham left to join Real Madrid.
Neville named Beckham as one of three United players which completed the bleep test earlier this week: “We used to do this form of bleep test, I know when we were at United, Yorkie, Giggs and Becks completed the bleep test. Their energy levels were incredible. But what he used to do was run the same speed all the game continuously, he used to wear out the legs of the left-backs that were faster than him.”
He added in talking to Sky Sports that, “He would have got that space at the end of the game, the last 20 minutes, and he would be putting those crosses in. It was incredible, the pressure put on teams. Giggsy have had the same energy levels.”
So, it seems, despite not enjoying being his roommate, Neville was all praise when he talked about his teammate Beckham.
