www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/manchester-united/11088420/Sir-Alex-Ferguson-warned-me-off-playing-for-England.htmlTell us how the documentary about the Class of 92 came about last season.
Giggs: It was Gary’s idea. Gary’s brainchild. He has so many ideas in his head. It was the 20th anniversary of winning the Youth Cup, so we wanted to do something. When we were actually making it, we were all thinking how it would turn out. We didn’t have a clue but, to be fair, we were really pleased with the outcome and the directors did a great job.
Butt: We were worried about it being another one of those football documentaries that everyone’s seen and are probably a bit fed up with. But the way they pitched it to us was that it was going to be about friends growing up and living their dreams in a city that was really coming on to the world scene in those days.
Who’s the star of the film?
Neville: I think it is Scholesy because no one’s ever heard him speak!
Giggs: He’s made up for it, though, in the last few months.
Neville: In the movie, he was obviously relaxed. It was done over a period of time where he could relax in his own house and tell stories about when he was a kid. When he’s relaxed Scholesy is really funny. He’s quite witty, he’s sarcastic, and that came across in the film. He came across more than anyone because nobody’s ever heard him speak and they saw the real Paul Scholes.
Are you surprised that he has become a very talkative pundit?
Giggs: I’m a bit surprised because if you’d have said to Scholesy 10 years ago that he’d be on the TV or have a column in a paper, he’d have told you where to go. His views on football are obviously very good and interesting and he adds a different aspect to so many things. So it’s great to eventually hear from him.
How did you all get on in the early days? Who did you get on with, and who didn’t you get on with so well?
Neville: He [pointing at Giggs] was a bully. Because he was the oldest one and he used to make us do stupid things in the dressing room. You’d have to stand there and tell everyone who your girlfriend was and what you do to your girlfriend.
Giggs: You didn’t last very long, did you? It was more character building. I went through it.
Ryan, who were your heroes in the first team?
Giggs: Bryan Robson and Mark Hughes. At 13, 14, you’re sharing a canteen with them and you’re literally five or 10 yards away, sometimes queuing up for dinner with them.
Butt: Bryan Robson was my hero growing up as a Manchester United fan.
Phil, how did you regard your brother?
Neville: He wasn’t my hero! To be fair, me and Gary are best friends. Like the lads said, we were mixing with our heroes. We were cleaning their boots, we were cleaning the showers. Mark Hughes was a stickler for discipline and respect. He would make you knock on the first-team door just out of respect. It was a great upbringing I think a lot of the young lads are missing nowadays.
Giggs: The world’s changed and I don’t think most of the players now do what we did. I think they could do a little bit more.
What do you all remember about your very first game for Manchester United?
Giggs: We got beat, unfortunately. It was at Old Trafford and the pitch was awful. I remember Everton’s centre-half, Dave Watson, kicking me. I think I came on for a substitute appearance for Denis Irwin in ‘91. We lost 2-0 and it was me and Danny Wallace up front, so not exactly heavyweight centre-forwards. I just remember enjoying it, loving it. I much prefer my full debut against City.
Butt: We were used to playing at Old Trafford. We played at Old Trafford in the youth team, we played at Old Trafford in the reserves and that seems to have stopped for the last few years. I don’t think it’s great. I’ve done that at our club now, playing a lot at Old Trafford. It does prepare you, it helps you.
How you remember Alan Hansen’s quote ‘You’ll never win anything with kids’?
Giggs: At the time, not many people would’ve disagreed with him – including us. It was the older players, really, who won that league, not the kids.
What was your most memorable match?
Giggs: Mine was in 1999. Champions League Final.
Neville: I was among the subs so I saw the ribbons on the trophy. They were Bayern Munich ribbons, and I saw Lothar Matthäus touching the cup, kissing the cup. I was gutted, I was down and out. I’d personally thrown in the towel.
Butt: I don’t remember too much about the game if I’m honest. I think I’ve watched it twice since then with my little boy. I just know that we got a right doing, to be fair. They should’ve won two or three [nil]. People might think it’s a fluke to win in three minutes of added time but that was in our breeding. Right through our lives. We never got told it was 90 minutes. We always got told it was 96, 97 minutes.
Giggs: It wasn’t a coincidence what happened that day. It was something that we’d done time and time again.
How do you regard the manager Sir Alex Ferguson today?
Neville: He could walk into a room and could pinpoint who was feeling good, who was feeling bad. He had a smell for certain games for certain players. He was a pioneer for everything. I think he was a genius and I don’t think I would be here today without him.
Giggs: He always seemed to know when you’d been out. One day he said, ‘I know you’ve been out because you’ve had a shave’. Every time I was clean shaven, he said ‘You’ve been out’. He was just a father figure to me. He was just someone both on and off the pitch who you’d always turn to.
Were you scared of him?
Giggs: Yes.
Are you still scared of him?
Butt: Yes. You still respect him and you still see him as the boss. He’ll always be the boss in our eyes. He turned up at my school once when I was misbehaving.
Giggs: Just the once?
Butt: I remember I went into the headmaster’s office thinking, ‘I’m in trouble again. What have I done now?’ I’ve walked through cocksure and he’s sat there. It was like, ‘I’m dead’.
David Beckham turned into a superstar. What did you think when that happened?
Giggs: Obviously, the goal from the halfway line was the key moment and it shot up from there. Within football, it was his sort of release. He was always a good professional, he always trained well and would always perform on the pitch.
No matter what was happening in his life, he would always be professional. We would just treat him the same. We would just take the mick out of him, if he wore a skirt or had a stupid haircut. He felt at home and at ease with us.
Were any of the players with England jealous of him?
Butt: I don’t know about jealousy but I think one or two may have resented the power he had. He had a lot of power in the England set-up, a lot of decisions went through him.
Maybe a few resented that, but he was always still Becks to us – and still is to this day when we meet up and go for a meal. He is the boy who came up from London, the skinny little boy who loved Man United. He is still the same lad and we all just click when we are back together.
It all just snowballed. He became famous and got more famous and more famous. He is a massive big superstar but he handles it well.
Neville: It is difficult to get jealous of someone who – when he is in a room with you – is actually quite humble and shy. If he was in a room giving it large with all these materialistic things you would probably get jealous of him and resent him, but actually when he is in a room he is just David Beckham the footballer and not the global superstar outside that everyone else sees.
How do you regard him now?
Neville: He’s Becks. We did the film together and a lot of us probably hadn’t seen him for a while. He came up to Manchester and was just Becks. We had a laugh. He had a go at us, we slaughtered him. It is no different. That is the way he likes it and that is the type of lad he is.
What will he do next?
Neville: I think he could achieve anything he wants to achieve. You could see him going up to government level or to head the FA or to do something in America that is not just average – he doesn’t do anything that is average. He wants to do something that is going to leave a legacy, a stamp. I heard him talk this week about being involved in the FA. It would be silly of the FA not to take up that kind of offer, because what an unbelievable ambassador he is.
Ryan, do you ever regret not playing at senior level for England?
Giggs: It was never an issue for me. The confusion comes because I played for England Schoolboys. As far as I’m concerned, I was Welsh. I was born in Wales, my parents were Welsh, my grandparents were Welsh.
When you were coming up to an [international] friendly, did the manager ever suggest you may have strained an ankle or had a problem with your back?
Butt: He’d never pull you out over a fake injury. It was a case of, ‘You’ve got an England game coming up – you’re not going’. And that was it. He was honest to the FA.
Phil, your brother thinks his time with England was a failure. Was yours?
Neville: We just failed. England should be winning major tournaments. The generation I played with, Gerrard, Lampard, Terry, Campbell, Butt, Scholes – we should’ve won a major tournament. I just don’t think we’ve got that big-tournament experience or big-tournament mentality.
Butt I don’t agree with Phil here. I don’t think we were good enough.
Neville: I think we have been good enough.
Butt I don’t. My turn to speak now. If you look at teams that are successful, they stay together for eight, nine, 10 years. England are always chopping and changing. We’re getting knocked out all the time anyway so why not get knocked out with a young team that try to progress together and, at the end of eight years, you’ve got a team who are comfortable together and know each other inside out. Like we did growing up.
Neville: There’s got to be some sort of plan where they win and experience a tournament at under-21 level.
Giggs: It’s not easy because the Premier League’s so powerful.
How do you perceive Manchester United now? Does Danny Welbeck’s departure signal a change?
Butt: All clubs are changing. I think Manchester United was probably one of the last outstanding ones that have had the connection between youth and the first team. To be fair to Liverpool now, they are doing that very well. But we are still trying to do that.
We have still got the vision of doing that. The Danny situation is just something that has come at a certain time in the club’s history. Everyone is thinking, ‘They’ve forgotten about youth, they’re selling Danny Welbeck, who’s Man United through and through and has been there since seven or eight years of age’. But Danny wasn’t playing in the position he wanted to play in.
The club now only has so many games, we’re not in Europe. I think it is a case of being fair to the player and fair to the club, having someone with Danny’s ability who has international credentials and wants his England place. It is not a case of giving up on youngsters, giving up on the academy. It is a case of getting the club back to where it needs to be, winning ways.
That is the first priority, to get back to winning ways. We have got a manager now who is a winner, who is proven to win things. It is a short-term thing for him, he has signed a three-year deal and he is going to be here for that length of time to get the club to where it needs to be: winning.
For now, the priority is to win things. Unfortunately, it takes a back step, the rest of it. But there are people still underneath the blanket that everyone sees working hard, working all the hours god sends, to get these young kids through. Me and Ryan were there on Monday night at the Academy, under nines, 10s, 11s watching it – so we do pay massive attention to what is going on there but at the minute the most important thing, unfortunately, is to get the first team back to winning ways.
Neville: Danny’s not the first – and won’t be the last – home-grown player to leave Man United. Me and Nicky have both left. It’s sad to see both Danny and Tom leave but there are other lads coming through.
Ryan, you’re assistant manager. Presumably, one day you’d like to be the manager?
Giggs: Yes.
As someone who’s life has been Manchester United, how do you see the current situation?
Giggs: The club will never change. The history of the club is to play exciting football, always give youngsters a chance and keep to the traditions of the club. OK, Danny has left, which is obviously disappointing because you never want to see a home-grown player leave but this is a manager who gave [Clarence] Seedorf his chance, gave [Patrick] Kluivert his chance, gave [Andrés] Iniesta his chance, Xavi, Thomas Müller – he has got a track record of giving youngsters a chance.
Tyler Blackett has played every game this season. Underneath Van Persie and Rooney, you have got [Adnan] Januzaj, you’ve got James Wilson. It will always happen, players will leave, but we have got to make sure that young players come through because United fans demand it. As someone who has come through, I want to see that as well. I want to see young players come through.
Fans always give young players that, if they make a mistake, they don’t get on their back, they always encourage them. That has been right through the history of Manchester United and we never want to lose that.
Could there ever be another Class of 92?
Giggs: I hope so. It’s obviously going to be a tough ask for five or six players to come through at the same time. The easy bit is getting into the first team. The hard bit is staying there and staying there for a long time. It might not be a lad from Salford.
Butt: There could be or should be but I doubt it would happen in today’s society with the way football is. Everything’s got to be today.
Everything’s got to be now. A lot of foreign investors are coming in and buying clubs and wanting immediate success, spending billions of pounds, getting superstar managers in. Until owners speak to managers and tell them it’s a journey you’re going on together that could take five, six, seven, eight or nine years and you’re not going to get sacked, I don’t think you’ll see six players or five players or even three players coming through from the same age groups.
