Gary Neville ate ‘weird’ Christmas Day meal while at Manchester United

Gary Neville stuck to a particularly “weird” routine while playing for Manchester United, which included a non-traditional Christmas Day meal and going on the same holiday each year.

Ranked at No.10 in FourFourTwo’s list of the best Premier League defenders of all time, Gary Neville worked especially hard to at Manchester United get the most out of his career and talent. During his 19 years as a professional, he retired in 2011 having won eight Premier League titles, two Champions Leagues and three FA Cups.

In order stay at the top of his game, Neville led an especially disciplined lifestyle, with his wife, Emma Neville, revealing a “weird” Christmas Day meal the former right-back used to eat.

Gary Neville didn’t enjoy a traditional Christmas Day meal

Neville on the Stick to Football podcast (Image credit: Getty Images)“Christmas days were always weird,” Emma Neville revealed, speaking on the Stick to Football podcast, brought to you by Sky Bet, “he was eating pastas and stuff which is a weird thing to do. Food would always just be timed and it’s still like this.

“Our social time was us going for meals and it wasn’t really like anything else. Going to bed was strange – at half nine! I can’t get my head around how early that is. Now it’s fine but back then I just thought, ‘I can’t do this!’. We would watch a film, and he’d just fall asleep, and I’d get to the end of it.”

Neville is now a pundit for Sky Sports (Image credit: Getty Images)Gary and Emma Neville married in 2007, with the pair having met three years earlier in 2004. But while his former team-mate David Beckham enjoyed worldwide fame during the off-season, Neville often relied on the same holiday destination, with the Manchester United legend sticking to the same routine even while away.

“At first, we would just literally go to the same places, and I’d be like, ‘I don’t want to go there every year’,” Emma Neville said. “We went to Malta every year – we made some amazing friends which we still have, but it was so planned out.

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“Then, it was like, ‘Let’s go somewhere different’. I thought, ‘Oh he has got some adventure in him!’”

Neville with his wife, Emma (Image credit: Getty Images)Emma Neville added: “[On getting together with Gary Neville at the time, whilst he was at Manchester United] It’s a shock to your system really – I was 23 then and a lot younger. It is a different world, but Gary was really grounded, and his family were also very grounded.

“Our social time was us going for meals and it wasn’t really like anything else. Going to bed was strange – at half nine! I can’t get my head around how early that is. Now it’s fine but back then I just thought, ‘I can’t do this!’. We would watch a film, and he’d just fall asleep, and I’d get to the end of it.”