The I-5 FC: Phil Neville is ready to be judged
In a candid reflection on his journey, Timbers’ new manager Phil Neville sets his sights on unity, growth and a long season ahead.
PORTLAND — Phil Neville used to love preseason training.
During his years as a player with Manchester United and later Everton, the now-Timbers manager viewed every day of practice as another opportunity to make a case for himself. He was never the most talented player on the pitch, but “I was one of those players that loved to run,” Neville said. “Maybe 15, 20 years ago, we didn’t touch the ball for the first 10 days. I loved it. I loved the feeling of pain — the blood, sweat and tears type of thing.”
The manager spoke with The I-5 Corridor last week from Coachella. It was the morning after the Timbers dropped a 1-0 decision to San Jose and two days before the club closed out the preseason with a 2-1 loss to Chicago. For those looking at Portland’s exhibition slate for signs of a club ready to return to the postseason after a two-year absence, the Timbers’ 0-1-2 record against MLS competition wasn’t particularly inspiring. However, it wasn’t exactly unexpected: the Timbers are still in the process of signing their second designated player and, admittedly, Neville said it’s going to take some time before everything is firing at 100 percent.
During a 19-year career as a player in the Premier League and his last six years as a manager, Neville said he’s learned it takes time to form the relationships, bonds and chemistry that are necessary to reach a championship level. The player who once loved to sprint out of the gates in the preseason has grown into a 47-year-old manager who knows it really doesn’t matter where you start — whether that’s on the roster as a player, or your standing as the new face of a city’s football club.
“As a player, I always found it difficult because you’re looking for places at the front of the race and every day is almost a trial for that first game. You want to be in that starting 11 the first game of the season,” Neville said. “But as I got older, I got more experience and learned that, you know what, this season is going to last 11 months. And it’s not the first day you want to be in the team, it’s the last day of the season.”
Neville’s father often liked to tell a story of his favorite moment as a sports fan. A lifelong Manchester United supporter, Neville Neville would recount walking up the steps of Old Trafford and viewing the iconic grounds for the first time.
“He said it was probably one of the best moments of his life,” Phil recalled. “He stood there just for an hour amazed at the size of the place.”
Neville Neville was a cricketer. He married the now-Jill Neville, who grew up playing rounders, hockey, netball and basketball. They had three children — a son, Gary, who is a year older than Phil, who is 12 minutes older than his twin sister, Tracey.
“Every night we’d be in the park playing some type of sport,” Phil said. “We were just the sportiest family ever.”
That’s continued into their professional lives.
Gary would play 19 seasons for Manchester United and captained the squad for five years. Phil played 11 seasons for Manchester United and won six Premier League titles with his brother. Tracey is a professional netball coach who led the English national team to the gold medal in the 2018 Commonwealth games.
Phil remembers watching England beat Australia 52-51 for gold on his phone while boarding a flight out of London.
“I was sobbing like a baby,” he said. “She was on the other side of the world and I’ve never been so proud.”
Tracey now coaches in Australia. Gary is a commentator back home.
“I’m in Portland. My sister is in Melbourne and my brother is in Manchester,” Neville said. “We were from this sleepy little town, Bury. People born in Bury stay in Bury. When I go back and visit my mum, it’s the same people that go into the same pubs and restaurants. It’s like time stood still. So when me and my sister branched out, it was a big thing, ya know?”
Phil and Julie Neville moved to Portland on the last day of 2023.
“We wanted to wake up and start the new year in our new city,” Neville said. “So we woke up in Portland and we started falling in love with the place.”
It’s also fair to say the fourth manager in Portland’s history as an MLS franchise was itching to go. It had been seven months since he was let go from his first MLS job as Inter Miami’s manager. It had been two months since his hiring was greeted by a disapproving statement from the Timbers Army and a firing squad of questions from the Portland media about a series of tweets from more than a decade ago.
“Those first two or three weeks, I can’t say they were nice because they weren’t. You want your supporters to be on board with everything,” Neville said of the backlash to his hiring. “When you make mistakes you have to live with them. But I have a feeling that once they get to know me and know my character, they’ll know that I’m not what those tweets were about.”
Neville first apologized in 2018 upon his hiring as the English women’s national team manager. He led the Lionesses to a fourth-placed finish at the 2019 World Cup and a trophy in the She Believes Cup that same year.
"He did much to raise the profile of our team,” Sue Campbell, the Football Association’s director of women’s football, said upon Neville’s departure for Inter Miami in 2021. “He has used his platform to champion the women’s game, worked tirelessly to support our effort to promote more female coaches and used his expertise to develop many of our younger players.”
It was a great experience, Neville said, the best of his professional coaching career. It’s one he said he would love to continue to share with Timbers supporters over the coming months. He said he’s ran into a handful during his two months so far in Portland as he and Julie have found their local Fred Meyer, Zupan’s and tried out a few restaurants across town. They’ve frequented the University of Portland campus, where their daughter Isabella has enrolled as a student. It’s there, more than anywhere, that Neville said they’ve felt the heart of their new home.
Isabella has cerebral palsy and transferred to UP from Miami.
“For the first time in her life she’s going to a university where people aren’t looking at her, judging her, saying nasty things,” Neville said. “At Portland, she’s just seen as Isabella Neville. I am proud of this city that I’ve been learning about because it’s accepted the most special girl in my life and is treating her normally.”
Neville said he’s all in on Portland and he’s ready to put in the work with the community. He knows he’s a long way away from the finish line there.
But also: he’s got to win.
Things came crashing down on the pitch pretty quickly for the Timbers.
After reaching the MLS Cup in 2021, the Timbers went 22-23-23 over the next two seasons, being outscored by 12 goals in that span. Missing the playoffs in consecutive seasons ultimately led to the late-season firing of Giovanni Savarese, who was let go after a 5-0 loss to Houston in August. The hiring of Neville two months later was a bit of a head scratcher when it was announced. At the time, Neville was known as the coach who had been sacked in Miami with the Eastern Conference’s worst record a week before Lionel Messi’s arrival.
He went 35-13-42 in his two-plus seasons for former Man U teammate David Beckham’s club, reaching the MLS playoffs once as Neville said the club was severely hampered by sanctions announced just shortly after his hiring.
“I knew it was going to be massive,” Neville said of the Messi signing. “I was never brought up to feel envious or jealous. There was never really a period where I was like, ‘That could have been me.’ Within a minute of something happening, I’m moving on to the next. It’s the way that I’m wired. I’m happy for everyone at the club. My son was in the club at the time, so I was watching the games like everyone else thinking about what an incredible opportunity it is now for MLS and American football to really make a push to become an even better league. It almost substantiated my views of this being where I wanted to be and manage and live with my family for the foreseeable future.”
Now without sanctions, an Inter Miami squad led by Messi and infused with more international talent is expected to contend for the MLS Cup.
And Portland?
“We are extremely close to accomplishing everything that we wanted this offseason,” general manager Ned Grabavoy said. “So for me, I’m positive about the plan that’s going into place. But we’ve also spoken in the past about those things needing to add up to something in the end. We need to see that this year. We need to see those results.”
Grabavoy said much of the last month has been spent in long conversations with Neville, talking philosophy, opinions on players and the direction of the club. The second-year GM has repeatedly stressed since November that the club did its due diligence in making this hire and he said the last month has only made him feel more comfortable in that decision.
“This is a new experience for myself in this role,” Grabavoy said. “You go through the process, the interviewing and the amount of time you spend with that person. Then ultimately, that person shows up in the building and they start to go and operate.
“I’ve loved every second of my collaboration with Phil since he’s been here. He’s very detail-oriented. He’s very direct. He gets about his business….He’s been a very, very good communicator on many levels.”
The Timbers have bolstered the roster this year with the additions of goalkeeper Maxime Crepeau from LAFC and center back Kamal Miller from Miami. Grabavoy and Neville continue to tease a significant addition to the team’s second DP slot. And since Neville has been in the building, he’s said it’s been a goal of his to communicate that turning this thing around will be a group effort.
“When a team fails it’s not just one person’s fault,” he said. “Everybody has been culpable for the performances over the last 12-18 months. Everybody has to take responsibility for that and take a look in the mirror and ask what more could I have done.”
Neville knows that moving forward, on the pitch and in the community, no member of the organization will be asked to do that more than himself. And he certainly knows by now that it’s now where you start, it’s where you finish.
And Neville can’t wait to begin that process.
“Two months ago when we were at the stadium in Providence Park, I’ve got to say, I wasn’t wishing the time away, but I was praying that morning would come where we were close to starting the season,” Neville said. “When I woke up on Sunday morning, Monday morning, it’s like, ‘All right, we’re into the real stuff now.’”
— Tyson Alger, The I-5 Corridor
I felt like i was reading a feature in the old fish wrap! I cant wait to see how this team comes together. The oregonian has left a big hole in covering the timbers im glad you decided to cover the team!
Great piece, Tyson, wow!
One lengthy comment here - I've always been less prone to focus on the decade-old tweets (as you delicately illustrate, there hasn't been as much as a peep out of his former players on the England women's national team as to any misconduct or even dislike) and instead focus on, well... That he might not actually be a very good manager. Pretty much the second he left England, the ladies won a major trophy - and you could make a compelling argument that they should have won the 2019 World Cup under different management, the team was that talented. Inter Miami was bottom of the conference for long stretches with him at the helm. His credentials as presented to the Timbers appear to have been: famous former player, English, knows Becks, has coached in the MLS and elsewhere. And apparently that was enough. I'll just never understand why a club already awash in scandal decided to go with Neville and his (albeit much milder by comparison) baggage. The juice, as they say, never seemed worth the squeeze.