Beckham on hiring close friend Neville as Inter Miami coach: ‘We have to indent a DNA’

It wasn’t the original plan, but David Beckham had to spend almost all of Inter Miami CF’s inaugural season watching from more than 4,000 miles away. The COVID-19 pandemic meant he spent most of 2020 at his home in the United Kingdom and couldn’t take on the hands-on ownership approach he initially planned. Even an ocean away, Beckham knew quickly, though, his team didn’t look the way he expected it to.

“I knew pretty soon that I needed, or we needed as an ownership group, to make changes,” the co-owner said, “and I think it was better doing it sooner rather than later.”

On Jan. 7, Beckham and Inter Miami’s ownership group made the change official after the team and former coach Diego Alonso “mutually agreed to part ways.” Quickly, Beckham and Co. targeted Phil Neville, and officially named him coach Monday, along with new sporting director Chris Henderson.

The moves were brash and exciting for one of Major League Soccer’s highest-profile disappointments in 2020. They were also, at least in Neville’s case, eyebrow-raising and risky.

Henderson’s resume is unimpeachable. The former midfielder had been the technical director for Seattle Sounders FC since its 2009 expansion season and led the Seattle Sounders to 11 consecuitve playoff berths, four U.S. Open Cups, a Supporters’ Shield in 2014 and a pair of MLS championships.

Neville’s is more unorthodox. He won six Premier League titles and the UEFA Champions League as a player for Manchester United F.C., then had stints as an assistant coach for the England under-21 national team, Manchester United and Valencia CF in La Liga before he finally got the head job as the coach of England’s women’s national team in 2018. Above all else, his relationship with Beckham drew scrutiny.

David Beckham-Phil Neville relationship

The two have known each other since they were 15 or 16, Beckham said, as they rose to prominence through Manchester United’s youth academy to become the foundation of the club’s success through the 1990s and into the 2000s. Beckham adamantly denied he hired Neville just because the coach is one of his closest friends.

“Of course people are always going to turn around and say, ‘Oh, it’s because he’s your friend.’ It’s nothing to do with him being my friend,” Beckham said. “Our ownership group don’t just employ our friends. We employ the best people, whether it’s on the field, off the field, in our backroom staff, the staff that we have working at our training facility, at the stadium. We’re running a serious soccer club here and, at the end of the day, we hire the people that are best-suited to the job.”

Owner Jorge Mas was even more firm in defending Inter Miami’s hiring process.

“Phil Neville was not handed the Inter Miami job. Phil Neville earned the job. It was a very thorough interview process with many candidates,” Mas said. “The fact that he’s David’s friend is a reality. No one runs from that — actually, we embrace it — but he wasn’t given or handed the job because he’s friends with David Beckham, or solely because of his relationship with David Beckham. Phil Neville earned his job and I’m very proud as a co-owner of this club to have Phil on board.”

Why Phil Neville for Miami?

As much as Beckham wants to separate his relationship with Neville from the hiring process, those days they spent together as teenagers played a part in the club’s interest in Neville.

Mas, Beckham, Neville and Henderson all spoke publicly Friday for the frst time since Inter Miami’s makeover and the overarching theme of their conversations was the holistic approach to team building in Fort Lauderdale.

Beckham rarely mentioned just the MLS team. In almost every answer, he also brought up the importance of Fort Lauderdale CF, the USL League One affiliate, and the potential of Inter Miami’s fledgling youth academy in South Florida.

Beckham finally returned to Florida on Christmas and said he has been at the training complex every morning since. It backed up his hunch the club needed to make a change after a first-round exit from the MLS Cup Playoffs in its debut season.

While he didn’t dive into too many specifics, Beckham said Neville’s work ethic and his experience coming through one of the world’s best youth academy puts the two on the same page.

“A couple things have been eye-opening and that’s why we’ve really made the changes that we’ve made. I felt that it was important to install the coaches that we expect at this club, the hard work that we expect at this club and also we’ve spoke about the young players who are around our city, and the real opportunity and potential that we have,” Beckham said. “We need people within this club that are going to work with these young kids. It’s not just about our top team, our first team. It’s about the academy, it’s about the USL, it’s about the potential that runs through this club and that was the most important thing for me to see, and to understand and one of the reasons we made the changes that we have.

“We have to indent a DNA that runs through this club and that was why we made the moves and the decisions that we’ve made in the last few weeks.”

Neville pointed back to his experience as a player when he explained why he got the job despite a thing coaching resume.

Neville said he first realized he wanted to be a coach when he was 22, playing for legendary coach Alex Ferguson with one of the most successful teams of all time at Manchester United. After he retired, he came to Los Angeles and spent about eight weeks shadowing Bruce Arena when he was coaching Beckham with LA Galaxy, then his formal coaching career began with high-profile stops as an assistant.

With England, he put together a solid resume in his first stint as coach of any team. In 2019, England won the SheBelieves Cup for the first time, then finished fourth at the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup after a one-goal loss to the United States in the semifinals.

After he successfully made the switch from coaching men to coaching women, Neville isn’t worried about jumping back to the men’s side.

“I used to always get this question at my early press conferences with the women’s team. It was as if football on the women’s side was played on a different planet. For me, it was football,” Neville said. “Football for women, football for males is the same. It’s a ball played on the same pitch with the same size goals, and ultimately the sessions that I did at Manchester United, the sessions that I did at Valencia were no different from my women’s team last year.”

How’d Inter Miami land Henderson?

While Inter Miami’s addition of Neville is probably flashier, the addition of Henderson might be more important.

In Seattle, Henderson built an expansion team into a two-time champion. In the Miami metropolitan area, he’ll get to try to do virtually the same thing. While this will be Year 2 for Inter Miami, the coronavirus pandemic made Year 1 something of a wash, and the organization is still trying to build a real foundation and identity.

Last season, Inter Miami played a slow, defensive-minded style. It ranked near the bottom of the league in passes and possession time. It was incongruous with what a Beckham-led team was expected to look like.

Neville’s tactics with England fit better and should immediately lead to Inter Miami improving in both categories, and Henderson’s involvement is evidence of a desire to make something sustainable.

“When I looked at the project and spoke with the ownership, it was an exciting new opportunity to take a team that can get to the championship level and has aspirations to be a global club, so the challenge is exciting,” Henderson said. “It’s a huge challenge and it’s going to take a lot of work, and evaluation and assessment. And it’s great to work with a new coach who has new energy and to have David’s involvement in the everyday building of the team.”