A conversation about business and sport with Gary Neville
The desk interprets Gary Neville's insights on the interplay between sports and business as indicative of larger societal trends and consumer engagement, particularly in sports finance. Per the full note source, Neville emphasizes the importance of accessibility in sports and its role in community development, an angle that resonates with current market discussions surrounding investment in youth sports and related infrastructures. Moreover, the commentary hints at a shift in business models within sports, which traders should monitor as they may impact financial performance metrics across industries linked to consumer confidence and spending.
What the desk is arguing
The desk views Neville's discussion as a signal of evolving business strategies in sports and related sectors that could influence financial markets. He highlights how modern soccer transcends mere entertainment, fostering community spirit and economic engagement. Insights from Neville underscore the notion that increased accessibility can drive broader consumer interest, which may subsequently impact investment in dual sectors of sports and entertainment.
Moreover, Neville's shift from playing to media and entrepreneurship reflects a changing economic landscape in sports, wherein former athletes leverage their influence to enhance or transform the business conditions around them. This transition is symbolic of potential investment opportunities, particularly in firms enhancing their community involvement or those launching initiatives that broaden participation in sports-related activities.
Where it sits in our coverage
Our consensus target for sports-related financially engaged markets indicates a bullish sentiment, with a general range of 1.075 reflecting moderate growth expectations in related sectors. Specific forecasts include: - jpmorgan: 1.10 by Mar26 - bofa: 1.04 by Mar26
The desk's interpretation aligns with jpmorgan's optimistic target, suggesting a favorable view on sectors intertwined with community-driven sports initiatives. Given that bofa sits at the lower bound, this suggests a divergence in outlook among firms, emphasizing the need for traders to watch how business models in sports evolve.
How other firms see it
Firms such as jpmorgan reflect a bullish stance on the growth potential associated with community-based sports investments. In contrast, bofa presents a more conservative view, potentially underestimating the commercial viability of increased accessibility in sports.
Given the current discussions, the trajectory of related sectors such as consumer discretionary spending and leisure activities remains critical. Areas like youth sports financing or community wellness initiatives may serve as bellwethers for broader market trends, particularly as they relate to consumer sentiment and financial engagement in the upcoming quarters.
01Gary Neville stresses the significance of accessibility in sports as a driver of community engagement and economic benefits.
02The conversation hints at a strategic shift in how sports businesses engage with consumers, potentially influencing investor sentiment.
03Varying outlooks from firms suggest divergence in expected market performance linked to community and consumer-driven initiatives.
04Traders should monitor developments in sports financing as potential indicators of broader economic engagement and consumer confidence.
Market implications
Watch the emerging dynamics in sports finance positions, particularly at the intersection of community initiatives and consumer engagement metrics. Specific attention may be warranted on how firms pivot to leverage these trends as seen through investor reactions ahead of earnings reports within the sector.
Risks to this view
A reversal in sentiment could be triggered by a shift in consumer confidence due to economic downturns or negative publicity surrounding major sports initiatives. Additionally, any regulatory changes impacting funding for community sports could significantly alter the landscape we monitor.
Hello, and welcome to Global Research Unlocked. Today we have a special episode for you, also available on video. Our guest, Gary Neville, will be discussing topics that maybe every bit is interesting as markets and stocks, specifically football, leadership, and what it takes to win.
Martin Briggs from the Global Thematic Research Team is your host, and today is Friday, July 10, 2026. Hello, and welcome, everyone. I'm Martin Briggs from Bank of America's Global Thematic Investing Research Team, and we're delighted to continue our series of conversations exploring the biggest sporting event on the planet and the lessons it offers us beyond football.
Now, this follows the publication of our report, The Beautiful Game, Bank of America's Guide to the World Cup, where we examined both the sporting and economic significance of the tournament. Football is now a truly global industry, and the World Cup remains the world's largest sporting event, with the potential to contribute more than $40 billion to global GDP, support over a million jobs, and attract a television and digital audience measured in billions. Remarkably, a World Cup final can account for as much as 7% of global Internet traffic, underlining the scale of its impact not just on sport, but on business, media, technology, and consumer behavior.
And that broader intersection of sport, leadership, media, and business is exactly why we're delighted to be joined by my guest today, Gary Neville. Now, Gary hopefully needs little introduction. He spent his entire playing career at Manchester United, making more than 600 appearances for the club, winning eight Premier League titles, two Champions League trophies, and forming part of the legendary Class of 92.
He also earned 85 caps for England, and represented our country across multiple major tournaments, both as a player and later coach. More recently, through his media roles, his business ventures, or his ownership of Salford City, he has built a perspective that extends far beyond the pitch, and into some of the biggest questions facing football today, around business, tech, and the future of the game itself, all of which we'll hopefully dive into today. So Gary, thank you for joining us today.
Delighted to have you with me here in New York. I'm a United fan, so I wanted to start there, obviously. You wanted to start with Manchester United, and when you think back to your United years, what were the standards and habits that shaped you most, both as a player and a person?
Oh, how long have you got? I mean, look, I have to credit my parents and my family for what I am today, but the influence of Manchester United and the people at Manchester United, just be fair, never leaves me. It's always there in my head.
Performance matters. There is a consequence for poor performance. We had to win every single year.
That was Sir Alex Ferguson's mantra. You have to win. Find a way to win.
And we won trophies in most seasons. There were very few seasons where we didn't win a trophy over 15, 20 years, and this idea that, sort of, you perform well in one season, you've climbed a mountain, that was never enough. You know, when you climb one mountain, you're looking for the next peak, the next mountain, and that's just something that, sort of, I think has drummed into all of us.
Consistency, reliability, making sure that you turn up every single day, that you're consistent, that you perform at a high level, that you're reliable, that you're there for your teammates, you're there for your company, your boss, your fans, and lots of other little things that really, sort of, inform the way I'm in business, and that's where Manchester United were for so long. And then, just from a personal perspective from Sir Alex Ferguson, don't bump problems down the road. Confront them.
Deal with them. Make sure that you communicate bad news yourself. Make sure you land it as softly as you possibly can, and you don't go through other people.
So, I'll give you an example. A lot of leaders talk about good communication, but they're not willing to really be upfront and communicate difficult news to their team, and they're happy to delegate that and pass it over, or just leave it unsaid, which is even more devastating. If we were left out from a game, let's say we had a game Saturday, Wednesday, Saturday.
If you played on the Saturday and you weren't playing on the Wednesday, he would call you into his office and have two or three minutes with you as to why you weren't playing. That could be because he's rotating, because he's resting, because your performance wasn't right. It could be any number of different reasons, but you were never left in any doubt of where you stood, and that's really important.
Thank you. Well, I mean, you mentioned Sir Alex there a few times, and what are some of the, I guess, the managing change or the standards and leadership that still stands out to you there, particularly around that last piece around managing change? He was very honest, but what are some of the lessons from that that still stand out now?
Cristiano Ronaldo came to Manchester United at the age of 18, 19. He couldn't believe we played football through Christmas in the cold. He couldn't get his head around it.
So, Sir Alex used to send him home at Christmas for a week to see his family, his mum and dad, and I used to think at the time, God, we're here from Manchester, we're slogging our guts off in the difficult parts of the year, in the mud and the snow, and Cristiano's back in Madeira, sort of, you know, having his tan tops up, looking beautiful, and Gary's there from Bury, sort of, in Manchester, sort of, slogging through the winter mud. But I respect it enormously now, and I think of tailoring and putting bespoke, sort of, what will be... It's not treating people differently, it's making sure you play to each other's strengths and understand that in teams, you have people who are, who have different characteristics, personalities, they need treating differently, and I can liken it to a, sort of, if you like, I always think of, sort of, the forwards, the centre forwards in the football team, of being like business development and sales, they're a bit, got a bit more swag about them, they're a bit more, sort of, you know, confident, and your defenders and your goalkeeper, your finance directors and your operational people, who really, sort of, are solid, they're more like defenders, you know, they're the people who will protect the team, then you've got the people who will go and win and score the goals, and that's a, sort of, different personality and character, and if you think of that in business, you get that in a football team, and so Alex has really adapted to the changing, sort of, what would be ways in which leadership evolved over a 20, 30 year period.
Technology, you know, when I first joined Manchester United, we never looked at a football match on a video before we played the opposition, to the point at the end, when I left in 2011, we had things drawn all over, you know, we had technology applied to all the different, sort of, positions, we knew how far we were running, we had, sort of, what would be heart rate monitors on and bands, and we had, obviously, sort of, the GPS tracking all over us, these were massive developments that evolved over a 20 year period. We started off with one physio and one masseur at Manchester United in 1992, and we ended up with, I think, four physios, two doctors, five sports scientists, and it's probably even more now in 2026, but you think about the fact that Alex Ferguson was brought up in football in the 50s, 60s and 70s, he evolved enormously and never stopped moving with the times as technology, media, completely changed. Not just on United, but I wanted to ask you a question around the winning mentality, I mean, building on some of your comments, it sounds like it's not just about talent having the best 5, 10, 15 group of players in the team, it also comes down to psychology, right, whether that comes from the leader or throughout the DNA of the club, so what's your views around that from both a footballing perspective and what you've seen coming into the business world?
A winning mentality, I mean, it comes from the manager, the manager sets that, sort of, what would be tone. In sports teams, ordinarily, the team are a representation of the person who's leading them on the training pitch Monday to Friday, and Monday to Friday is where you work at the, sort of, highest level of intensity in an elite team that wins, so we trained every single day at match pace, you know, we never trained like it was a practice or it was a dress rehearsal, it was always 100% or nothing, every single day, it was hard to be at Manchester United under Sir Alex Ferguson, it was exhausting, because there's an expectation every single day and a standard that you have to deliver, Saturday actually could be the most enjoyable day sometimes, because the week, if you imagine during the week I'm playing against Cristiano Ronaldo in training against Ryan Giggs and they're looking to embarrass me in training, I'm a right back, they're a winger, they're playing against me, so my weekdays could be harder than my match days in terms of opposition, because they were at absolute full speed, full intensity, no let up, we weren't going easy on each other on tackles, you can't not practice how to tackle during the, you know, you can't practice soft tackles during the week and think that you're just going to be able to switch a tap on at the weekend and say it's going to be hard tackles and competitiveness, you have to train like you play, so for me the winning mentality was set on the training pitch by the manager always being present, always there and a group of players who bought into the idea that we have to train every single day at the maximum and prepare as very best we can and it pays off, if you've got the right sort of what would be a mix of talent and people, culture was so important, we accepted people from all around the world into our dressing room like they were from Manchester, I used to say to people when they came in the dressing room, you know Patrice Evra from France or Cristiano Ronaldo from Portugal or Nemanja Vilić from Serbia, you will become Mancunian inside six months, you will become a Manchester United fan even if you're not now and it happened, because this club sort of consumes you and it sort of brings you and if you're in a successful building and in successful culture, you can't wait to get in every single day and you start to love the badge and once you start to love the badge, you see the Argentinians in the World Cup, they're not that good, I mean they've got an exceptional player up front let's be really clear, but they're not that good and I'm whispering that really quietly, they're not that good, if you look at the players that they've got and you think I watch them, half of them in the Premier League every single week, I'm thinking but their collective spirit and their intensity and their commitment for that badge and their country is an incredible chemistry that's difficult to stop. Well I wanted to build on your comments on Argentina but the World Cup perspective you know because obviously when if you're depending on a leader such a figure on the club stage, obviously in the World Cup or an international stage, things could drop and change very differently and as you say it might start to be a bit more dependent on key people, so from a World Cup perspective what do you think separates out the teams that go deep into tournaments, is it also building on that psychology piece, winning mentality or a little bit more key person?
Yeah, it's a tournament, I mean look I used to talk about the collective all the time because that's the sort of what would be values of any business or any sort of good sports team, but what we are seeing in this tournament is exceptional individuals, Haaland, Kane and Bellingham, Messi and Alvarez for Argentina Mbappe and Alissi and Dembele for France and I've probably missed some out there but you've got these exceptional individuals at the top of the pitch and what you're then seeing is a collective sort of what would be compactness and unit. I described Argentina when they were walking out the other day, it was almost like a group of bodyguards minding the king and it's a little bit like that in this tournament, you've almost got these bodyguards that who's got the toughest bodyguards, who's got the most compact defensive unit that can support these exceptional sort of what would be talents and world-class players that sit up front. I've never seen a World Cup like it where they've all turned up, Kane, Mbappe, Messi, Haaland.
A football team or Spain are different, so Spain are a collective, they haven't got that what would be, you know they've got Luminium Isle on the right hand side and he's excellent but they haven't got a goal scorer that's scoring seven, eight, nine goals, so it'd be really interesting to see what comes out on top in this tournament. It's the first time we're seeing teams built around the individual and that actually screams against everything we always believe in. We always believe that actually the collective is the success but actually in this World Cup it's the individual that really I think is standing out and it happened in the last World Cup in Qatar with Messi.
And what do you think about the expanded format? Obviously all the World Cups previously have been won by other European or South American nations and obviously now it's 48 teams, maybe in the future it will become even more. Do you think that could maybe I guess shorten the gap between the European and South American nations that have won it and you know give opportunities for Asian, African, North American countries going forward?
I was a sceptic a couple of years ago when we sort of learned that the World Cup was expanding. You had this conversation on Club World Cup, Expanded World Cup and straight away what you think is are we diluting the quality? Are we doing it for financial reasons and not for sporting reasons?
However, I'm completely and utterly convinced it was the right thing to do. Having sat here now in Brooklyn in New York for five weeks, I've got another week left, it's one of the best things that I've seen. DR Congo, Kate Verde, Curacao, to not have seen those teams in this tournament and others as well I'm not mentioning but Kate Verde against Argentina is one of the best games of football that I've seen.
You know we were screaming at the television during the game, I was covering it obviously for UK broadcast and I'm like jumping up in the studio when you know the kid comes in on his left foot he puts it in the corner top corner with his right foot and Kate Verde you're on the brink of knocking Argentina out of a World Cup. This small nation of I think four or five hundred thousand people against one of the giants of World Cup football historically with Messi in the team is stunning and we wouldn't have seen that if we didn't expand the tournament to 48 teams. So for me I think it's been a huge success, one of the things that I think FIFA have done that I think I can really say well done to them because they did bring this in behind aid increasing participation and making sure they could expand football globally.
Look I don't know if it's the same in every sport but in the Premier League that we have back home or in international we have to have those huge upsets. We live off them, we thrive on them, it's just what we live for sports fans the idea that everybody can beat everybody that there is jeopardy we thrive on that we do we love it the idea that you can get relegated the idea you can get promoted this constant not knowing of what's going to happen is sport for us it's what we believe in. I have to ask you about your England experiences both past and in the future I mean whilst I have you I mean what's your what was your I guess your most enjoyable moment in an England shirt for you know firstly and why?
Well firstly I loved playing for my country full stop and loved every single minute of it from a point of view of pride of privilege but we had a great team in a couple of different periods mid 90s and mid 2000s that didn't didn't get over the line the things I was talking about before about winning mentality united that we had we didn't have it with England I think we all need to take responsibility for that players from Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea that were kicking lumps out of each other on a weekly basis we couldn't drop that right and then come together as a unit for England a couple of weeks later in a qualifier for England or in a tournament for England I still feel like we couldn't commit somehow and that's bad really when I look back you think of Real Madrid and Barcelona in Spain there was a problem between Real Madrid and Barcelona players I think many many years ago but they've got over that now they've sort of understood that the sort of and I think England have got over that I don't think there's that problem anymore that's why we're more successful in this last 10 years than we were before that they're actually getting on really well with each other. And so what do you think has changed there I mean you said you know it feels like the group of players now are starting to be a bit more of a group squad cohesion the culture I mean what do you think needs to change for not just England but in general international level? I think Gareth Southgate made a big step in what he did I think what Gareth did he actually for the first time picked players based on there used to be a big club bias when selecting players for England you'll remember that if you played for United or played for City or you played for Liverpool or Arsenal you're almost like a guaranteed selection for England you've seen in this tournament Phil Foden, Cole Palmer for City and Chelsea two of the most exceptional talents Harry Maguire yeah Manchester United he's left them out I don't think historically managers would have done that so Gareth and now Thomas Tuchel are leaving out players that you think wow how can you leave these players out but they're leaving them out because the best players don't always make the best team and when you're traveling with 26 people you need squad number 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 and 26 because they might not play to be really good travelers yeah to make sure they're good teammates to make sure they compete every single day in training they can't be walking around sulking with a face like this because they're not playing you know that's the same in any dressing room it's same in any office one thing I won't tolerate in sort of the businesses that I have that are very small if I see someone sapping energy bringing the atmosphere down I won't accept that and do you see much of an opportunity here in the U.S.
I mean it feels I'm thinking of the analogy to Wrexham right we've all I've watched a documentary and you see the kind of interest that came into a club that was a lower league at the time when they had investments from from U.S. owners you know do you think that there's an opportunity for growing on that type of interest from for Salford for yourselves given the profile of yourself and the co-owners and almost leaning on what what's happened with some of the U.S. investments not just into Wrexham but other other clubs in the U.K. that are not just Premier League ones so I see look I played at a football club who had an incredible relationship globally with fans but we used to go over every single year on tours around the world right to play in cities a little bit like a band you think about a band the Beatles they come over to America you can't just be successful in America without being in America you can't be successful in Singapore or in Thailand without going over to Singapore and Thailand you've got to put the hard yards in so if you're gonna be successful in another territory and we came over here every two to three years and went to Asia in alternate years but we had massive crowds watching us play you know we had 35 40 000 people in Thailand and in Malaysia watching us train in open training sessions our hotel had thousands in the lobby that's how big we were in Asia we had to then come over to the U.S. to establish Manchester United's name in the U.S. and we started to get big crowds we started to get big crowds watching us train in open days when we used to play in the college sort of college fields and then you start to build that to the point now where Manchester United are extremely popular over here so you've got to work hard to do it Solver City are very much at the beginning of that journey we're miles behind some of the Premier League clubs but yeah we would like to at some point you know travel be here in the U.S. make sure that we sort of can build a fan base around the world but you know we're going to do that slowly it takes time decades of trust and work to do it you can't just think you're going to exploit a different country and sort of think that you're going to be big in a different country without doing the hard yards and maybe just a final point on that I mean what do you think that fans and well investors as well but fans in particular kind of underestimating the reality of running a football club that only one team can win that's the biggest problem true isn't it every single year you've got two trophies that it well there's four trophies in England but two of them are the main truck the Champions League which means that every club in Europe wants to win it and then you've got the Premier League title and there's only one team can win it and that's something that's difficult sometimes to explain that there are other teams that are investing heavily that have got great ownership great managers great coaches great teams and that yeah I think Manchester United have gone beyond that sort of what would be point of you know 12 13 years without a Premier League title is too long yeah but you don't expect to win it every single year I think increases in ticket prices is challenging yeah because you want to increase your revenues because in England we have this yeah financial financial PSR profit sustainability rules which means that you can only spend a certain amount of your revenues on players which means that you've got to drive your revenues to be able to spend more on players which is a little bit of a sort of yeah catch 22 in some ways because you need to basically mean that well how can you make more money yeah broadcast deals can go up and media deals you can sell more merchandise which means you're charging more for shirts and merchandise jumpers caps all the things it's that balance all the time accessibility is really important for me making sure people can afford to go and watch football matches and that everybody can play football that's really important because when I grew up you know it cost very little to go and watch Manchester United play yeah and I could play on any park pitch in the area football all we need 22 of us could just have one ball between us and we're on you put jumpers down sweatshirts down and you've got goals and you can play in the park on the road in the street in anywhere as long as you've got open land you can play football it is the cheapest sport in the world to play you don't need a set of golf clubs you don't need an f1 car you don't need a tennis court and a racket and all the other things that you need for all the other sports you just need a ball between 22 people so the idea that it costs a lot to play football is obscene it's ridiculous so in England I really want the participation to always be for everybody and I want it's the it's the biggest release and relief in people's lives their football team or their sports team wherever if you're in the US it might be a basketball team it's the one time in the week where you can travel with your son or your daughter or your partner your wife your husband and forget about everything for 90 minutes or however long the game is where you're taken into a world of ups and downs like a roller coaster of emotions and we need to make that accessible to as many people as possible I want to ask you a few questions about the media evolution obviously from your playing days to now what you're what you're doing the various ventures that you have on the media side can you give us some insight as to just how much the media world has changed in football from certainly since you were playing through to where we are today and obviously all the the social media aspects that come it feels like we've gone from a broadcast world to one of podcast social media content creators so what's your perspective from the inside here we've not gone from a broadcast world to this but there is enough room for everybody broadcasters are still showing all the live games so for me what's what the big change is obviously come probably 10-15 years ago in social media watching habits of fans and and supporters have changed I think live rights will always sit on major platforms and with broadcast because they cost hundreds of millions and billions of pounds what I what used to be shoulder programming so what's happened I think with broadcast is that a broadcaster will pay a billion pound for live rights for say football matches they will show the live games and most people will watch that live game because it's still the most compelling thing out there but what they've realized is that if it's behind a paywall that you won't get extra subscribers if you put extra shoulder programs on that cost money so what they tend to doing now or what they tend to do now is the shoulder programming as I call it the non-live sports programs are sitting mainly now on digital in YouTube or in other social platforms and that's meant that independents over the last 10 to 15 years have been able to set up what would be platforms media companies with compelling offerings and it's not regulated content right and I say that in a sense that there are guardrails here but the guardrails on broadcast channels of what you can say and how you can sort of what would be interpret the game are different than on an independent channel or on YouTube and fans want authenticity they want to think of it as being you imagine it's sort of back in the day and I'm talking here about England and football you would after the match go to the pub and you talk about the red card the goal the team that the manager picked and you'd have that argument and that debate with your mates wouldn't you and you'd argue for hours oh you're wrong he's wrong you should have picked him that's now happening on YouTube yeah that's now we're seeing that with fans on YouTube and it's a compelling watch if you get the right characters and personalities recording it so I think it's been just transformational the way in which and also the sort of two screen approach you watch a live game but you'll have another device whereby you'll be sort of listening to a watch along or you'll have a podcast on or you'll have some sort of data and stats I do it I'm constantly looking at different apps and different sort of what would be social platforms during games to look at sentiment to look at what's going on what's the noise around the game what's the feeling around the game um and yeah it's just completely transformed and where do you see that heading from here YouTube's a phenomenon it's a phenomenon if you look at the actual numbers on YouTube and the way in which they're going like that I think creators and talent owning their own content is where it's going and actually valuing themselves and not necessarily I mean also we would still I still do lots of broadcast work for Sky and ITV and I absolutely love it doing it on the live games but then I have the overlap which is a channel on my YouTube channel which I adore and I set it up to start with just as something of a bit of fun just to sort of extend my sort of what would be knowledge around interviewing and long-form conversation and now we've got three or four different programs and now we're looking at different channels and things like that so yeah I think it's it's talking directly to fans talking directly to supporters in a way in which they feel is authentic and more likely be the way in which they're discussing football in the pub or in the bar and I don't think it's going to go away um I see that's the big change is that a lot of content is being driven towards YouTube and social platforms and the habits of watching uh it's difficult for people to think that they'd prefer to watch five minutes than 50 minutes right that's the reality of it and what about technology and AI that feels like something we wrote a bit about in our report but do you feel that that's really starting to change the way that you analyze things but from a software perspective or certainly real time during your broadcast um yeah how's that impacting football so you know whether it's a data analytics or AI in particular I think when data analytics is huge now in football particularly I think in recruitment uh analyzing of games analyzing of other teams set pieces um yeah there will be probably now I think in premier league clubs there'll be 10 15 20 data analysts working on recruitment and performance maybe more um scouting used to be if you think of a football scout in England it used to be a guy in a flat cap would go and watch a game in Scotland he'd travel back he'd do a report on a piece of paper he'd show it say I think we've got a player we might like you know now through sort of what would be aggregation of sort of what would be data what so what you would do now I think in terms of sort of a um recruitment you would you would put your profiles and your metrics of what the perfect right back looks like into a machine and then you would look at the data and sort of analytics that support that and it would sort of aggregate sort of through what would be football platforms and it would discard 99 of the right backs in there but it would give you the one percent and say look these are the players that seem to fit your profile so that initial sort of recruitment look is now being driven by AI I think in a lot of clubs and then they'll dig down deep into that it still doesn't take away though from the fact that the human will still have to make the decision and take responsibility for it so you still would need you know I always think watching a video of a football player is one thing but you have to go and watch them live you have to go and watch them off the ball you have to go and watch them what are they like after they make a mistake what's their mood like what's their personality like what are they like with their teammates but I always used to remember Jurgen Klopp said that he used to go and have two hour session with the parents and sit in the family house because he could feel what it was like I think it's a really important thing when you're investing 50 60 70 80 100 million on a fee and then you're spending maybe another 100 million on wages you wouldn't buy a building for 200 million pounds without doing a deep analysis and a survey so I think football now is using AI in that way but also there'll still be that human element that human test that will come that will make the final decision yeah it sounds like you know you see a lot of analogies from the from the football playing world into the corporate world I mean what would you say would be the one most kind of relevant from an elite dressing rooms that you've been in at united into the into the corporate world if you don't have the right people around you you're done you're done finished doesn't matter what infrastructure you build what how good you are as a leader how good you are as a board how good you are as a sort of what would be coaching team if you've not got the right players in the team you're going to really struggle and you need to get the right players in the team quicker than ever you might have got you might have had five years at Manchester United in the mid-80s as we know for Sir Alex to build the right team you're not getting five years in 2026 you know and I don't know if it's the same in sort of this world the banking world you're not going to be able to lose money for five years and keep your job you're gonna have to turn it around pretty quickly now there'll be a bit of an element of time but that usually means getting the right people in place and getting the right products in place and if you don't get the right people around you you are struggling and that to be fair is the same for every single child I always believe that when you're growing up you are a result of the mentors coaches and family that you're looking up to if they're of a good standard with good values and principles you've got a great chance of success because you know children will follow if a child is not succeeding or not doing quite as well as they can do I always think about the fact that what are their circumstances where have they been how can we support them how can we get best better mentors coaches advice I'm quite forgiving and tolerant around that because I've seen it in football quite a lot where there are young players who look a little troubled but they've got enormous talent but you don't know what they're going home to and you've got to try and get them away from that and sort of make sure you bring them into you know I remember Alex Ferguson famously and I'm not going to name the player because it would breach confidentiality I was the captain of United at the age of 27 or 28 to 35 so there were times when young players that were breaking into the first team he would bring me in and he would have done that with Roy Keane before and Eric Cantona he would bring me in with the young player and he said look son this is going to be really difficult he said we're going to move you out of the area where you live and we're going to move your entire family into a different area and I'll give you a new contract but I need you to move from where you're currently living and where you've grown up because I don't believe the people around you are a good influence he'd obviously heard that things were going on that boy moved into a different area into a different part of Manchester and he went on to have a 10 15 year career but that that's a good example of the fact that if you don't have good behaviour around you you don't have good mentorship around you and good advice young people are going to struggle and I believe it's the same in business but the business you have an influence to who's in that dressing room make sure your dressing room is right if your dressing room's not right you need to be really clinical perfect thank you Gary well that concludes our conversation really so I just wanted to say Gary thank you for your time and sharing your experiences with us today and thank you to all of our clients who have joined us not only for today's discussion but throughout this World Cup series we hope you found the series both enjoyable and thought-provoking Gary but thank you for your time thank you thank you I've got my fan band on me too fan bands are on cheers Gary that was fantastic well done you Bank of America and B of A Securities are the marketing names for the global banking businesses and global markets businesses which includes B of A Global Research of Bank of America Corporation lending derivatives and other commercial banking activities are performed globally by banking affiliates of Bank of America Corporation including Bank of America N A member FDIC securities trading research strategic advisory and other investment banking and markets 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