GARY NEVILLE has branded the Premier League’s plan to ask clubs to assign a coach to monitor contact as “nonsense”.
That is just one of the protocols laid out in the second phase of Project Restart – which the top flight hopes to roll-out within the next week.
It will see clubs resume contact training, but it will still be limited and monitored.
Each club will be asked to appoint a Covid-19 coaching contact to carry out “risk assessments” of sessions and drills.
Clubs will also be asked to limit the number of throw-ins.
And one member of staff must be placed in charge of bibs, balls and cones to avoid equipment becoming contaminated.
But former Manchester United and England defender Neville said: “We saw Jadon Sancho over the weekend go and celebrate with his team-mates. A lot of football is around instinct.
“I would say it’s player by player. The way Jamie Redknapp used to play, he would always be looking for space, he didn’t want player contact because he was trying to move into space to receive the ball.
“Whereas I was constantly mauling my opponent, even off the ball. I wanted to know where he was all the time and my hands would be all over him.
WELL I NEV-ER
“I would be touching him, elbowing him. I wanted that contact.
“If you were playing against a Michael Owen he wouldn’t want contact, he’d want to spin off your shoulder and play away from you.
“But if you were playing against Emile Heskey he would bump into you, he would shove into you, he’d grab you, he’d hold you.
“It depends on player by player, position by position. So the idea that you can have Covid coaches is a bit of a nonsense.
“We’ve seen the games in Germany in the last couple of weeks and defenders are still marking at corners very tightly.
“We’ve seen players trying to win space by putting their arms on people – that’s just football, it’s natural. I don’t get this.”
Neville, speaking on the Football Show on Sky Sports, insisted: “I’ve been in a supermarket without gloves on and picked up chocolate and that bar might have been mauled by four different people before it was picked up by myself.
“The reality is, you come back home, wash your hands and get on with.”
He added: “My concern with the restart is more around the conflicting messages between industries – if it’s safe to play football then I would say it’s safe to do pretty much most things.”
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