Gary Neville reveals Peter Schmeichel treated him ‘brutally’ and ‘horribly’ when he made his Manchester United breakthrough
Ex-England star says keeper's 'tough love' prepared him for life at the top after he was first Class of 92 player to emerge
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GARY NEVILLE says he received anything but puppy love from Manchester United's Great Dane when he made his first-team breakthrough.
England legend Neville revealed giant keeper Peter Schmeichel was "brutal" and "horrible" to him.
But Nev claims the stick from between the sticks was just the character-building tough love he needed to reach and remain at the very top.
Schmeichel even told the right-back his crossing was "sh*t" when he "absolutely battered" Neville during training in his early days.
Nev was the first of the revered Class of 92 to get into Alex Ferguson's side.
Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, David Beckham and Co followed as United put together a squad that went on to win the ultimate treble in 1999.
Sky Sports pundit Neville, 43, who is 11 years younger than Schmeichel, opened up on his life as a United rookie on the ";Quickly Kevin, will he score?" podcast.
He said: "They were tough, yeah.
"Peter Schmeichel.. quite often was brutal with me. Now, I speak to him and we laugh about it.
"He didn't fancy me as a player that much. Peter Schmeichel was the goalkeeper and that back four of Bruce, Pallister, Parker and Irwin was legendary.
"I was the first to break into that and he saw it as a risk, he saw it as a challenge to the fact that we'd been successful.
"Paul Parker picked up an injury and I started getting in at right-back, and obviously as a young player, you're not perfect, you make a couple of mistakes and he just absolutely battered me in training, daily, about my defending, my crossing.
"He used to do this crossing practice after the game and he used to stand on the penalty spot and catch it and say, "That's s***".
"He was actually just being really tough and horrible with me.
"It did affect me but to be honest, you have to just come through it and that's part of it because imagine if you crack when you go out on to the pitch with the fans booing you away from home."
