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Gary Neville admits he believes Manchester United and the five other English clubs involved in the European Super League plans should've been booted out of the Premier League. The Old Trafford icon has pinpointed the breakaway plan as the turning point in his opinion of the Glazer family.
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In 2021, 12 of Europe's leading clubs were announced for the ESL, an exclusive breakaway competition with no promotions or relegations that would've run in midweek to rival the UEFA Champions League.
The Premier League's 'big six' - United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur - were all involved as 'founding clubs'.
AC Milan, Atletico Madrid, Barcelona, Inter Milan, Juventus and Real Madrid made up the star-studded lineup. However, the finance-driven plans quickly derailed due to mass backlash.
Fan protests and warnings of severe punishment led to each of the Premier League clubs dropping out one by one after asserting their loyalty and commitment to UEFA competitions.
The six outfits agreed to make a combined "goodwill" payment of £22million to the Football Association and Premier League, which was put "towards the good of the game".
With it came an agreement that any attempt to relaunch a similar project would lead to the clubs being fined £25m each and having 30 points deducted in the Premier League.
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Neville had often been criticised by supporters - who have witnessed the club enter over £1bn in debt since the Glazer family's controversial 2005 buyout - for his refusal to speak out against them before the ESL attempt.
However, the scandal sparked a change of opinion, and he has since regularly called for the United owners to sell the club over fears that they pose a risk to the game.
In the latest The Overlap Fan Debate, Neville blasted the scale of the proposed ESL clubs' fines, suggesting that all six, including his beloved United, should've been removed from the Premier League.
"I properly started to unload on the Glazers post-Super League. Before that, believe it or not, my actual criticism of them was either little or next to nothing, United fans will know that," Neville explained.
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"Once I recognised they were an actual danger to the actual game itself and were willing to do something like that, that was when I fully unloaded on them.
"Those six owners who were willing to destroy the game in this country and around Europe, they've been let off scot-free. It's disgraceful that they've been let off scot-free; it really is.
"They get fined £3m quid each, they should have been knocked out of the league, the lot of them. What they did was an absolute crime."
The Football Governance Bill is set to establish a new Independent Football Regulator (IFR), which should prevent the risk of another breakaway league emerging in the future.
