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Ex-Valencia boss Gary Neville: I won't coach again for at least five years

Gary Neville has said he will turn his back on coaching for at least the next five years.

The former Manchester United right-back took his first foray into management with a troubled four-month spell at Valencia last season, while he was also Roy Hodgson's assistant with England, a position he relinquished in the wake of a dismal Euro 2016 campaign.

Neville says he is not looking to get back into the industry any time soon, instead continuing in his punditry role with Sky Sports while focusing on a number of business projects, including his joint-ownership of National League North side Salford City.

"I've committed now. I put two or three things on hold while I was in Valencia and in the summer,'' he told the Mail on Sunday.

"And obviously, after the summer I was, 'Right, these projects go and we go with them now.' And they're going. And I'm too integrated into them and at the forefront to go and do something else.''

On a potential return to coaching, he added: "You can never say never but I think it is unlikely you'll see me step back into a coaching role, certainly in the next five years. So the reality is that I probably am consigning myself to no coaching position, unless in five years I wake up and say, 'Actually, I'd like to do something locally' and something happens.

"But, honestly, at this moment I can't see it at all. I'm far more passionate about those things I'm doing and Salford City than I am about coaching."

Despite England's poor showing at Euro 2016, Neville insists the team was going in the right direction under Hodgson, though he accepts their position was untenable after the Iceland defeat.

"Absolutely, and unless you don't qualify, you'll only ever be judged on a tournament,'' he said.

"And the sadness for me watching in the last couple of months and since the tournament is that it definitely was the right direction. But when you lose a game like Iceland, you lose the right to have a say any more.

"The reality, what people will work out in time, is that the direction of travel was correct, the identification of the right players was correct, the system and the style of players was correct, but not always the end result.''

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