Womens head soccer coach Phil Neville posts sexist remarks

[SoccerGal @soccergal Participant]

It has been revealed that new England women’s head coach Phil Neville apparently made sexist remarks on social media a couple years ago and now they are coming back to haunt him.

In tweets made on twitter he said that women would be too “busy making breakfast/getting kids ready”

and joked he had “just battered the wife”.

Is Phil Neville sexist? Should he lose his jobs for this? Or are people overreacting?

[beckyE @beckye Participant]

“Storm in a teacup” doesn’t come close to covering the over-hyping of this non-story.

[cat @cat Participant]

Some these tweet were from 2010-2011 some sad person must have trawled through his entire twitter account trying to find dirt on him. This is just a witch hunt…The media are really going at it recently with the man hating agenda.

[connie @connie Participant]

@beckye You are trolling, I hope, because you cannot really be serious. Making jokes painting domestic violence against women in a positive light (Let’s hope he was joking and did not in fact beat his wife) mainly proves that he is a colossal arse.

That would not make him unsuitable for any job ingeneral (I guess he might fit right in as a professional footballer….), but it definitely makes him unsuitable for a management role where he specifically wields power over women.

This applies even more so when the position became vacant only because his predecessor got himself sacked through a mixture of sexism, inappropriate relationships, and racist bullying.

[strike @strike Participant]

@connie He made a joke in poor taste, seven years ago.

If this is enough to make someone unemployable, then 80% of the population would be unemployed.

Anyway, he is currently employed. Do you think a bad taste joke seven years ago is sufficient grounds for dismissal?

[beckyE @beckye Participant]

@connie Of course I’m not trolling. You know perfectly well he doesn’t beat his wife and nor does he think women should spend their lives in the kitchen. He was employing things called “irony” and “black humour” which the wilfully offended and downright stupid choose not to have noticed.

Not a great joke and pretty dumb of him to have done it on twitter but then again he’s a footballer ((not, of course, that,unlike you, I wish to offend footballers whom I am sure are generally wonderful and very intelligent human beings).

[Fi @fi Participant]

He was employing things called “irony” and “black humour”

Spot on.

There are WAY too many people who don’t get irony and black humour. If they ever read texts or overheard me and my mates at the wall we would never get employed!

[connie @connie Participant]

@becke No I do not, but I would expect his employer to have a word with him about his duties to corportae image, especially as a person who knows that he is exposed to media scrutiny.

However, I do think that there are certain jobs and circumstances for which, if the employer had any sense of integrity and decency (which the FA manifestly has not,) jokes of that kind should kick you off the short list.

Specifically, the FA are looking for a replacement for a coach sacked because of racist bullying and inappropriate sexual relations! The same joke would be pretty much irrelevant if he were considered for a coaching role for the men’s team.

[connie @connie Participant]

Plus no it is not black humour or irony, both of which I “get” and enjoy.

It was a misogynist joke in extremely bad taste, that revealed him as a complete arse, and is quite informative about his character. Since he obviously expected that his audience/followers consisted of similar arses who would find the joke funny, it is also revealing about them.

It is also not about intelligence, but about attitudes to women, and a general sense of decency that should tell you whether a joke is on or not.

[skipper @skipper Participant]

@connie Why don’t you just acknowledge that most people make bad and bad taste jokes, and they do it partly to annoy people like you, but mainly as a coping mechanism in the face of real life. It doesn’t actually mean that they, for example, think that battered wives (or husbands) are a big joke.

Humour is like grease that makes the world livable. It is the prigs who fail to understand it or the (usually benign) reasons for it who are in the wrong.

[jess @jess Participant]

Plus no it is not black humour or irony, both of which I “get” and enjoy.

It was a misogynist joke in extremely bad taste, that revealed him as a complete arse, and is quite informative about his character. Since he obviously expected that his audience/followers consisted of similar arses who would find the joke funny, it is also revealing about them.

It is also not about intelligence, but about attitudes to women, and a general sense of decency that should tell you whether a joke is on or not.

I’m sorry but you clearly do not get it! Also you do not know the context with which it was written by him so how you can judge him on it is beyond me.

There are loads of scenarios where he might have written that as a private joke, for example, say he’d been having a chat in the changing room and said something which someone else misheard as “just battered the wife”. They all had a laugh about how it was misheard and how random a thin g it would have been to say. Later he then writes on twitterbook “Just battered the wife”, knowing his mates would get the joke.

The above scenario is one of hundreds of possibilities, it does not tell you anything about his attitude to women.

If you don’t get that then as I say, you don’t get it.

[donna @donna Participant]

There are WAY too many people who don’t get irony and black humour. If they ever read texts or overheard me and my mates at the wall we would never get employed!

@fi Oh, they “get it”. But they can’t resist the opportunity to go pointing fingers or making victim narratives out of it (I would say “virtue signal” but even that phrase appears to trigger folks now).

[connie @connie Participant]

I make and enjoy jokes in bad taste all the time, and some jokes that circulated my old virology department back when AIDS was still a death sentence would be beyond the pale if we had told them in front of any patients or relatives.

The difference is, we did not, because we knew it would have been unacceptable.

Football player makes a shit joke about domestic violence, shares it via twitter, and then whines over the backlash when being hired for a job that hands him power over a group of women.

What an idiot.

Also, and this probably should have been part of the previous reply, I fully appreciate the value of black and tasteless humour as a coping strategy. However his “joke” was not about coping, it was merely gratuitous mentioning of wife beating that revealed his lack of respect for women, and his expectation that this would endear him with his followers.

To me it is the gratuitous nature of the joke that grates most. IMO black humour is only OK if it is pertinent (to the extent that in some context even jokes about AIDS, disability or the even the holocaust could be fine).

• This reply was modified 6 years, 2 months ago by connie .

[jess @jess Participant]

@connie I don’t think anyone doubts that he was dumb to put it on twitter but that has very little to do with whether he capable of managing a football team.

That the joke “revealed his lack of respect for women” is just a product of your imagination and prejudices. Like Mr.Neville, most men have wives,partners, and /or sisters and daughters who they love and respect but many of them will also make bad taste jokes about women. It says sweet FA about their respect for women but, nowadays, quite a lot about their views on the wilfully offended.

[connie @connie Participant]

@jess I guess we have to agree to disagree. But even if I am wrong and it does not reveal underlying misogyny it reveals his stupidity and lack of judgement. IMO that should be more than enough to exclude him from a job for which the topic of his “joke” is particularly inappropriate.

I also still maintain that the very idea that such a joke could be appropriate and funny tells you something about the “lad culture” and the attitudes towards women ingrained in football, which I have seen first hand playing Sunday league pub football.

Again, the FA should be seen to make an effort in tackling these issues after the long overdue sacking of Sampson, but as usual they manage to pick the one candidate that, in this context only, carries baggage.

All that aside, parachuting in a male celebrity with no documented managerial skills is an insult to all qualified coaches, regardless of whether they are male or female. Sticking with that choice when the candidate also proves an idiot with respect to his social media handling adds insult to injury.

[cat @cat Participant]

@connie Don’t you find it fun every now and then to say the things you aren’t allowed to say? The words you always have to be guarded about? Especially if its darkly amusing and instantly understood by those around you at the time?

Seems like a uniquely modern problem, where the main channels of communication are recorded and freely available for vindictive individuals many years later to go looking for words that, taken out of context, are no longer permissible. Back when it was just Fred at the local pub (or you in the virology department) making the comments nothing would come of it.

[anne @anne Participant]

I also still maintain that the very idea that such a joke could be appropriate and funny tells you something about the “lad culture” and the attitudes towards women ingrained in football

@connie Do you not see the hypocrisy in that vs it being ok to make jokes about AIDS patients like you said you do in your other post?

[connie @connie Participant]

@anne A bit difficult arguing the same thing to PMP and you, but I almost get the feeling that you are being willfully obtuse.

Can you not see the difference between making gratuitously offensive jokes and black humour as a coping mechanisms because it deals with a situation that is distressing (and yes, it was distressing to have worried looking young couples or mothers with their teenage sons come in and wait for their appointment with the head of department that stood a good chance of being a death sentence).

We always made a point of offering them tea and coffee from our tea kitchen, because we knew that we were not running a risk of infection, at least not after the cups had gone through the dishwasher), and being nice and friendly and treating them as humans not some infectious zombies would be the minimum we could for them.

I have no doubt that, say, social workers may similarly joke about domestic violence in their professional environment, but it would then be in a situation where the topic of the bad taste joke is at least relevant.

However, in either case the jokes must remain private!

edit: Just to add one example of medical black humour going wrong: A few years ago it became public that doctors at a well known NHS hospitals labelled some of their patient GFS, “good fen stock”. Cynical, but probably largely nail on head, and most importatly something should have never appeared on a patient note. Generating a paper trail of your bad taste is the hard copy version of PNs idiocy.

second edit: AFAIK it had disciplinary consequences, and quite rightly so!

• This reply was modified 6 years, 2 months ago by connie .

[Emma @emma Participant]

It strikes me that some people are rather missing the point here. The main question is what the women who are going to play under this guy think. I don’t know the answer, but if I was the FA I’d start off by asking them.

[sophie @sophie Participant]

Does anyone else feel rather aggrieved that someone must have gone back through all his tweets and dug up something that could be construed as sexist? Presumably the person doing the digging worked on a newspaper?

The same as the way Sam Allerdice got stitched up by a couple of hacks whose sole intention that night was to get him to say something dodgy they could put in their newspaper.

I have nothing but contempt for this sort of malicious gossip.

[connie @connie Participant]

@sophie Not malicious gossip, but proof of their unsuitability for the job in question (even worse in the case of SA) obligingly provided by the candidates themselves. Seriously, what was SA thinking?

[lilly @lilly Participant]

So who actually spends their time going through people’s tweets etc. from years back, in the hope they can find something to put in the media and stir up trouble at an appropriate moment. Probably been holding it back for ages waiting to do the most damage.

Now those people are seriously sad effers.

[lilly @lilly Participant]

He wasn’t employed by them when he made the remarks so prima-facie they aren’t covered by his employment contract. They could have chosen not to hire him based on his previous behaviour but that ship has sailed. If they want rid of him they’ll probably have to pay him off.

[connie @connie Participant]

@everyone Keep on defending a complete arsehole, it does not paint you in a good light.

[anne @anne Participant]

Keep on defending a complete arsehole, it does not paint you in a good light.

@connie might it be that you actually just don’t like Mr.Neville, irrespective of a joke he may have posted years ago. And now this storm in a tea-cup is serving as a convenient hammer to bash him with? Sexual deviancy, or claims of misogynistic behaviour are damn fine trump card to be able to pull out.

[connie @connie Participant]

@anne I have no opinion about Phil Neville, except that he used to be an international football player and used to play for Manchester United (?) as a midfielder or defender, that is about it.

I just read about about the controversy surrounding his appointment in the Guardian website before it cropped up here, and to me it is very clear that you have to be a severely unpleasant character if you think it is OK to jokingly claim in public to have battered your wife.

This is simply inexcusable behaviour, and should, if the FA had any integrity, exclude him from being considered for a post that involves holding power over a group of women.

What I do not get is people defending this a “black humour” or “irony”, it is not. To qualify as such the joke would IMO have to be made in a context where domestic violence was relevant, e.g. between social workers dealing with the consequences, and in front of the right audience (e.g. not including the victims).

To bring up the topic of abuse as a joke on twitter is gratuitous, but I am not surprised that famous people can be arses, too.

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