Former Manchester United star Phil Neville has admitted that his only friends are his former Class of 92 teammates and a golf partner.
The football star said he decided only to keep company with a close knit of mates after Sir Alex Ferguson advised him that the only friends he needed were six to carry his coffin.
Phil, who now coaches Inter Miami, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and the former England women’s team coach, said David Beckham, Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs, Nicky Butt were all “like brothers” to him - even though he rarely sees them.
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“I don’t have many friends,” Phil, 44, told Gabby Logan during her The Mid-Point podcast, reports the Mirror.
“Sir Alex Ferguson used to say to us ‘you only need six friends in your life - the ones that are going to carry your coffin’.
“He didn’t like entourages around us so he’d say ‘just get six friends around you, they’re the ones that are going to go to the grave with you’.
“So I’ve never been one to having lots of friends. I’ve probably got two or three friends that are real, real friends and then outside of that I just cast aside people. I don’t really take that many people on.
“Obviously, the boys Nicky, Scholesy, Gary, Becks and Giggsy are my close friends - they’re almost like my brothers.
“And I don’t see them at all now. Obviously we’re on WhatsApp groups and stuff like that, but they’re getting on with their lives.
“But apart from that I’ve not come to Miami and made friends. That’s not the type of person that I am. I’ve got probably one friend out here that I’ve met that I played golf with yesterday.”
But he said it poses constant differences with his more sociable wife Julie.
Phil said: “It’s a constant battle and I’ve had to adapt and be flexible because she was brought up where they had an open house.
“So when Isabella wants to bring a friend back Julie will say ‘two or three friends’, and I’m going ‘just one friend’, and then we’ll negotiate.
Phil said his son Harvey has also inherited his close-knit family-centred trait - spending his 18th birthday having his first ever alcoholic drink with uncle Gary.
“My son is just like me - he hates anyone coming to the house,” he explained.
“For his 18th I said ‘what do you want for your 18th’. He said ‘don’t want a party, I just want to go with uncle Gary’.
“So my brother took him out on his 18th for his first drink. That’s all he wanted to do - just go out with his uncle for his first beer or his first wine.
"Gary said ‘I just want to take him out for his first drink, that’s been my goal’. Because he’s got two daughters, so he hasn’t got a son.
“I think he got a text from Julie ‘you dare bring my little boy home drunk’.”
Phil added he and brother Gary will often just text each other once a month with short messages saying ‘how are you?’ and replying ‘fine’.
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