Giggs: Gary Neville will be no good as a manager

Ryan Giggs believes his former Manchester United team-mate Gary Neville will make a perfect first-team coach - but is NOT cut out for management.

Neville announced his retirement from playing with immediate effect on Wednesday night after a distinguished 19-year career in which he made 602 appearances for United and won 85 England caps.

The 35-year-old has been taking his FA badges, along with United contemporaries Giggs and Paul Scholes, and is set to be offered a coaching role at United by Sir Alex Ferguson.

Giggs, 37, who continues to defy the ageing process by playing at a formidable level almost 20 years on from his United debut, said Neville would be perfect in the No.2 role at Old Trafford.

"I'm not sure about Gary," said Giggs. "He'd be a brilliant assistant manager because he is so focused and organised. He could do the day-to-day coaching.

"He gets his point across well on the training pitch. I wouldn't be great at that. I'm better face-to-face, so probably better at management.

"I'm not sure about David Beckham [becoming a manager], but Scholesy will get involved, though probably not as a manager, and Phil [Neville] will definitely be a manager.

"I hope I can be a good manager. I like helping players and improving them, but the life expectancy of a manager is just 18 months, so you don't get long."

Gary Neville admitted he accepted some time ago that his 20-year United career was over and said he did not want to be a "passenger" at the club.

"I've known for the last few weeks," he said. "I've been speaking to the manager, went away for a week and came to the same conclusion that it was the right thing to do.

"The mentality at this club is always to come back, to go again, go again. Sometimes you get a feeling in your mind that you can't go again and that time had come for me.

"You know your own mind and you don't want to be a passenger. When that fire stops burning, you know something's not quite right.

"Sometimes you have to go with your gut instinct. That's the type of person I am and I felt the time was right.

"Having spoken with the manager, I'll continue to go in until the end of the season, but not in the same capacity I have been doing for the last 19 years.

"I'll be working with some of the younger players and doing some coaching, but that will only be until the end of the season.

"At this moment in time, my mindset is not to go into coaching or management full-time. I want 12 months to gather [myself] and not to rush into a new relationship.

"I need to relax. I'm not a very relaxed person, but I need to chill out after 20 years coming in and doing the same thing."

With his contemporaries Giggs and Scholes continuing to excel at United, the 35-year-old defender insisted it was not the end of an era at Old Trafford.

"I don't know if it's an end of an era feeling, because there's a new layer below us now," said Neville.

"When Roy Keane left five years ago, and Denis Irwin before that, it was seen as the end of an era. But me, Giggsy and Scholes stepped up to that next layer, with Edwin van der Sar obviously.

"But now, below us, there's Nemanja Vidic, Rio Ferdinand, Darren Fletcher, Michael Carrick, John O'Shea and Wayne Rooney, and they'll step up. The conveyor belt doesn't have a gap in it.

"The manager creates a squad with layers and tiers of experience, from young lads of 17 who are in the squad, right through to experienced players aged 37 or 38.

"And when those ones go off, there are people who step up to the plate and take that responsibility and experience.

"You think back to Roy going a few years back and you wondered how the club would ever replace that character and that player.

"But it happens in different ways. It will happen again when Giggsy and Scholes leave, although I don't know how you replace those two, or the manager obviously, because they're all a bit special."

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