The wife of England Women’s football manager Phil Neville has revealed he left her to go to training before she nearly died giving birth to their daughter.
Julie Neville, 43, has been married to the former Manchester United player, also 43, for 20 years after they met at a friend’s 21st birthday party three years earlier.
They have two children, Harvey, born in 2002, and Isabella, born in 2004, who was later diagnosed with cerebral palsy at 18-months-old.
But Mrs Neville has revealed her husband’s devotion to his job meant he wasn’t by her side when Isabella’s birth went horribly wrong – and she was left fighting for her life.
She told the Manchester Evening News how he asked doctors ‘how long it would take’ when she started haemorrhaging and they said she would need an emergency C-section.
Julie Neville, 43, has been married to former Manchester United player Phil for 20 years after they met at a friend’s 21st birthday party three years earlier
Neville, 43, is now manager of the Lionesses and is pictured at a friendly between England and Brazil in October last year
Mrs Neville, who lives with her husband and their children in a plush mansion in Hale, Greater Manchester, said: ‘I’d been in hospital quite a few weeks because my waters broke before 28 weeks.
‘He was sleeping in a chair beside the delivery table every night and then going to training during the day and then on the morning she was born it was quite obvious something bad was going wrong.
‘I was haemorrhaging quite badly and they were like ‘we need to get this baby out now.’
‘Phillip said to the obstetrician ‘how long do you think it will take? I was just thinking I was going to go to training and do some stuff at work and then I’ll come back later.’
‘I was in quite a bad way at his point, thinking ‘oh my god I think I’m dying.’
‘And so he said ‘right I’m just going to go to training.’ So my mum is at home looking after our one-year-old son I’m on my own then in this delivery room.’
The mother-of-two recalled that her husband had only been gone for 10 minutes when Isabella’s heart stopped beating.
She said: ‘They pressed an alarm and before I knew it there was 20 people in the room and I was haemorrhaging more and more.
‘I literally remember them going ‘where’s Philip? somebody ring him now he needs to come now.’
‘There was this panic stations and I remember going ‘I need to wait, can we just wait?’
Phil and Julie have two children, Harvey, born in 2002, and Isabella, born in 2004, who was later diagnosed with cerebral palsy at 18-months-old
‘As it happens I remember him dashing in at the last minute and then they had to throw him out because she’d had no heartbeat for six minutes and they had to knock me out and it was an emergency section.
‘He looks back now and says ‘probably looking back maybe it probably wasn’t a good idea.’
‘I still would never say ‘actually I’m really scared’ I was like ‘you go I’ll be fine.”
‘He says that’s the only time probably football maybe shouldn’t have come first.’
Mrs Neville also told her local newspaper how her husband has ‘never made her drink’ in all the 23 years they have been an item.
She said: ‘We’ve been married 20 years and we’ve been together 23 years and he’s never even made me a drink, honestly.
‘He’s not capable. He’s just never learned. He just doesn’t know how. It’s not that I think he wouldn’t do it if he could he just doesn’t know how to do it.’
Last summer, while Salford City co-owner Neville led the England Lionesses through to the World Cup semi-finals in France before they gracefully bowed out in fourth place, his wife Julie project managed the refurbishment of their home.
Mrs Neville (pictured) has revealed her husband’s devotion to his job meant he wasn’t by her side when Isabella’s birth went horribly wrong – and she was left fighting for her life
It now boasts a games room with his football memorabilia, a private cinema, a fully-equipped gym, an indoor swimming pool and spa area and she has her own dressing room.
The couple didn’t speak for six months after they first met, but Neville told a friend that he’d just met the woman he was going to marry.
She says she’s accepted that she comes a ‘close second’ to his lifelong love of football.
She said: ‘I think the thing I’m most proud of is his work ethic. Philip told me quite soon after we married that he loved me very much but
‘I was a very close second to football and I’m not insulted by that in any way. He literally, eats, sleeps lives football.
‘So to say he works seven days a week from first thing in the morning to last thing at night. I can’t remember the last time he had a day off.
‘He’s taken the job with the Lionesses nearly two years ago and I think he’s had three days off in that time when he worked from home, and we’ve had one family holiday in three years.’
Neville was named head coach of the England women’s team in January 2018, signing a contract that runs until the end of the UEFA Women’s Euro 2021, and he’ll take the footballers to the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.
‘Ultimately I probably think that he probably thinks that he’s a man in a woman’s job and that eventually a woman will take his job,’ said his wife.
‘But until that time, he says ‘I’ll take them as far as I can until that point’.
‘I’m really proud of all his achievements and now he’ll go to Tokyo in the summer. I’m independent and I plan everything I do, whether it’s myself or with the kids, as if I’m doing it on my own. If he’s around that’s a bonus.
‘Nine times out of 10 he won’t be able to be and I’m used to it. I’m used to him being away and I want him to feel he can just take any job and do what he wants to do and know that I’ll be fine with it.
‘I would never want him to look back and think ‘I really wanted that job’ or ‘I really wanted to do that and I didn’t because Julie didn’t want me to’.
‘Even though there’s times where I wished that he could be at home for a certain thing or do something I would never ask him to be.
‘It works because I’m independent and I don’t mind that. He know the bills are paid, the house is looked after and the kids are sorted.
‘He needs to do that so he can focus whether it’s on the Olympics or Salford City.’