Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher have found a rare post-career sweet spot in modern football media — Volume 2, Issue #32

It was a week in which Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher showed, in different ways, a rare post-career solace that the likes of Mark Lawrenson and Graeme Souness have lacked.

In a week where football entered its non-stop, full-throttle, narrative-enduring conclusion, it's been the individuals whose post-playing exploits off-the-pitch have garnered attention again. 

Whilst a tipsy, light-hearted Jamie Carragher was relishing his time as a day-long adopted Borussia Dortmund fan during their Champions League first-leg win over Paris Saint-Germain, from footage amongst many in the famed Yellow Wall at the Signal Iduna Park with his jocular CBS Sports interview with the much-lauded Jadon Sancho on the night gaining views on views, Gary Neville, staying based in England, visited his old club Manchester United and their pressurised manager for a sit-down half an hour interview for Sky Sports. 

It was, in different ways, a display of solace for two former footballers who, after years of effort, have carved a career and an acceptable place in football media. 

Image: Naomi Baker/Getty Images.

Neville and Carragher possess an alluring nature that no other media persona within UK football media has in the last decade-plus. Maybe, to some, only Gary Lineker can rival them. To the point that I'm writing about them, and you're reading. 

Thursted into the media spotlight subsequently after retirement: Neville in 2011 as the new-age analyst that Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football (MNF) aimed to promote and Carragher in ‘13 as a complementary piece on the Sky punditry team. Apart from Neville’s brief managerial escapade with Valencia, which he detailed on The Overlap YouTube channel earlier in the week, labelling it “brutal,” and a five-month suspension for Carragher after his spitting incident in 2018, the pair have been a constant fixture on UK screens in the last ten years. 

Even in their aforementioned respective tribulations, both were sucked back into the media cycle—whether through adoration or intrigue. 

Neville and Carragher—self-deprecating characters about their playing careers—brought a rare awareness to the media scene that would resonate with viewers rather than detain their perceptions of the game. 

They weren't the most talented footballers on the pitch—they knew that, and so did everyone else—nor did they feel entitled to be in the media. 

Neville eventually learned to flip between the studio analysis and commentary emotion, with the iconic Fernando Torres ‘goalgasm’ and the publicly noted groans of “Ohhh” being downplayed, even if the occasional soundbite can still show true. 

Carragher has crafted himself into a more appealing character than the one he came in as. His penchant for the modern craving for analytical views—the one that Neville was supposedly meant to provide—relates prominently to those infused by expected goal models and inverted full-backs. The intention is to target that audience on MNF, breaking down the much-talked-about events over a Premier League weekend as well as his weekly column in The Telegraph.

His prominent role in CBS Sports Golazo, which tends to set social media ablaze on Champions League night with its witty, chucklesome clipable production, alongside Micah Richards, Thierry Henry and host Kate Abdo—one that highlights a loose but playful style to his punditry in an equal environment that you won’t get in a Sky Sports studio.

Neville’s exclusive interview series on The Overlap sheds industry insight from well-known sportspeople and shows a real passion and feel for stories—unique given his life as a club legend at one of the most successful sports franchises of all time turned media figure. 

The pair’s involvement in speaking out against the European Super League in 2021—at a time when the footballing world was striving to regain public discourse—certainly adored a section of people. Though with an inescapable inherited bias given their playing allegiances, their punditry and commentary entice a conversationalist sense that others in that position tend to undervalue.

During a week in which fellow former footballers in the media, Mark Lawrenson and Graeme Souness, branded the BBC as “woke” and produced a scathing attack on Mohamed Salah, respectively, Neville and Carragher continue to show, in different ways, a place can be crafted out in the football media after the days of ‘playing the game’ are left behind.