Neville Southall exclusive: 'I see myself as an experiment' | OneFootball

There are numerous reasons why you might decide to write a book about yourself.

Perhaps you have an interesting story to tell, perhaps you just want to make quick buck, or perhaps you want to pass on some of the wisdom you’ve gleaned from your years of experience in life and football.

When it is put to the former Everton and Wales goalkeeper Neville Southall that his new book, Mind Games, was an attempt to do the latter, his answer is modestly blunt.

“I haven’t got a clue about anything,” Southall tells OneFootball in an exclusive interview.

“Teaching is not my thing in that way. What I was trying to do was combine my experiences in football and just say: ‘This is how I dealt with stuff, it might work for you, it might not’.”

Whatever his intentions behind writing it, Southall has a lot of wisdom to dispense in the book where, among stories from his football career, he muses on important topics such as racism, homophobia, loneliness and mental health.

“I think everyone’s unique so everyone’s got a different way of doing stuff and what I did might not suit everybody else,” he continues.

“I’ve had a fella this week saying it’s brilliant and it’s really helped him open his eyes better than all of his therapists, which is really good for me.”

A First Division, FA Cup and European Cup Winners’ Cup winner with Everton in the 1980s and 90s, Big Nev was arguably the finest goalkeeper in the world at the peak of his powers and he has the YouTube highlights reel to prove it.

Not that he sees it that way.

“Who told me I was the best in the world? I never worried about what people told me,” he says.

“Let’s be honest if you’re flavour of the month you’re great, if you’re not flavour of the month you’re the worst thing they’ve ever seen. Unfortunately Jordan Pickford is going through it at the moment, and you see lots of other players going through it, like Harry Maguire. When people make their mind up that they want to nail you, they’re gonna nail you.

“I haven’t read a paper for 40 years so it was pointless. My agent said to me: ‘Look, whatever’s in the paper this morning will be around your fish and chips tonight, don’t take any notice of it’ and I think that’s a good way of looking at it really.”

Since finally hanging up his gloves in 2002 at the age of 42, Southall embarked on a short-lived managerial career in the lower leagues before largely turning his back on the world of professional football.

He now works in a school for children with special needs in Swansea and for many young people, he is perhaps better known these days for his social media presence than anything else.

Southall created his Twitter account in 2011 with the original intention of dispensing goalkeeping tips but when he thought one of the children at his school was about to come out as gay, he sought advice from from the online LGBT community about how best to deal with the situation.

“I sat down one day and thought I haven’t got a clue what I’m gonna say to him, so I started talking to a few people online and they were brilliant to me,” he says.

“I told them that sometimes he can be quite homophobic and they said that can be him finding himself, and stuff like that. It’s quite common, he’s denying himself, so they were quite helpful and it came from there really.”

Since then, Southall has amassed over 170,000 followers and become something of a Twitter activist.

If he isn’t tweeting his own opinions on politics and other issues of the day, he is providing a platform to others by allowing his account to be taken over by mental health campaigners, charity organisations and various other people representing marginalised sections of society.

“The biggest thing I’ve learned is I know even less than I thought I knew,” he says, reflecting on his Twitter experience.

“It’s taught me to be open-minded and really, the bottom line is that happiness is the best thing and the simple things mean the most.

“And I think lockdown has shown people that communication and family is much better than anything else, and I think we’d like to get back to a world where we’re a bit more level.

Society’s many injustices are a constant source of frustration to Southall, who directs his ire at the likes of Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson during our conversation on the subject of racism.

He is truly passionate about mental health  – “I am a bit worried at the moment because mental health seems to be trendy. I don’t want it to be trendy, I want it to be sustainable” – and erudite when it comes to topics like racism and homophobia, and how they should be eradicated from football.

“They should ashamed of themselves because they’re not creating anything. You can’t go to Qatar and you can’t go to Russia if you’re serious about homophobia or racism or any sort of rights anywhere.

“You’ve gotta pick your countries to play the World Cup in and I think it all comes back to the same thing, all the governing bodies are chasing cash and what they should be chasing is inclusivity. That means making sure that we cut out racism.

“I don’t think we’ll ever get rid of racism or homophobia because there’s always people who need educating but I do think we can stamp it out a good deal and we’ve gotta create atmospheres where gay players can come out.”

And if everybody was as committed to self-improvement as Southall, the world would undoubtedly be a better place.

“I see myself as an experiment because if something doesn’t work, there’s no point trying that same something every single day because it ain’t ever gonna work, so you have to move on and try to find another way,” he says.

He remains a passionate Evertonian to this day, and he believes the criticism levelled at Toffees and England goalkeeper Pickford is mostly unwarranted.

“Look, he’s still learning. I was still learning when I was 42 when I was playing, so everybody still learns,” he says.

“It’s just a matter of him knocking five seconds off every game. Take five seconds off every game and he’d be perfect.

“People have gotta remember that he’s got his own style and people criticise him for laughing but I think his laughing is just pure nerves because he’s got away with stuff or he hasn’t got away with stuff.

“Dean Henderson’s come back, but he’s not in the first team is he? I think Nick Pope’s a decent, solid goalie but he’s still at Burnley. Pickford’s at the bigger club and I think he’s performing better overall.

“He’s performed better than Henderson because he ain’t playing is he? He’s in the first team and he’s kept his place, and people look for the negative rather than look for the positives.”

And finally, what does he think of modern goalkeepers like Alisson Becker, Ederson and Manuel Neuer?

“They keep telling me they all wanna be good players with their feet but they don’t get paid for using their feet do they?

“They get paid for using their hands and keeping the ball out of the net.

“Bobby Charlton could pass but he was shit in goal!”

‘Mind Games’ by Neville Southall is out now on HarperNonFiction.