Gary Neville has revealed the bizarre reason why he accidentally snubbed Harry Styles last month.
The Manchester United legend was working as a pundit for Sky Sports as the Red Devils beat Luton Town 2-1 at Kenilworth Road. Before the game, Neville was relaxing in the studio with the rest of the punditry team, which included Jamie Redknapp.
As he was doing so, pop superstar Styles – who is a United fan – walked in alongside Luton’s directors, but his unfamiliar wardrobe choice appeared to render him unrecognisable to Neville, who admitted he was unaware who the 30-year-old was.
Instead, Neville was in conversation with Luton chief executive Gary Sweet, who has helped to oversee the Hatters’ remarkable rise from non-league to the Premier League.
And, speaking to Geoff Shreeves on his brand-new podcast Football, Music and Me, Neville – who co-owns League Two side Salford City – insisted he was too wrapped up in his discussions with Sweet surrounding EFL finances to notice the One Direction icon.
‘Harry was at the back and Gary Sweet was there,’ he said. ‘But we’d interviewed him (Sweet) for the first or second Friday Night Football of the season and got on really well.
‘I felt like I had a lot of synergies with him, because Luton have done their promotions from League Two, we’re in League Two with Salford. I was really interested in his story and how they’d done it.
‘So I was talking to him and I saw one guy go past and I shook the hand of Harry but I was concentrating on the conversation with Gary. But he walked past and then I saw Jamie Redknapp get up and go “hey you alright”.’
Neville went onto claim it was an innocent error but admitted his daughters wouldn’t be happy with him.
He added: ‘I thought “oh no”. My daughters absolutely adore him. They went and watched him at Lancashire Cricket Club about a year ago now, he fills everywhere.
‘But it was like “yeah alright, let me carry on talking to Gary Sweet about League Two finances”.’
In the aftermath of the clash at Kenilworth Road, Neville had offered a heartfelt apology to Styles after originally thinking he was the son of a Luton Town director.
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