Phil Neville adds his name to the list of worst English managers abroad

Michael Graham
2 June 2023

English managers don't have the best reputation to begin with, so the very worst ones showcasing their failures in foreign leagues is the last thing anyone needs.

Phil Neville has found managerial life almost as tough as his brother did, it seems. The former Manchester United and Everton defender was finally sacked by Inter Miami after four successive defeats left the club bottom of the Eastern Conference at the start of June 2023.

However, Phil Neville is far from the only English manager to perform badly abroad. A few have succeeded, with Roy Hodgson, Bobby Robson and Terry Venables obvious examples.

In the main, though, if an English manager tries his luck overseas, it doesn't work out well. Planet Sport looks at some of the worst English exports.

Phil Neville

You would have to say that there has not been anything even remotely impressive about Phil Neville's managerial stint in MLS.

Inter Miami persisted with Neville in his first season despite a very poor start, and there wasn't much reward in them for that - they finished the season fourth bottom of the Eastern Conference.

Results improved in the 2022 season, with the club finishing 6th in the Eastern Conference, 12th overall. However, they crashed out of the play-offs at the first hurdle, losing 3-0 to New York City FC.

Neville won 35 of his 90 games in charge, with a win percentage of just 38.89 per cent. You have to wonder whether he'd have been sacked sooner if one of his best friends wasn't the club's owner.

Gary Neville

Of course, however bad Phil Neville is, we must never forget that he will never be the worst managerial Neville brother.

That honour falls to Gary Neville who was a total failure at Valencia. Naturally, he was being 'assisted' by his brother Phil, too…

Statistically, Gary Neville wasn't too bad. Over 28 games he produced mid-table form. That's not really good enough for Valencia though.

"There is not one single part of me that wakes up and thinks 'I want to be on the training field'," Neville said following his time at Valencia.

"I'm more interested in the board room or in the business side of things. The football side I love. I love watching matches but I just don't want to be on the training pitch, I feel like I've done that part of my life and want to move on."

Tony Adams

Tony Adams getting managerial roles is one of the greatest mysteries in football. In fact, scrub that, it's one of the greatest mysteries in life - right up there with the Voynich Manuscript and the Shroud of Turin.

Adams was a brilliant player at a top club, and it was that playing career that he leveraged for a chance in management. Wycombe took the leap, and he won just 12 of his 53 matches in charge. It was the best win-percentage of his managerial career.

He somehow got another chance, this time in the Premier League with Portsmouth, and won just four of his 22 matches. That should have been it.

However, eight years later La Liga side Granada inexplicably saw something in Adams worth hiring. Their reward? Played seven, lost seven.

You'd have to say there is a strong case for Adams being the worst ever English manager, never mind just the worst one abroad.

Alan Pardew

As annoying a character Alan Pardew is, he was actually a pretty good manager as long as he remained on British shores.

Reading, West Ham, Southampton, Newcastle and Crystal Palace fans will likely have at least some fond memories of him.

In 2019, though, Pardew decided to try his luck abroad. He joined Eredivisie club ADO Den Haag.

The Eredivisie has been kind to English managers before. Even Steve McClaren was able to win it, as was Bobby Robson.

However, Pardew was nothing short of a disaster. He won just one of his eight games - the first - before the season was halted due to Covid with Den Haag seven points adrift of safety. His contract was not renewed.

He then had miserable spells at CSKA Sofia, where he picked up one win in seven, and a 22-game stint at Aris Thessaloniki in Greece, where he did slightly better, winning nine matches.

Robbie Fowler

Robbie Fowler's foray into management was not all bad, but it was all very weird.

He started his coaching career in Thailand with Muangthong United in 2011, where he was already a player. It didn't last all that long, though, with him taking charge of 13 games and winning just four.

Although he applied for the Leeds job a couple years later, he had to wait until 2019 to get another chance. This one came in the A-League, where he had done okay as a player at the end of his career.

Brisbane Roar were the club, and he did relatively well, winning nearly half of his 24 games.

It still wasn't good enough to get him a chance back in England, though, and he went to India next with East Bengal. That one was a disaster, and he left after winning just three matches in 11 months.

Phil Brown

Brown's star was already on the wane by the time he arrived in India in December 2018 to manage Pune City.

The perma-tanned former Hull City manager had been sacked by Swindon Town six weeks previously and was still trading off his promotion to the Premier League with the Tigers some ten years previously.

Nevertheless, the initial signs were good as he won three and drew two of his six matches in charge of the Indian Super League (ISL) side.

However, financial problems saw the club dissolved at the end of the season with Hyderabad replacing them in the ISL and taking on a number of their players, and their coach.

Brown was handed a key role in signing players and that was to prove his downfall (he had inherited the Pune team mid-season).

Hyderabad won just one of their first 12 games and Brown was dismissed with the side six points adrift at the bottom of the table.

Brown has since returned to these shores and after being sacked by Southend (for a second time) and just saved Barrow from the drop at the end of the 2021/22 season.