Gary Neville: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Busby Babes
It Was What It Was : The Football History Podcast
The Overlap
4.9 • 667 Ratings
🗓️ 4 February 2025
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Welcome back to It Was What It Was, the football history podcast.
This week former Manchester United captain Gary Neville joins us to look back on one of the most momentous and tragic events in football history: The Munich air disaster of 1958.
Neville discusses the lasting significance of the tragedy - and how Sir Matt Busby rebuilt the club, leading them to European Cup glory just a decade after its darkest day.
Gary shares stories with Jonathan and Rob - including how he was raised to honour the Busby Babes as a young fan and as a player - and how their legacy helped shape the modern Manchester United.
Later this week, we’ll bring you the first instalment of our mini-series on the disaster, exploring who the Busby Babes were before that fateful night.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to It Was What It Was with me, Rob Traper and with Jonathan Wilson, and we're recording this on Monday, February 3rd, just a few days before the 67th anniversary of the Munich Air Disaster. |
| 0:19.4 | The Munich Air Disaster is of course principally a tragedy |
| 0:22.4 | for the people involved in their families, but it is also an event that arguably defines |
| 0:27.4 | modern British and European history and of course Manchester United's history itself. |
| 0:33.2 | And to introduce a three-part history that we will be doing on the media care disaster, |
| 0:38.5 | we're joined by someone who would have learned about this event and its significance from |
| 0:42.7 | very earliest childhood, who's bound up in the Manchester United Community, a season ticket |
| 0:47.5 | holder as a child who went on to represent the club at youth level and then win the treble, |
| 0:52.7 | including eight Premier Leagues leagues three FA cups two |
| 0:55.2 | world club cups and two champions leagues there's arguably few people better able to articulate |
| 1:02.0 | and understand what the munich air disaster means to manchester united than gary neville gary |
| 1:07.0 | welcome to the show that's great to be here rob in this obviously very important week that comes around every year from Manchester United. So, Gary, I'm somebody who's a complete outsider in this. Yeah, I've got no connection to Manchester, no connection to the club. But, you know, I find it a hugely emotional topic, I think. That's partly because the amount of work I've done on Bobby Charlton, partly because I've done a lot of work on the Torino side that's wiped out in the Superga Air |
| 1:31.8 | disaster in 949. I was with Zambia in 2012 of the Cooperation's when they won the tournament in |
| 1:38.4 | Lebeville 19 years after their team was wiped out at Lebeville. But I can't imagine what it must be |
| 1:43.1 | like to be somebody from the area, |
| 1:45.6 | somebody who's a fan of the club, who's played for the club. |
| 1:49.1 | And not just that, but a club that's so synonymous with bringing through its own, |
| 1:53.9 | with youth development, and two of those generations are celebrated above all others. |
| 1:58.2 | You're over the class 92 and the Busby Dirt Babes. |
| 2:01.2 | I think that's something we'll be probing over the course of this episode. |
| 2:05.1 | But to start with, can you give us some idea of the young Gary, |
| 2:09.9 | how do you get into football, how do you get to Manchester United, |
... |
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