Neill refutes World Cup revolt claims

Socceroos captain Lucas Neill has categorically denied reports that he led a player revolt against former manager Pim Verbeek.

Respected football scribe Les Murray claimed in his recently released book, ‘The World Game’, that Neill had told his team-mates to ignore the Dutchman’s orders ahead of the Socceroos’ disastrous 4-0 loss o Germany in their opening game at the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

Murray wrote that Neill had asked Verbeek to leave the change room prior to the match, erased his notes on a whiteboard and told his teammates to ‘ignore this bulls**t’ and to play like they normally play.

Murray claimed that Neill’s comments were made in frustration at his refusal to select a striker in the team’s starting line-up, with the likes of Harry Kewell, Josh Kennedy and Brett Holman all starting on the bench as Australia was routed.

But Neill hit back on Friday, claiming that the allegations were simply not true.

“I’m on holiday and I’m absolutely shocked by this. Yesterday I was shocked about it and a little bit angry. (It’s) clearly not true,” Neill told Fox Sports News.

“It’s unfair to make me a scapegoat and say I’ve undermined the manager. If it’s just a way to sell a book, then so be it, I’ve seen that done before. But I don’t want it to be me and I don’t want it to be me having my name and my reputation (tarnished).”

Neill revealed that he did not even have the chance to speak to his fellow players before the loss and re-iterated that he would not undermine Verbeek.

“As a captain, I’m not going to undermine that guy, he’s my manager and he is my boss. Whatever he says, I’m going to get all the boys believing in that,” he said.

“In the end Schwarzy (Mark Schwarzer) started talking in the changeroom before the game and as a senior pro, I respected what he was saying and before we knew it, it was time to go out. I actually didn’t get to give my captains speech.”

Verbeek stepped down as Australian manager following Australia’s World Cup campaign, which ended in the group stage, but Neill said it was unfair to judge his rein on that one performance against Germany.

“To say that Pim is a bad manager, that’s not true. He had one bad game out of 16,” Neill said.

“Pim won us so many great games in tough places and with one or two games to spare we were in the World Cup.

“We hadn’t been to the World Cup for 30 (32) years and all of a sudden we are going again to two consecutive World Cups and he did it with time to spare. That’s credit to a man who didn’t go down well in everyone’s books.”