England women's manager Phil Neville has said he always planned to coach the team for three years before moving to club football.
The English Football Association (FA) announced in April that Neville would leave the role when his contract expires in July 2021.
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"My plan was always just to go for the three years and then get into day-to-day running of a club job, which would be what I wanted to do. It's been brilliant and I've loved every minute of it, but ultimately you don't get to see the players. You don't get to impact them every single day, which is now what I feel I need to do," Neville said on beIN Sports' Keys and Gray Show.
"The plan was always to do the three years. I had a World Cup, I had the Olympics -- which [would have been] this summer -- and then there's the Euros in England next summer. That was my three-year stint at international football.
"With the coronavirus, there has obviously been no Olympic Games, no Euros -- which meant that obviously I had to make the decision early."
Neville had been due to bring Team Great Britain -- made up of players from England, Scotland and Wales -- to the Olympics in Japan this summer. There is a possibility Neville could still coach the team next summer as the manager is appointed by the FA and doesn't have to be the England manager.
The 43-year-old added that the cancellation of the Women's Super League was "disappointing" but "the right decision" for the league.
"Nobody's spoken about women's football for the last 60 days," he added.
"I'd say that for the whole of the lockdown period, the news and the focus has totally been on the Premier League.
"I'm pretty sure that the likes of Man United, Arsenal, Chelsea, Man City will look after their women's team. I think there's a massive commitment there. It's teams like Bristol City, Birmingham and Brighton, even -- when they're looking at the budgets for the year, and obviously the biggest income is on the men's side... Reading and Birmingham have both furloughed their women's teams and staff.
"I hope that we don't lose them, because ultimately there's only 12 teams in the senior division. We need to keep teams like Birmingham, Bristol City and Reading because they're really good teams who have been there from the start."
Neville, the former England men's international and Manchester United defender, was appointed in January 2018 on a three-and-a-half year contract and led England to a maiden SheBelieves Cup success before a fourth-place finish at the 2019 World Cup.
A disappointing run of losses followed with seven in their last 11 games including losing to the United States and Spain in the 2020 SheBelieves Cup. Against the latter they failed to register a single shot on target.