The reverberations felt by a footballer’s stamp on the game are most accurately portrayed away from the house which he represents.
At the Bernabeu last season, where Real Madrid fans can be particularly unkind to their own, Ryan Giggs was the surprising and yet unsurprising recipient of a standing ovation. They know about legendary footballers in those parts, and colours aside, they know when a player is worthy of attention-drawing admiration.
Ryan Giggs has become one of those players whose deserving of praise is perpetual, but whose receiving isn’t always an equal to his counterparts. Rather than it being perceived as an under appreciation for the Manchester United midfielder, it should be viewed as one of the highest compliments: Giggs doesn’t get the constant praise because there’s no need for it.
Giggs has won the lot; everything that’s worth winning in club football. If there’s an argument to be made in favour of the Champions League’s importance over the World Cup, it’s that players like Giggs, one of the best of his era, have never featured in the grandest of international competitions. While continually absent from World Cup finals, he’s won two Champions League medals and helped Manchester United to a further two finals.
Two days shy of his 40th birthday, Giggs gave an accurate account of his worth at this stage of his career, playing a hand in Manchester United’s 5-0 demolition of Bayer Leverkusen in the Champions League – their best performance of the season. It was a performance that didn’t need to be enhanced by the revealing of his age: it was a fantastic performance by an individual regardless.
In the Premier League, Giggs stands alongside a host of great names who are rightly considered among the best and most important for English football. There’s a coincidence in that Giggs’ former manager Alex Ferguson singled out Steven Gerrard in his autobiography. Yet regardless of the Scot’s assessment of the Liverpool captain, both he and Giggs and have offered near-unrivalled services to the English game.
Giggs, as part of Ferguson’s youth movement in the early nineties, arguably paved the way for some of the trends we’re seeing in football today. There’s so much weight placed in the upbringing of home-grown talents. Barcelona, Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich are the standard. And yet alongside clubs like Ajax, Manchester United were one of the frontrunners for the modern era.
It speaks of Giggs’ longevity that he’s been able to see out multiple eras in Manchester United’s recent history. The era which culminated with victory in the Champions League in 1999; the transition period and rebuilding that eventually led to a Cristiano Ronaldo-guided assault on the Premier League title once again and another tilt at the European Cup; another rebuilding phase that followed, bringing further successes; and now the new dawn for the club in the wake of Ferguson’s retirement.
What does it say about Giggs? He’s outlasted Gary Neville and Paul Scholes, but he’s been a valued servant and lieutenant to his former manager, helping to uphold the values and traditions of the club even after his abdication. In that time, Giggs has reinvented himself from flying winger to assured and steady presence in the middle of the pitch.
He was good in his prime; very good. His character even more than his ability is telling now in these final years spent at the highest level.
Instead of simply asking how Giggs weighs up when compared to other greats of English football, it’s fitting to talk him up alongside the greats of Manchester United, the club who have flown the flag for English football for much of Giggs’ career.
He’s a legendary figure now; in the future, after his retirement is lamented, he’ll be spoken of as a pivotal and glittering figure in the rapidly changing landscape of the Premier League. Ever adaptable. Ever an influence.
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