A quiet legend - a tribute to Paul Scholes

When he left the Old Trafford pitch as a player for the very last time on May 19, 2013, he left a void which may never be filled because there may never be another player as gifted and as complete as him.

He’s unique, he’s irreplaceable, he is Paul Scholes.

Paul Scholes makes his final appearance for Manchester United

Of late, there has been a widespread discussion on who the greatest midfielder of the Premier League era is. The contenders are Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard and of course, Paul Scholes. Lampard is the highest scoring midfielder in Premier League history and Steven Gerrard perhaps was born world class, but it is difficult to look past Scholes as the number 1.

Xavi, in an interview with The Guardian in 2011, made a perfect assessment of Scholes by saying, “He can play the final pass, he can score, he is strong, he never gets knocked off the ball and he doesn’t give possession away”. Scholes was all these things and more.

Scholes’ fooball career, like football itself, was a game of two halves, but a game of two equally brilliant halves. The first half of his career saw him as a free-scoring attacking midfielder, and the second half was played out as a midfield marshal who ran the game dictating the tempo at will.

In fact, Scholes started his career as a striker. He made his debut on 21 September 1994 in a League Cup tie at Port Vale and scored twice. Three days later he made his first Premier league appearance against Ipswich Town and scored again. He was considered as an understudy to Mark Hughes and Eric Cantona. When Hughes was sold to Chelsea in the 1995-96 season, Scholes started to get more first team opportunities, standing in for the suspended Eric Cantona as Andrew Cole’s strike partner.

The first significant turning point in his career came in late September 1997 when Roy Keane was injured and ruled out for the rest of the season. Scholes had already showcased his ability to pass and hold possession and Alex Ferguson thought he could do a job in central midfield. Scholes was duly moved to the middle of the field, and that move well and truly launched him into the mainstream. He soon became a key player for United. In the 2002-03 season, Scholes netted a career-high 20 goals playing behind Ruud van Nistelrooy.

What made Scholes deadly in this prolific period was his knack of slipping into the box unnoticed and showing up at the right place at the right time. Musa Okwonga, in his tribute poem to Scholes, writes:

“Silently slipping in at the far post:

Head down, always down, in an aggressive burst,

Like a fervent worshipper arriving late for church”

Scholes missed from the penalty spot in the shoot out for the 2005 FA Cup against Arsenal

In 2005, Scholes began to suffer from blurred vision which eventually marked the end of his attacking midfield role. When he returned after a lengthy spell off the pitch, he was moulded into a playmaker and the following six years until 2011 witnessed, perhaps, the best years of Scholes. This was indeed the second phase of his career.

Scholes dictated play in his deep-lying playmaker role by spraying wonderfully measured passes all over the field. He controlled the tempo and with his uncanny ability to read the game, it often looked like the entire game was played around him. In my opinion, it was in this role that he became an irreplaceable player for Manchester United. The evidence of this is seen in the current United side. United are now struggling to run the midfield without a deep-lying playmaker.

Scholes is always hailed as a master technician, but the one thing he could never master was tackling. He amassed over 120 bookings in all competitions during his career and was sent off ten times. While some say he always mistimed his tackles, his former captain Roy Keane has a different opinion. Keane said in his book that they were all deliberate fouls, and Scholes doesn’t deny that:

“I don’t think my tackling was that bad. Sometimes if someone had got me, I would have it in the back of my mind who it was, and I would try to bide my time to get them back, so I suppose Roy does have a point.”

But it is Scholes’ willingness to tackle and take on a rough challenge which makes him a ‘complete’ player. While many players of his stature refuse to track back and defend, he never shied away from putting his foot in. Arsenal legend Thierry Henry once said: “I know people used to give him some stick for his tackling, but I liked that. He put his foot in, showed some character, had a go, but I liked that about him too”.

For all his talent, Scholes had been an underrated player throughout his career. One of the reasons for that was that he never looked for publicity. Perhaps he is the only modern day footballer who never bothered to have an agent, or a Twitter account! Gary Neville in an interview asked him why he didn’t open a Twitter account and Scholes replied, “What’s the point in telling people what I’m doing?”

Scholes is as much a ‘complete’ family man as he was a ‘complete’ footballer. His friends would often lament how difficult it was to catch Scholes away from football. After each game, he simply disappeared, to be with his family.

Manchester United’s Class of 92 – From left to right: Giggs, Butt, Beckham, P. Neville, Scholes, G. Neville

But Scholes is all set to appear on the big screen shortly with the upcoming release of the movie, ‘Class of 92’ in which he’s reuniting with David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, Gary Neville, Phil Neville and Nicky Butt to tell the story of their journey from the Manchester United youth team of 1992 to the treble-winning triumph of the Nou Camp.

Interestingly, Scholes is not an original member of the class of 1992, but he played in the youth team that reached the FA Cup final the following year. When Scholes made his debut for Manchester United, the likes of David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, Gary Neville and Nicky Butt were already established players, and Scholes, in fact, would go on to struggle for many more years to establish himself. There were suggestions that even Sir Alex Ferguson didn’t trust his abilities, so much so that he purchased Juan Sebastian Veron in the summer of 2001.

From the very beginning of his career the little Scholes had to adapt his game to overcome his lack of physical attributes needed to make it at the big stage. He wasn’t among the strongest of the players to win a physical battle. He couldn’t run as fast as Ryan Giggs could or dribble past players like Giggs did. He wasn’t tall enough to win headers. He suffered from asthma which made everything even more difficult.

To compensate, he became a master of reading the game. He created space for himself with his brilliant first touch, and when players tried to rush him off possession, he passed on the ball with extreme precision and with deadly effect. He quietly slipped into positions and placed himself at the right place in the box, and when the ball arrived at his feet, he sent it crashing past the goal post before others could blink their eyes.

Scholes is now a revered player, but all those years ago, little did Sir Alex Ferguson and his staff imagine that this flame-haired diminutive player would one day be called the best in the Class of 92 despite not rightfully belonging to the group, and go on to become one of the greatest players ever to play for Manchester United.