Book Review: Scholes - My Story

Paul Scholes’ recently released autobiography aptly reflects his character – quiet, unassuming and understated. It is full of lucid insights about his career with both Manchester United and England, team-mates, important matches, opponents and goals. He copiously uses comments by his team-mates and others in the game which aptly reveals his character and impact on the game.

A sampling of some of these comments show how highly rated Scholes was by in both England and Europe. His club manager Alex Ferguson says, “Paul is one in a million.” Sir Bobby Charlton assesses the technical brilliance of Scholes in his two-page afterword to the book. Charlton says, “he had guile, an amazing touch and that priceless knack of making instant decisions that catch so many opponents on the hop.” Former England manager Sven Goran Eriksson says, “Paul finished with the national team too early” and that “he was very clever with outstanding technique. He could pass the ball over five yards or fifty.” Gary Neville says he was the most talented player he played with. Even the legendary Zidane has called Scholes as the complete midfielder.

The book also has Scholes’ assessments of his team-mates and rivals, as part of the narrative. He says, “to see Zidane in action was to see poetry in motion. The skills, the vision, the goals…” He praises Cristiano Ronaldo’s God-given talent and calls him a happy-go-lucky workmate and a congenital joker. Scholes stresses that Ronaldo’s image as a playboy is an exaggeration and that instead he had a top class attitude, was always practicing and took loads of physical punishment.

These interspersed comments give an extra dimension to the fast flowing narrative. The format of the book is unusual but very effective. Scholes has taken great pains to include vivid photographs on each page. His narrative technique is to comment on the action in the photographs. These pithy comments are part of the flow of his narrative. Sometimes, the thoughts of other players involved in the action are also included. For instance, on page 7, we see the four year old Paul Scholes trying to trap a bouncing ball at his relative Uncle Patrick’s house in Middleton, Manchester. On that same page, the narrative gets linked to the photograph, as Paul Scholes comments on his Beatles hair-cut very much in vogue during the 1970s and how his family frequently visited his Uncle Patrick’s house. His maternal uncle, an avid Manchester United, played a big part in developing young Paul’s obsession with football and the Red Devils.

Then there are lively action pictures of Scholes tangling with Lionel Messi and Andres Iniesta, who he calls “two of the most gifted football artists in the planet” in the UEFA Champions League. Commenting on Manchester United’s losses in the 2009 and 2011 Champions League finals, Scholes admits that “facing Barcelona is the ultimate test because they are the best team in the world. Afterwards you need a week to recover because your concentration has to be all-consuming.”

There are pictures and comments of many of his 106 goals in the English Premier League and his 26 goals in the Champions League for Manchester United, from 1994-95 till 2011-12. His injury-time winning goal, a well-directed header against arch rivals Manchester City on their own ground in April 2010 is, according to him, his most satisfying goal.

The book provides rare insights into the life and times of Scholes’ career. He candidly talks about his controversial decision to quit playing for England, when he was at the peak of his career, in 2004. He says that he retired at the age of twenty nine because he “did not like being away from home and my family for weeks on end”. He honestly admits that “whenever we were knocked out I was always more than ready to go home…..given my mindset I never enjoyed the football (international) and therefore had no chance of being anywhere near my best.” He then drops a bombshell by giving a secondary factor, namely the selfish attitude of some other England players,”who appeared to be there for personal glory.” That is the hallmark of this book; Scholes reveals little known facts about his professional life and of other professionals.

The book has 18 riveting chapters, which reveal his childhood, his early professional career and his successes with Manchester United from the time he joined in 1994-95 till the present. Scholes recalls his first match, which was against Port Vale in the League Cup on 21 September 1994. He scored both goals in the 2-1 win and then got his first start in the EPL against Ipswich Town, in which he also scored on debut. Writing about the start of his career in the opening chapter, A Natural Process, Scholes says, “I never planned my football career, it just happened. Even as a lad barely out of short trousers, I was an associate schoolboy with Manchester United…”

There are memorable chapters dealing with the years Manchester United did the double, winning the Premiership and FA Cup, aptly called A Double Dose of Glory. The treble crown and the magnificent unbeaten run after the 1998 Christmas are vividly described in the chapter Two Out of Three, can’t Complain. The title of this chapter is very appropriate as Scholes and Roy Keane were suspended for the memorable Champions league final against Bayern Munich at the Nou Camp.

The most interesting chapter has a title from a James Bond thriller, Blood and Plunder in the Moscow Night. It provides graphic details of how Manchester United were desperate to win the Champions League in 2008, as they felt they had underachieved in this tournament, frequently getting beaten in either the quarter finals or semi finals. The year 2008 was also significant as it marked the 50^th anniversary of the Munich air disaster. In the all-England against Chelsea, Scholes reveals the sense of injustice he felt when he got a yellow card for an accidental clash of heads with rival midfielder Claude Makelele. As a professional, he sympathises with international team-mate but Chelsea rival John Terry who missed the crucial penalty kick in the penalty shoot-out. Terry was crying at the end and in a sporting gesture, Scholes tapped him on the shoulder, as he knew that words could not offer any consolation.

This is a very sensitively written autobiography with delightful illustrations and mandatory reading for all Scholes and Manchester United fans.