Paul Scholes: The underdog that never was

“Everybody roots for the Underdog.”

A common adage that symbolizes both the sympathetic gullibility of the human race and the beauty of sport. Underdogs are present all around us and the sight of someone in triumphant spirits who was expected to lose before the eventual outcome evokes melancholic strains in humans alike and that satisfaction of seeing an individual beating the odds is one of the most riveting outbursts that inspires millions.

Football as any other sport encompasses its fair share of underdogs, be it individual players or teams that have dispatched betting odds to the cleaners. The unpredictability of football is what drives it.

Most recently, Chelsea defied every bookie on the planet to clinch the UEFA Champions League despite being up against it facing Napoli, Benfica, Barcelona and Bayern Munich; culminating woes included facing Bayern Munich in their own backyard in the final taking an astonishing last minute Drogba equalizer to haul the match into penalty kicks.

Paul Scholes would have probably watched that match on the tele in the quite milieu of his house sipping a cup of tea going by his own admissions of relaying his pleasure in enjoying quality family time.

Paul Scholes on the field though was everything but an introvert.

Scholes symbolizes everything that is Manchester United; guile, resolute aggression and class.

When he bid adieu to football for the first time after that loss to Barcelona at Wembley, the football world namely his peers poured their hearts out on social networking sites. Every quote articulated by the people that mattered in football were dug up, compiled and presented as an honor to a player who ironically was devoid of individual honors throughout his illustrious career.

Thierry Henry echoed his admiration for the “Ginger Prince” in calling him the best player in the league repeatedly during his stint with the Gunners. Henry went on to lament his bewilderment at Scholes’ lack of individual honors. His team-mate Patrick Viera expressed his old team’s weariness and their inability to contain the wizard when they faced him. Zidane, Davids, Figo and the rest were in awe of him.

Yet Paul Scholes being lauded in the same breath as the above mentioned is ridiculed by most fans. Most fans of my generation that is, most of whom were too young to watch these players at their peak. A generation that issues Youtube videos the license to be judge and jury.

Scholes sends United through to the UCL final in 2008 with a 25 yard screamer against Barcelona

Many of who us who play football at a High School, College or professional level admire goal scorers, tricky wingers and rock-solid defenders in our teams. Yet there’s always that one player irrespective of his skill set, who becomes a vital cog to the team’s functioning. The glue that keeps everything in line and dictates a team’s directional play. The absence of such a player would result in the team psychologically losing the match before kickoff. Paul Scholes was that player.

Even as a small boy alien to the understanding of tactics and susceptible to the lure of flashy players, it was pretty obvious to me that the small ginger man in the centre of the field was dictating everything. My friends would rave about Van Nistelrooy and the young Rooney but it perplexed me how they couldn’t see that Scholes( a name I thought was German initially) was running the show.

Most often than not, United strikers would benefit from wily crosses from their wingers or find a tightly tactical bound opposition cut open in moments. Most often than not, it was a Paul Scholes pass that would generate the chaos. Youtube videos sadly, fail to capture these moments.

A midfielder who he was often compared to was the legendary English and United great Sir Bobby Charlton who is heralded as probably the greatest English player and one of the greatest in the history of the game. What propelled his name to such adulation and love was not only his talismanic presence on the field but his near perfection decorum outside it.Scholes was contrastingly different to any of United’s super star team mates yet quite similar to one of the club’s greatest. His bad tackling was often associated with a binge of the “dark side” as Wenger put it but as we’ve seen in the past, pure genius is often a double edged sword coupled with a penchant for the ugly and the erratic. Zidane and Maradonna would back me up on this one. Perfection is never sweet. Even the powerpuff girls needed a dose of “CHEMICAL X”.

Paul Scholes was a mysterious yet enchanting character, a shy and quite man off the pitch, but an incredibly competitive red “devil” on it. His tenacity was far beyond his minuscule physical exterior, an attribute most people fail to acknowledge. His off-field decorum was probably his most appealing factor.He never had an agent. He shunned the media and its glamorous loot. Alex Ferguson described him as a thorough and loyal professional, a trait that is almost alien in today’s footballers.

“I’m star struck when I see Paul Scholes because you never see him. On the pitch, you can’t catch him. Off the pitch he disappears.”

“The complete footballer, my toughest rival”, the great Zidane remarked about him. Headers, screamers from outside the box, daft poaching and dead accurate passing, and an incredible scoring rate, Scholes was one of a kind, the caliber of the which the game had not seen in a long long time, certainly not the English game to begin with. England’s failure to build a suitable team around the maestro never fully utilized his attributes unlike Alex Ferguson. England’s long ball game didn’t bring out the best in a possession minded Scholes who despite that was brilliant for England in his international career.

Sven Erikkson’s decision to pick a Gerrard-Lampard combination in the centre forced Scholes out of contention which resulted in his premature retirement, a decision that would later haunt the England national team. Both Gerrard and Lampard failed to assert the required dominance as years progressed and England have been trailing ever since, dreading their wastefulness in dealing with the quality that Scholes could offer; the quality of which appeared only once in many generations.

Despite being one of the most under-rated players of all time, Paul Scholes can look back on one of the most successful careers in the modern game. Throughout his career, he’s faced innocuous challenges: Missing the 1999 CL final, facing a career threatening eye surgery, England’s shunning of his position etc etc and every time he responded in kind.

Individual honors are merely dismissed as statistics with time, never really giving us an idea of what the recipient player was made up of. The greatest testament to Scholes’s career was the respect he generated across generations from Pele, Best and Maradonna to Zidane, Figo, Giggs and his peers, to the younger generations like Xavi, Messi, Iniesta Fabregas and others all of whom marveled at his genius and modeled their games after his.

I curse my luck for being too young to watch Scholes in his peak as one of the best attacking midfielders in the world but treasure the games I saw him play as a deep lying dictator; a period where he exuded sheer class and was the fulcrum of United’s great sides from 2004 to 2011.

The turnout for his testimonial shed light on the gratitude United fans poured out ; Scholes living up to occasion once again. A 25 yard screamer epitomized his career and his quick nonchalant substitution symbolized the man he was; humble and simple.

I don’t need statistics or other devices to voice my opinion that Scholes was on par with Zidane anymore when I share banter with my mates. Thanks to the media and their diligent compilation of his tributes, I have the football world backing me up.Scholes was and will always be the underdog that never was.