Ryan Giggs: The relativity factor

Ryan Giggs

When asked to explain relativity, Albert Einstein is known to have said, “When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder an hour seems like a second. That’s relativity.” The story of Ryan Giggs’ professional life isn’t too far from this astute summation of the scientist.

Ryan Giggs has been a gifted prodigy and the perfect epitome of childhood promise who went on to carve a distinguished name for himself at the club football level. However when the underbelly of his personal life’s transpiring was brought to light a couple of years ago, they presented a different shade to the man always known to be shy, unassuming and introverted.

Two years onwards, in the wake of the midfielder’s 40^th birthday, the topic hasn’t been rehashed much. But it still looms large, an aberration in the otherwise pristine reputation of the player. And that’s where it gets relative.

Football has always been a glamorous sport with footballers regarded to be larger than life. The vivacity of the game has more often than not transcended to the players’ persona lives with almost every second footballer marking several conquests to his name both on and off field. A hidden secret whose secrecy is hidden from no one, being a footballer is never about being only a footballer. It’s a lifestyle from which no one shies away with bigger names marking the biggest conquests.

Ryan Giggs’ fallacy thus has not been anything out of the ordinary – albeit wrong. But no matter the ideals of right and wrong, morality and immorality, that prevails in the righteous mindsets, there’s no one who can judge him on these grounds.

Similar incidents to that of Giggs’ are found happening in day-to-day life. But where these incidents are hushed without much ado, there is a stark difference in the way Giggs’ personal conduct has come to be perceived. There isn’t much spoken about his pristine personal reputation anymore. It’s as if the bubble called Ryan Giggs has been burst and not so kindly at that. Had Giggs been an ordinary person, with no celebrity status of his own, a similar behaviour wouldn’t have prompted a slew of antipathy, awkwardness and uncertainty about the man.

On his 40^th birthday, chronicles have been written about the mastery that Ryan Giggs has consistently wielded on the field. There are elaborate features talking about his continuity in the sport, for his club. He’s been made out to be perfect without any flaws – which he no doubt is, as far as his contribution to the sport is concerned. Over 950 matches and still going strong, athleticism such that it still puts some youngsters to shame and unique wizardry such that experts call to be beyond compare; not just in the present, but also in the future.

As a fan, basking in the glory of Giggs’ unmatched statistical giganticness isn’t a hardship at all for me. His monumentality is even more staggering in the face of the knowledge that I haven’t been a Manchester United or a club football fan for that long. But it is when I see from the eyes of a girl, that doubts start to cloud my objectivity about the player’s greatness.

The differentiation between a fan and a ‘girl who is a fan’ hasn’t been more obvious to me as it has been at this juncture. It’s not a conflict of right or wrong but a contention about objectivity and subjectivity. The girl sees the person’s personal comport outshining his professional calibre while the fan sees the player’s professionalism tower his personal choices and decisions.

The impasse still lingers with no clarity visible in the horizon. And perhaps will linger for as long as I continue to support the club and the player too. Having come this far as a fan, to change clubs because of one player’s – a favourite’s – mistake doesn’t seem to be a difficult decision to take. In terms of feminism, it’s too great an insult but in terms of being objective, it’s hard to treat Ryan Giggs as an isolated example. It’s a flawed logic, I know, but then Ryan Giggs too isn’t impeccable, despite all claims to the contrary. And in that lies the player’s humanness, the relativity that the world seems to want to obliterate.