The Life of Ryan – Always looking at the bright side

A true Legend in every sense

Manchester United’s longest serving player, only man to have played and scored in all every Premier League season since its inception, oldest goal scorer in the Champions League, five appearances short of making the most appearances in the Champions League and two Champions Leagues medals to go along with a dozen league medals and a bunch of those earned from domestic Cups. Sure, if this isn’t the bright side, then I guess there is no such thing. Ryan Giggs, no matter what his personal life would indicate, will always remain an inspiration and a role model for me, a benchmark in terms of loyalty. To his club, at least.

However, it is very surprising to know that before Ferguson saw the ‘cocker spaniel chasing the piece of silver paper in the wind’, Ryan Wilson, as was his name then –later changed to Giggs, which was his mother’s maiden name –used to, as a young schoolboy, train with United’s rivals City. And although it didn’t take much to coax an outstanding young prospect to join United who, as Alan Hansen would have said, were to win nothing in the coming years with kids not unlike Giggs himself, we can’t help but marvel at how long he has plied his trade at the same club, come to train everyday at the same ground –although there was a change of grounds –with the same enthusiasm and fire and desire to improve as he did in those dream-filled days of 1991.

Ryan Giggs has had his fair share of moments to treasure at and with United. Although I am not implying that watching every game in which he would bedazzle the right backs and leave his own team mates dazed with thunderbolt-like runs down his left wing that just oozed with raw pace and bloody brilliant dribbling ability weren’t moments to treasure for every Manc, his winner against Arsenal in the semi-finals of the FA Cup in that treble winning summer of 99, is one that we will cherish, recall wistfully with a touch of nostalgia, and one that we always use in an argument with a Gooner. But that goal requires some more footage.

Giggs had started on the bench for the game and came on as a substitute in the second half. In the 110^thminute, with scores level and Arsenal appearing the likelier winners, Patrick Vieira inadvertently picked out Giggs, who was relatively fresh, with a wayward pass. Giggs then pounced upon it and used his freshness to devastating effect as he began his run. With a faint sidestep he evaded Vieira’s challenge and went out past another defender before cutting back in and spurting past two defenders. Tony Adams was too late in his attempt to block Giggs’ drive, which left the Arsenal goalie clueless as the ball zipped into the roof of the net.

Off came the shirt, and Ferguson came on to the sideline applauding and wearing a proud grin on his face. That moment, when I watched the replay of it six years back, was when I truly fell in love with the man’s football. That was when I myself was inspired to pick up the ball and run with it on the hazardous streets of Bangalore, where no man wants another’s child playing in front of his gate. Admittedly, I was very bad at it, and still am, but that goal cannot be erased from my memory.

Of course, watching Ryan Giggs now, I feel pitiful, that a man who would leave the opposition with ‘twisted blood’ with his sprinting, has to make guest appearances of ten to twenty minutes in the League which he ruled with Ferguson, and get a full ninety minutes only as a last resort or against hapless opposition.

And it is only recently, that he has touched this all time low. Edging to forty years of age, it is only now that the last few grains of sand in the hourglass of his playing career are falling. Which is a feat in itself, considering that Gary Neville, another Old Trafford legend, had to put himself out of his misery halfway through the 2010/11 season. At the age of 35. And here marches on Giggs, along with his fellow war veteran Paul Scholes, who too, seems to show no awareness of the fact that at this age he must be putting his coaching badges to effect.

Life without him and Giggs, probably from the start of next season, seems frighteningly dull. There is almost a sense of emptiness attached to it, which we have already experienced once in Scholes’ case. Add to that the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson.

We will miss Ryan Giggs, leave alone his ability to inspire and provide motivation for youngsters, we will just miss the presence of the elegant winger our youth system crafted from a thirteen year old sprinter. We will miss seeing Patrice Evra and Giggs teaming up to make light of a throw in. We will miss seeing someone who once served as an excuse for people to fill Old Trafford, who once adorned the walls of almost every Red Devil and who still does with some.

Aye, we will miss the Cocker Spaniel.