How Ryan Giggs ruined my childhood

We’ve all played football at some point in our lives. The joy of scoring a goal or getting a long ball in control is heavenly and we’ve all spent many evenings arguing over hand-balls with our friends.

Football is more like therapy. It calms the mind and allows the body to let go itself and scream like a wandering lunatic when your mate doesn’t pass you the ball and goes solo. We don’t play football dreaming about wearing the number 10 jersey of Mohun Bagan, but we imagine ourselves at Old Trafford or the Emirates scoring past the last-picked ‘keeper’.

One of the scary aspects of football is the free kick. While taking it, everybody expects something spectacular and you expect yourself to do something out of the blue yourself. I blame this solely on Cristiano Ronaldo. Every 8-year old now rolls the ball searching for the ‘sweet spot’ before placing it on the ground and standing with his legs unnecessarily far apart. When you miss, you look like an idiot, when you score you’re a hero.

More scarier than the possibility of missing, is standing in the dreaded wall. Usually, there’s one ‘brave heart’ who stands alone and has that ‘bring-it-on’ look on his face. But sometimes, when some anomaly of society, some Indian football prodigy is ready to take the free kick, one man isn’t enough. So you stand in the wall, for the honour of your friends is more important than your fertility.

I’m very influenced by my favourite players and Ryan Giggs in particular. I often try to cut past defenders and imagine crowds chanting my name from the stands. I prefer using my left foot, which is as useless as the guy who plays defence on your team, and often take of my shirt after scoring, though the chest hair is still a while away.

Yesterday, while watching the Liverpool-United game, and when Steven Gerrard, who kept giving mild heart attacks to most United fans, lined up to take the free kick, I was worried. He did score from such positions before and he hates United more than Everton perhaps.

His free kick was low and pointless, it was straight at the wall. The Liverpool faithful were kept waiting for the long awaited goal as United supporters heaved a massive sigh of relief.

Except, that didn’t happen.

Gerrard’s free kick wasn’t the best. He has taken better ones and is capable of scoring from much farther away. The ball went straight towards the wall. And then Giggs did something which may affect my life in apocalyptic ways. He moved.

Ryan Giggs, the man who has won more trophies than any other footballer, the man who is 37 but plays like he’s 17, the man who ran through an entire Arsenal defence in 1999, the man whose knighthood is inevitable, the man who every football fan respects the most, the man who had illicit affairs with his brother’s wife – a fact I try to keep out of my head, the man who keeps the red flag flying high, moved away from the ball.

All those body blows I’ve taken, all those hits to my important area, all those times when the ball made my face leak with blood, all could have been avoided if I had just moved. If only he’d have moved earlier, I’d have a straight face now.

Last night’s draw is satisfying, considering we played at Anfield and Liverpool ruthlessly attacked David De Gea. But it could have been a victory if ‘Sir Ryan’ had just stayed put. It could have been better if he hadn’t changed the whole base of my childhood..