Ryan Giggs

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Ryan Giggs (born Ryan Joseph Wilson on 29 November 1973 in Cardiff) is a Welsh football player, renowned worldwide as being arguably one of the greatest wingers of all time in the game.

He was born in Wales to a black father and white mother, but was brought up in England.

Giggs currently plays for Manchester United for whom he is their current longest-serving player. Giggs had played for the England Schoolboys (which all schoolboys in England are eligible for, regardless of nationality) team, but plays for the Welsh national team as an adult, once holding the record for being the youngest player to ever play for Wales.

Giggs is the most decorated footballer in the history of Manchester United, having won eight FA Premier League championships (a record he shares with Liverpool F.C.'s Alan Hansen, Phil Neal and Kenny Dalglish), one Champions League and four FA Cup titles.

He has also won the PFA Young Player of the Year award twice, making him the first player to win the award in consecutive years - a feat matched only by Robbie Fowler that remains unsurpassed till today. Giggs holds other records including being the top all time scorer in the FA Premier League not to play in the position of striker, and interestingly, holds the record for scoring Manchester United's fastest goal (15 seconds), set in November 1995 against Southampton F.C. Giggs' squad number for both Manchester United and Wales is 11. He became known as The Welsh Wizard, a nickname last applied to David Lloyd George.

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Beginnings

Giggs began his football at Manchester City F.C. and was signed as a young 14 year old by the club after being spotted on the streets of Manchester.

Giggs' talent was so mercurial that Alex Ferguson literally made it a point to go down to the boy's house, knock on his door and urge him to sign for United instead of City, waving YTS Scheme forms with the opportunity to turn professional in three years in front of the boy, who grabbed at the chance of a lifetime.

Indeed, so great was Giggs' talent, that even the England Under-21 coaches like Lawrie McMenemy ensured a check on whether he was eligible to play for the nation. Contrary to some popular belief, Giggs could not have played for the full England national side; he was only eligible to play for the English Schools team because he went to school there.

In order to play for the England national football team, he would have had to have been born in England or have had English parents or grandparents. However, both his parents and all four grandparents are Welsh. Giggs has often been secretly wished for by England supporters as the dream solution to the lack of left-sided English talent for the national team during the 1990s.

A left-sided winger who occasionally plays as a supporting striker for United, Giggs shot to superstardom in Great Britain in 1992 as one of the most exciting talents in the history of the game when he was barely 18 years old. He earned the tag of Boy Wonder, and in one description by the tabloids, became The boy who converted a million innocent teenage hearts into United fans.

He was arguably the first teenage football poster boy to have garnered such attention since the likes of George Best, a player Giggs was ceaselessly compared to, and who, alongside Bobby Charlton, personally went down to United's training sessions at 'the Cliff' specifically to watch Giggs work his magic. Giggs' form in the years to come was breathaking and scintillating, to say the least, earning him the two aforementioned PFA Young Player of the Year awards and admirers world-wide. Even players like Roberto Baggio described Giggs as 'the most exciting British footballer' they had seen in years.

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Superstardom

Giggs also scored in the marketing department, his boyish good looks making him a hit with fans and unsurprisingly, a teen icon whom the media tabloids seemed to enjoy pursuing. Modelling agencies sought him relentlessly, with his fame comparable to the likes of pop stars at the time, such as Take That.

In 1994, the BBC described Giggs as "one of the most photographed persons" in Great Britain. Giggs or "Giggsy" as he was known, was also hailed as one of the at the time nascent FA Premier League's biggest stars and could oft be found as the picturebook merchandising icon of the league's early years in marketing itself globally (along with Jamie Redknapp and Lee Sharpe), with English football reforging its image after the hooliganism affected years of the 1980s.

Giggs turned professional in November 1990 and made his League debut against Everton F.C. at Old Trafford on 2 March, 1991, as a substitute for Denis Irwin. In his first full start, Giggs scored his first ever goal in a 1-0 win in the Manchester derby. He collected his first piece of silverware in April 1992 as United defeated Nottingham Forest in the League Cup Final, after Giggs had set up Brian McClair to score the only goal of the game.

By the start of the 1992-93 season - the first season of the newly-formed FA Premier League, Giggs made the left-wing position at United his own, and came to be known as one of British football's most prodigious young players.

His relatively rare ability to consistently dribble past opposition players, using his own exceptional balance as a weapon to un-balance the players he ran at, became a hallmark of his game. His combination of electric pace and sublime skills made him one of the most difficult players of his time to defend against. In what could be seen as a recognition of his quick maturation as both a person and a footballer, he came by many opportunities which were not normally offered to footballers of his young age. For instance, he hosted his own television show, Ryan Giggs' Soccer Skills, a hit with ITV and Granada in 1994.

With an uncanny ability to score wonderful goals and more crucially, play architect to a huge proportion of Manchester United's goals of the 1990s scored by Eric Cantona, Mark Hughes, and later Andy Cole and Dwight Yorke, and with a flair unseen in the game in a long time, Giggs was often hailed as 'wizard' or 'genius' by critics and pundits alike. According to an article in World Soccer by Stephen Thanabalan he was, alongside Steve McManaman, regarded as the leader of a new breed of creative new wingers in the English game that was crucial to its new image, dispensing with that of the often seen as 'boring' long-ball styles of previous generations.


The Ryan Giggs chant often heard from the fans during the Manchester United games is as follows:

"Ryan Giggs, Ryan Giggs, Running down the wing, Ryan Giggs, Ryan Giggs, Can do anything, Feared by the Blues, Loved by the Reds, Ryan Giggs, Ryan Giggs, Ryan Giggs." Another chant goes, "Giggs, Giggs will tear you apart, again", adapted from the enduringly popular Joy Division song, 'Love Will Tear Us Apart'. Giggs is also renowned for scoring some of the best goals yet seen in the game and always had special celebrations with team-mates and good friends, such as Paul Ince and Andrei Kanchelskis.

Goals of his were constantly in the shortlists for 'goal of the season' and tended to be memorable, particularly the ones against Queens Park Rangers F.C. in 1993, Tottenham Hotspur F.C. in 1994, Everton F.C. in 1995, Coventry City F.C. in 1996. By the late 1990s, with the emergence of Giggs' fellow fledgling young colleagues like David Beckham, Paul Scholes, Gary Neville and Nicky Butt, Giggs seemed to have been around for ages. Giggs' popularity in the fame and looks' departments gradually dissipated over those years, as he aged significantly, but his football skill was still marked genius, and he developed into a more mature senior player by the time United won their record breaking and unprecedented "Treble" in 1999, with Giggs' goals and form in the competitions a major asset too his side. With his contributions United finally defeated Juventus, along with other continental rivals.

Giggs later knocked the ball into the path of Teddy Sheringham who scored the equaliser in the UEFA Champions League Final and set United on their way to the treble. Giggs was also the man of the match in the United side which beat Palmeiras to claim the Intercontinental Cup that year. Few would deny that he is worthy of the rank of a Manchester United 'Legend'.

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The Latter Years

Giggs had seen the team evolve since United's rejuvenation a decade earlier and became the most experienced and was one of the senior players at United when Denis Irwin left, becoming a pivotal part of it. According to a BBC Sport article in 2003, "the trajectory of Giggs' United career follows that of the club almost exactly", underlining his importance to side.

Giggs' form in the years after the achievements of 1999 were reflective of Manchester United's dominance of the English game up till 2003 (when the club won its last FA Premier League title)- with Giggs still relishing his left wing slot. United won the League title four times within those years, and had always made it to UEFA Champions League Quarter-Finals at the very least. He celebrated his 10-year anniversary at Old Trafford with a testimonial match against Glasgow Celtic at the start of the 2001-02 campaign, while a year later he bagged his 100th career goal in a draw with Chelsea F.C. at Stamford Bridge.

One of his more infamous moments came in 2003, when he missed a clear-cut scoring opportunity in an FA Cup game against United's biggest rivals of the time, Arsenal F.C., in a match that later gained notoriety for the David Beckham and Alex Ferguson break up. He managed to win the FA Cup once more in 2004, making him the only player in history to have won the trophy four times, having also finished with a runners-up medal twice.

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Playing in a victory over Liverpool in September 2004 had Giggs become only the third player to play 600 games for United, alongside Sir Bobby Charlton and Bill Foulkes. He was inducted into the English Football Hall of Fame in 2005 in recognition of his contribution to the English game. During the first half of the 2004-05 season, Giggs was linked in transfer speculation with Newcastle United F.C., a club his best-friend at United, Nicky Butt, had left for. However, no move was made before the transfer window closed on 31 January, 2005. In that season, Giggs still managed to churn out a 'masterclass performance' (in the words of Sky Sports commentator Martin Tyler) when given the chance, and together with the old guard of Paul Scholes, looked to be the epitome of the football saying 'form is temporary, but class is permanent'.

After that season, Giggs signed a two-year contract extension with Manchester United, after chairman David Gill relented on his normal policy of not signing players over 30 to contracts longer than one year. The extension, which runs through to July 2008, will most probably keep him at Old Trafford for the remainder of his playing career.

Giggs has reinvented himself as age caught and still catches on but amazingly still is contributing positively to the Manchester United cause even after all his team-mates like David Beckham and Roy Keane had left the club over the years, playing role model to even the latest batch of talents at the club like Ruud van Nistelrooy, Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo. Giggs is used today as an example, alongside Gary Neville and David Beckham as a model professional for young players with hot tempers, such as Wayne Rooney to follow.

This is largely due to his upbringing by United manager Alex Ferguson, who sheltered the player since developing him, and now it remains to be seen whether Giggs outstays his career mentor at the club or vice versa. His versatility has supplemented his raw skill and talent in recent years, having been called upon by his manager to not-infrequently play as a forward and a central midfielder for his team, roles in which he applied himself admirably.

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International career

As of 2006, Giggs has logged 48 caps and 11 goals for the Welsh national football team. However, his career for his national side has been nothing short of frustrating. As of 2006, he has not played a single match in either an European or a World Championship, because Wales simply failed to qualify.

Giggs is probably the second best player ever to never have played an EC or WC match for his national side, the best being arguably soccer legend George Best from perennial minnow Northern Ireland.

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Personal life

Other than his notorious spate of womanizing as detailed in tabloids such as the Daily Mirror over the years, Giggs has otherwise managed to avoid the limelight of celebrity trappings that tagged his earlier years. In his autobiography titled: Giggs: The Autobiography, he revealed possible reasons for his aversion to attention, and accounting for his quiet and bashful demeanour.

The biography described how Giggs had a difficult upbringing - as the product of a mixed marriage, he endured racial taunts as a child. And, although he admired his rugby-playing father's sporting gifts (Giggs' attributes his speed and balance to his father's genes), he hated the impact his "bullying aggressive nature" had on his family.

In Giggs' words in an infamous interview with the Daily Telegraph, Giggs spoke of his father as a "real rogue". So much so that originally named 'Ryan Joseph Wilson', he subsequently adopted his mother's surname so that, in his words, "the world would know I was my mother's son" after his parents' separation.

Giggs is harped by many as a player, who unlike Lee Sharpe and George Best, achieved considerable fame despite a relatively low profile overall as a celebrity, although he has done ads for Reebok, Citizen Watch Co., Ltd, Givenchy, Fuji and Patek Phillipe, as well as being used for video-mapping in computer game simulations like EA Sports' FIFA 2003 series for which he also did a commercial.

An interesting article mentions how Giggs' deliberate shying away from the spotlight was crucial to his low profile. According to an article by BBC Sport: "In the early 1990s, Giggs was David Beckham before Beckham was even holding down a place in the United first team. If you put his face on the cover of a football magazine, it guaranteed you the biggest sales of the year. Why? Men would buy it to read about 'the new Best' and girls bought it because they wanted his face all over their bedroom walls." Giggs had the million-pound boot deal (Reebok), the lucrative sponsorship deals in the Far East (Fuji) and the celebrity girlfriends (Dani Behr, Davinia Murphy) at a time when Becks was being sent on loan to Preston."

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Campaigner

In recent years, Giggs has also become a UNICEF representative, launching a campaign to prevent landmines from killing children in 2002.

Giggs, who had visited Unicef projects in Thailand, told the BBC: "As a footballer I can't imagine life without the use of one of my legs...Sadly this is exactly what happens to thousands of children every year when they accidentally step on a landmine." Giggs is also an active campaigner in the fight against racism in football. Alongside fellow mixed raced players like Rio Ferdinand and Thierry Henry, Giggs is adamant about stamping racism out of the game.

He told the Football Anti-Racism site 'Stop the BNP' the following in 2004: "A lot of people don't know that my father is black. He was a professional rugby player in the area that I played as a youngster. So a lot of people who I went to school with knew who he was and knew that he was black. So I would get racist taunts in school."

He also added in the French L'Equipe Sports Newspaper: "Looking at me from the outside, it is not very obvious, I know but half my family is black and I feel close to their culture and their colour. I am proud of my black roots and of the black blood that runs in my veins. I do not wish to hide my origins, nor do I seek to make it a subject of conversation. I am what I am."

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Career Stats

Manchester United Career

Competition Start End Matches Goals Assists
FA Premier League 1990 2006 510 96 208
UEFA Champions League 1994 2005 125 23 28
FA Cup 1991 2006 57 10 26
League Cup 1991 2005 29 7 8

With Manchester United (1990 - 2005):

With the Wales national team: Total Caps/Goals: 48/11

Individual Honours:

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U-21 European Footballer of the Year (1993)

Intercontinental Cup man of the match (1999)

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External links

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