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There might be no knighthoods, no MBEs or OBEs, but every single team-mate will say he is the best they have ever played with. And every player he had played against, including Xavi and Zinedine Zidane, would say he is the best midfielder they have faced. Every fan or every club, no matter who they support, loves the way Paul Scholes plays. He’s a private man, a family man, and those are the parts of his life he values most. He doesn’t have an agent, he doesn’t employ a PR guru and there are no celebrity mates.
SCHOLES NI MCHEZAJI 'SIMPO' BORA WA KIZAZI CHAKETwo weeks ago we watched a football match in which a £25million new signing scored a hat-trick and came off the pitch to announce that a 37-year-old substitute should be man of the match. That, of course, was Robin van Persie talking about Paul Scholes, who played his 700th match for Manchester United. He had come on for just 30 minutes against Southampton but, in the words of Sir Alex Ferguson, he ‘brought order to the game’. That ability, for one player to be able to set the direction of a match and to control its tempo, is extraordinary.
Sacrifice your gate money and don’t look at the ball, unless Scholes has it. Don’t worry about watching the goals or any other player. Just look at his positioning, where he places himself, his body shape when he receives the ball, where he moves when he hasn’t got the ball and how he sets himself to play the ball. You’ll learn more about the game in 90 minutes than you will from any coaching video or training session.
This week saw UEFA take prizemoney away from 23 clubs, including Europa League winners Atletico Madrid under their Financial Fair Play rules, which limit spending to the amount of money you can generate. And though City might suffer under those rules, the new TV deals mean most English clubs will be in a better position than ever. That money is for the future, though.
Paul Scholes is one of the very few in the world who can do it. I must have trained and played with him thousands of times and in every one of those training sessions and matches that’s what he was doing: bringing order to the game. Timeless: Paul Scholes continues to defy the years, scoring the first in another sensational display against Wigan The best illustration I can give of his talent is that at Manchester United there was always a possession drill in training designed to develop our passing ability, which might be three players against another three players, or six versus six, or nine versus nine.
There’s just one thing I’m worried about. As soon as he finds out that I’ve written this article about him, he will be texting me to say: ‘What the hell did you do that for? ’ But for once I have to ignore his concerns. Today he should be in the spotlight. Special: Neville and S