Manchester United’s greatest players: No 8, Paul Scholes

Who are the greatest players in Manchester United’s history? The Athletic gave Andy Mitten the task of compiling his top 25, and we are counting them down this summer, in reverse order.

He explains his thought process here.

‘Wonderwall’ by Oasis may have been England’s anthem this summer, but it didn’t quite get the same reception when Patrice Evra put it on in Manchester United’s dressing room.

“No,” said Paul Scholes when he heard it. “They’re City. Never f*****g put Oasis on again.”

Scholes, raised on the 1950s Langley overspill estate five miles from Manchester city centre where Ken Loach set his bleak film Raining Stones, knew the score.

“For much of my career, I never had to worry about them (City),” he said when asked who United’s main rivals were. “For a lot of it, they weren’t even in our division. I’d probably have to go for City overall, though. Being a Manchester lad, a Manchester derby was always the big one.”

It was against City that Scholes made an improbable comeback for United, in 2012, having previously retired from playing football.

“We went into the dressing room and saw a shirt hung up with ‘18’ and ‘Scholes’ on it,” Evra recalled in his autobiography (although Scholes actually wore No 22 on his United return). “It was like winning the league for us, it gave us such a big lift ahead and even though he didn’t come on until the second half, we’d already run into a 3-0 lead at half-time.”

Scholes played 718 times for Manchester United, the third-most in the club’s history. He also scored 155 goals, the 10th-most and more than Ruud van Nistelrooy, Cristiano Ronaldo, Andy Cole and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.

He won 11 Premier League titles, three FA Cups, two Champions Leagues and nine other major trophies, including twice helping United to become world or intercontinental champions. The ‘Ginger Prince’ also scored the goal which prompted the loudest atmosphere at Old Trafford so far this century, a 25-yard screaming half-volley against Barcelona in the 2008 Champions League semi-final second leg, the only goal across both legs.

Some quotes from Scholes’ autobiography explain how he was viewed around the world.

“Paul Scholes is my favourite player,” said the legendary Sir Bobby Charlton. “He epitomises the spirit of Manchester United and everything that is good about football.”

“You rarely come across the complete footballer but Scholes is as close to it as you can get,” opined legendary former France player Zinedine Zidane.

“He is the best midfielder of his generation,” said Pep Guardiola.

“The best central midfielder that I have seen — the most complete — is Scholes,” added another Barcelona legend, Xavi.

There are many more testimonies from fellow greats. In 2017, this writer travelled to Asia for five days with Scholes and spoke to him a lot. He’s a good laugh. Witty. Dry. Cutting. Bemused that people around the world pour adulation on him.

He is a normal Salford/Manchester working-class lad who supported Oldham Athletic, played for Manchester United and whose mates tend to be normal working-class lads, too. He never left Manchester and retired from playing for England in 2004, aged 29, after 66 games (64 starts) and 14 goals.

“The main reason,” said Scholes in that 2011 autobiography, “was that I never liked being away from home for weeks on end. I was OK for maybe the first three or four days, but after that I was unhappy because I was missing my wife and children.”

He was still playing for a title-winning club nine years after he stopped for his country. Scholes was in United’s first team for 19 years but, despite being regarded as one of the best midfielders of his generation, he managed just seven for England.

“I never, ever wanted to play for any other club,” he said of his United career. “It might have been different if I needed to but, as I didn’t have to, then it never crossed my mind. It would have felt weird playing for any other team than United. I was once told that United received a bid from Inter Milan while I was on holiday. I panicked and rang the manager, worried that they would accept it, and couldn’t get through to him. Luckily the club rejected the bid and that was that.”

To the public, Scholes said little publicly and gained an image as a shy man, which baffled his team-mates as they knew him as a different character in the dressing room.

“One of the biggest myths is that Scholesy is a quiet lad,” said team-mate Nicky Butt in 2008. “The press have fallen for it. They think that all he does is spend time with his wife and kids and that he doesn’t speak. He’s a great family man and he’s not one for interviews, but he is one of the driest little b******s you will ever come across. There’s a devil side to him, trust me…

“Scholesy was the best player in training. Even when he was 16 and 17, training but not playing with the first team, he was always the best at the small-sided games where you had to keep possession. His awareness, touch and passing were incredible.”

Later, while on the training pitch, he would smash younger men to bring them down to earth and show them what was needed to be a United player. Sir Alex Ferguson would ignore errant tackles.

“Scholes was the only player I never saw Fergie tell off the whole time I was at United,” said Evra. “Instead, he’d tell players to give Scholes the ball because he could control the tempo of the game and he knew when to accelerate the play or slow things down. Scholes was Ferguson’s brain on the pitch.”

Ferguson considered him “fearless” and, in his 2015 book Leading, said when the midfielder came on in the cauldron of San Siro in a 1999 Champions League quarter-final against Inter, that “he went as calmly as someone popping around the corner for a newspaper… then he slid in the goal that took us to the semi-finals”.

Scholes, one booking away from a suspension, started on the bench against Juventus in the semi-final second leg. He made a fair tackle but was booked.

“It was heartbreaking for Paul,” said Ferguson. “He’s not only an outstanding player but a wonderful lad.”

Ferguson loved Scholes as a footballer for being “the clever one with the piercing passes”. He felt the challenge was to stop him getting bored since “things would come so easily to him that if we were leading a game he would tune out. He’d start to flick balls and do little tricks as if he was at a Christmas party.”

Ferguson knew Scholes better than most.

“He is an extraordinary player and an emblem of everything United stood for,” Ferguson added. “He is a man of few words (or was before his media career), doesn’t wear his emotions on his sleeve, and has no need for the limelight. However, deep down nobody should be fooled, because he torments himself if he messes up.”

Thankfully, there were many Scholes highlights from a glorious one-club career and few mess-ups. The famous volleys against Bradford City, Middlesbrough and Chelsea, all of them in 2000. The team goals against Panathinaikos, Barnsley and a 93rd-minute derby winner in 2010.

“The volley away at Aston Villa was my favourite,” he said of his goals, referencing a ferocious, 25-yard zinger in December 2006 which came off the underside of the crossbar into the top corner. His favourite United goal was at the same ground — “Giggsy’s in the (1999) FA Cup semi-final. That goal was unbelievable.”

In 2010, I went to Sao Paulo to see the great Socrates, where, among other quotes, he said: “Paul Scho-les. Good enough to play for Brazil. I love to watch Scho-les, to see him pass, the boy with the red hair and the red shirt.”

Another glorious testimony. They can’t all be wrong.

Catch up on the ranking so far

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