The end is nigh 
magnificient player for a half blind shortarse ginger and infinitely more talented, humble and likeable than ratboy
What odds on him getting sent off in his testimonial shan, given his total lack of tackling ability
Million to 1.
I wonder who United will get for him as a testimonial. Just hope its not Barca.
what about juve? Im sure theyd let him win seeing as hes an alright sort
Ask Gary Neville.
They should play Oldham and he should line out for a half for each team.
Decent article involving Scholes below.
Former Manchester United star Paul Scholes insists England players are too selfish to succeed
For the past seven years the received truth was that Paul Scholes quit international football because he felt undervalued being played out of position on the left wing and that he stayed in retirement, despite the efforts of Steve McClaren and Fabio Capello, because he wanted to extend his career with Manchester United and spend more time with his family.
By Duncan White
10:30PM BST 09 Jul 2011
Comments93 Comments
There was another reason why Scholes grew disenchanted with England, however, one that reveals a profound problem at the root of the national team: the destructive self-interest of players who saw England caps merely as a vehicle to transfers and better contracts.
Scholes retired from football in May and had not played for the national side since quitting in 2004. âI got fed up,â Scholes said. âWhen you are going to a team, and you want to be part of a team and playing well, and there are individuals who are after personal glory⌠when there is a simple pass of 10 yards, they might try and smack it 80 yards. They will do things to try and get themselves noticed.
âNo, [playing out of position] was never a problem. I played on the left for United I donât know how many times. I probably had my most successful time scoring goals in that position so it was never a problem.â When Jamie Carragher admitted that it mattered more to him when Liverpool lost then it did with England, it confirmed the suspicion that some players had much deeper bonds of loyalty to their club.
Scholes thinks the problem runs deeper and that some players are loyal to one thing only: themselves.
âYou still hate losing, whether it is Manchester United or England,â he said. âMaybe it is half the problem if players are going into that squad and not caring about it. I think there definitely is an element of that, what Jamie said about not being bothered about England losing.
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âI always felt when I first started going away with England, players â especially players at clubs like your Aston Villas â try to use England as a way to get to a top club. Which, I donât know, you feel: are they there for the right reason? I think they are very selfish people.
âIt happened in my day, I think they are all there to get their bit of glory, their headlines, to think, âOh, I will get a move from thisâ. That is the biggest problem with English players: that most of them are just too selfish.
â[When they get their move] they have probably done what they have wanted to do and that is enough, to get to a big club. It was a frustration for us United lads. It was just selfish. If you look at the Spain team now, they all seem to play for each other. There isnât one of them who would try to do something in a game that doesnât suit the team and the way they play. And that could happen over here.â Scholes won 66 caps between 1997 and 2004, playing for Glenn Hoddle, Kevin Keegan and Sven-Goran Eriksson. Despite the emergence of a talented group of players (what Adam Crozier called the Golden Generation), Scholes and his team-mates never got further than the quarter-finals of a major tournament â and fared no better after he quit â failing even to qualify for Euro 2008. All that while English club sides became the dominant force in European club football. Was there some form of technical deficiency among Englandâs players?
âNo, it is probably more attitude. If you look through our teams, there are loads of technically brilliant players but for some reason when we go onto the international scene, we donât look like that. Why? I just donât know. We, England, go to these tournaments with the greatest of hopes when really the reality of winning something is not really there because there are so many good teams.
The French of a few years ago, Spains, Brazils, Argentinas, we just seem to be not as good as them.
âYou never feel that when you are playing. You always think youâve got a chance. We feel weâve got the good players, people say the best in the world, but I donât really think we have if you go on international tournaments.
âWe are the favourites every time and we probably will be next time.
âWe will beat Macedonia 6-0 in qualifiers and weâll be 5/1 favourites for the World Cup. It is just the way we are. I think it is quite laughable, donât you? It is just the mentality of English people. We think we are going to win everything.â The English football mentality never fully appreciated Scholes. Here was a player whose playing style appealed to the continental connoisseur and whose lifestyle never troubled the front pages. In England it is still Roy of the Rovers who remains the subject of juvenile admiration. The English love the player who sprints from box to box, hurls himself into slide tackles and scores spectacular goals, players who speak (loudly) about the team but play as an individual.
Scholesâ qualities (his passing, his possession retention, his tactical intelligence, his spatial vision) were treated like an acquired taste (if tasted at all) and only in his maturity did he begin to get the credit he deserved for them. What was so evident to his impressive foreign fan club â Zinedine Zidane, Xavi, Edgar Davids, Laurent Blanc, Marcello Lippi and Pep Guardiola â was often overlooked at home.
In retrospect, England should regret not building their team around Scholes. In fact, not long after he had made his debut in 1997, that seemed to be the future for the national team. At the 1998 World Cup, Glenn Hoddle left Paul Gascoigne at home and made Scholes, then 23, the creative fulcrum in his 3-5-2 system. Yet Scholes was never central to the plans of Hoddleâs successors, Kevin Keegan and Sven-Goran-Eriksson, and quit international football in 2004.
Hoddle saw something of himself in Scholes. He had been a player more to continental taste and was never fully appreciated by England. âHe is an Englishman who knew the style of football he wanted to play,â Scholes said. âIt wasnât quite the same way as Barcelona play but there were similar traits. He has been an English manager who seems to have been cast aside. He was the best manager I played for with England. I liked Sven as well, but I think we were a better team under Glenn. We understood more what was required.
âUnder Hoddle and Sven, you knew the way you were playing. But I am thinking how England play now and I donât really know. I do watch the games but where does Gareth Barry play? Do you have a holding midfielder? One up front? I couldnât tell you Englandâs style of play.â The ideal for Scholes is, unsurprisingly, the one represented by Barcelona. Before the Champions League final this season, Pep Guardiola singled out Scholes as the âthe best midfielder of his generationâ while previously Xavi said âin the last 15 to 20 years he is the best central midfield I have seenâ. That affection is reciprocated.
âBarcelona are the level we all need to get to. They play the game the way everyone in the world would like to. They have the players to do it. The big thing for them is that word again, unselfishness. They play as a team, work hard for each other. As much people say Messi is the star man but amongst them he is not, he is just another player.â The next challenge for Scholes is putting his strong opinions about the game into practice. He will meet with Sir Alex Ferguson at the beginning of next month to define his coaching role with the club as he inaugurates a new stage of his career â and has not ruled out eventually moving into management.
âI am sure he [Ferguson] has some ideas of what he wants me to do. I think it will be hands-on coaching, maybe with Warren Joyce for the reserves. I am not too sure yet. But I will probably just watch for the first few weeks and build myself into it. I have began my level two and level three coaching badges. Iâve done all my classroom work and just need to get out and do my hours now. When I am in the coaching job, it shouldnât take too long.â
âYou think you can do both [coaching and management], canât you? I probably just want to settle into the coaching first and whether in two years Iâve got enough experience and feel like I want to go into management, then maybe. I just donât know yet, I want to see how I get on with my coaching. I donât think anybody at the club would think or see me going into management but I just donât know. I might get the bug for coaching. I have to hopefully get one or two yearsâ experience, maybe more, and something might lead from that. I didnât know Mark Hughes that well but I hear Mick Phelan say he could never see him going into management and look how well heâs done.â
Great players often make impatient coaches â Hoddle was famously exasperated by the limitations of some of his players. For Scholes the challenge will be coaxing out of players things that come to him by instinct. Perhaps the Football Association should take note.
England may not have got the best out of Scholes as a player but they could do so as a coach. There could be few better groundings for an aspiring international midfielder than working with him.
Interesting read. Iâm not sure he can carry off the âselfishâ accusation considering he has looked after his own career before England and itâs easy to complain now. I know heâs talking about selfishness on the pitch but walking away from the international scene wasnât much of a team response.
Also puts a lot of stock in Hoddle being English which doesnât really tally with the rest of the criticism of the England setup. Why would Hoddleâs nationality have such an importance then?
where does he put stock in hoddleâs nationality?
are you referring to this:
âHe is an Englishman who knew the style of football he wanted to play,â
his main reason for favouring hoddle was that his team knew exactly how they were supposed to play. sven was a little less clear, and keegan, by omission, probably hadnât a breeze.
there might be an undertone of john bulll about the article, but thatâs not scholesâ fault, surely the jouro?
Im not sure who are the Aston Villa players he is referring to as I dont think Gareth Barry played for 4 years under Sven and Villa were pretty crap at the time so had very few involved. Vassell maybe.
The selfish one in this is Scholes, a player whose limitations like those of his team were exposed against better sides in international tournaments. Retiring early was a cop out like Shearer before him both realised they didnt have what it took to succeed at that level anymore.
I dont think England underachieved under Sven at all. Lost to Brazil (eventual winners) Murphy, Sinclair, Seaman, Mills involved, lost to an excellent Portugal side (euro 2004) Rooney injured being a big blow, Vassell wasnt in the same class, then with 10 men again lost to Portugal on penos. Cant remember Scholes having much impact in any of those tournaments. Far from it the players from the Aston Villaâs, it was the likes of Gerrard, Rooney, Scholes, Lampard who disappointed continually in this tournament.
To be fair, on Scholes I thought Roy Keane covered up for a lot of his limitations - for a central midfielder he had no pace, couldnt tackle and had little presence. Comparing him to Xavi is ridiculous. Read a similar type jingostic article on how the English game had failed Joe Cole lately.
Iâd agree with a lot of that, apart from the fact that the England team in 2002 contained Murphy and Sinclair, as the latter replaced the former in the squad due to Murphyâs metatarsel injury.
What really bugs me about Scholes is this notion that he is some underrated, unassuming genius. He is none of those things. One of the sneakiest, dirtiest players I have seen on a pitch as well yet when he gets sent off it, all analysts say it is out of character.
Farmer, why do you think that Scholes is so highly thought of on the continent? Various Italian and Spanish managers and players thought he was a fantastic player. Ancelotti, lippi, Zidane etc.
I donât know. I donât think he was a bad player, and in fact was a very good player but wasnât a genius.
But hannibal, surely the fact that these people all rate him would indicate that he is certainly not underrated. Yet this is the persona that is built up of him. Also that article gives the impression that nobody rated him in England as he wasnât an English type of midfielder. Thatâs rubbish as well.
I think the âAston Villasâ comment is a bit of a giveaway because it proves the point that he was just inventing circumstances to explain why he didnât play with England. What better way to explain his retirement than to call into question the commitment of others? Pure smokescreen and he didnât even have the guts to name anyone so just went with a club instead.
Diplomacy. They always get asked what English players they like by the panting English media if theyâre being interviewed and they have to choose someone. You read Dani Alves or someone saying how âSteven Gerrard is a very great championâ or some shite but you know heâd never have him playing for his own Barcelona (or Brazil) team in a million years. Scholes plays central midfield for the most successful English team of the last 15 years so of course he gets picked all the time. Thereâs not much competition.
The ginger head on him also helped in making him stand out.
Exactly, at different points in time Zidane has come out and said that Scholes, Vieira & Gerrard was the greatest central midfielder of their generation and I am sure if i went looking for quotes from Zidane about Xavi, Beckham or Edgar Davids I would find him saying similar things about them. it is playing the media game, of course the likes of Lippi and Zidane are going to wax lyrically to the likes of FourFourTwo and the English tabloids about English players
Pirlo or Scholes?
Bang on the money. The only time Zidane was truthful was when he spoke about the greatness of Lubomir Moravcik - no need to say that other than speaking about a personal idol.
im a man utd fan but pirlo any day of the week.
KIB man always mentions pace when debating the merits of central midfield players. Other qualities are of far more relevance for that position.