He’ll be sorely missed.
From The Guardian:
Today Ryan Giggs announced that he will play his last game for Wales on Saturday. Never mind Terry Butcher’s blood-red headband or Franz Beckenbauer playing a World Cup semi-final with a broken collarbone; Giggs went the extra mile for his country, once even getting an accidental wedgie against Canada. So, in tribute, we decided to type ‘Ryan Giggs’, ‘Wales’ and ‘shameless sickie’ into our special Fiver Factathon Facilitator. After much whirring, a couple of hollow clunks and a disturbing rattling noise, here’s what it came up with:
-
During his 16 years as an international footballer, Giggs didn’t
play a single friendly away from home. -
He did once play against Brazil on neutral territory, though. At
White Hart Lane. (And against a “Basque XI” too, if you’re being
especially picky.) -
Having made his debut in 1991, Giggs missed 18 friendlies in a row
before deigning to appear in one against Finland in 2000. -
He has missed 27% of Wales’s competitive games and 76% of their
friendlies. -
Retiring from a team who couldn’t qualify a minor observation,
never mind for a major tournament, so as to concentrate on playing
for the English champions wasn’t an easy decision: “I have loved
playing for my country and I have loved captaining my country,”
gushed Giggsy. “I think it’s the right time to do this. It wasn’t an
easy decision for me.” -
Since his debut Giggs has played 63 games out of a possible
12,000,004. “The number of games he has played for Wales doesn’t
proportionally seem to fit,” said his manager John Toshack in 2004,
before proudly unveiling his theory as to why Dolly Parton sleeps on
her back. -
Due to a series of unfortunate ailments, including 1,908 forms of
hamstring knack, a malicious nosehair and a new season of The
Apprentice, Giggs has missed glamour mid-season trips for friendlies
in Norn Iron 1-0, Estonia, Qatar and Brazil. “You must question who
arranged a game in Qatar involving an 18-hour trip with players
having such a heavy playing schedule,” harrumphed Lord Ferg of the
friendly in Qatar, a month after yanking his players out of the FA
Cup and herding them on to a plane to Brazil. -
Giggs has been genuinely injured every time he has missed a game.
“Every time I missed a game for Wales it has been because of a
genuine injury,” he said in 2001, inadvertently swallowing a fly in
the process and ruling himself out of the next friendly. -
Lord Ferg emphatically did not influence any of Giggs’s
withdrawals. -
Giggs’s frequent absences were in fact the Welsh public’s fault,
as Lord Ferg revealed in 2000: “The Welsh public have a special
player in Ryan Giggs and what they must realise is that he does have
a hamstring problem that does need looking after.” -
Every day, when Ryan Giggs wakes up, he thanks the Lord he’s
Welsh.