Legendary Manchester United midfielder Paul Scholes has retired today at the of age thirty-six, marking the end of a seventeen year career with the club in which he made almost five hundred appearances. Scholes was more than just a good one-team player, however - he was a genuine great in midfield, heralding the arrival of a game increasingly driving by passing vision and range. There's a reason the likes of Zinedine Zidane and Xavi Hernandez considered Scholes to be one of the absolute best players in the world, with Xavi praising him as the best midfielder of the past two decades:
Paul Scholes Retires Age 36
A role model. For me, and I really mean this, he’s the best central midfielder I’ve seen in the last 15, 20 years. He’s spectacular, he has it all, the last pass, goals, he’s strong, he doesn’t lose the ball, vision. If he’d been Spanish he might have been rated more highly. Players love him.
Sometimes a figure of fun for his rash tackling, one suspects that Scholes was respected even by fans of rival teams for his remarkable skills. However, his biggest praise usually came from abroad, where a more thoughtful, technical style is favoured rather than the blood and thunder of the English game - attempts to indulge in the more brutal aspect of football usually turned out badly for both Scholes and whoever was unfortunately enough to get in his way.
Since I did a spectacularly poor job describing Scholes’ career in words, we’ll let the man himself do the talking:
What a player he was. Scholes, whose last match came as a substitute in Manchester United’s 3-1 loss to Barcelona in the 2011 UEFA Champions League semifinal, will be given a coaching rule with the club, presumably helping to unearth and teach the skills that made him one of the very best players in the world.
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