TREATMENT OF SCHOLES WAS CRIMINAL

PAUL SCHOLES was the best player I played with and people like Xavi and Zinedine Zidane counted him as their favourite player. Other nations would have used him as their fulcrum but Sven Goran Eriksson’s first-choice midfield was always David Beckham on the right, Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard in the centre and Scholes on the left. We didn’t have a football culture that appreciated him. So we wasted him by putting him on the left and banished him to the margins. It was disrespectful, one of the biggest crimes ever. When you talk about Gerrard, Lampard and Scholes, Scholes was the best of the three and yet he was asked to give way. He was the absolute master of one touch in training. One day he scored three or four goals — and I’m not talking tap-ins. I’m talking 25-yarders-lodging-in-the-stanchion-type goals. When the session was over, the rest of the England players formed a guard of honour and clapped him off the pitch. I’d never seen that before and I never saw it again.