Nobody will say I don’t care for my country if we win

GIGGS UNDER FRIENDLY FIRE OVER WALES JOB

IT IS 1,352 days since Ryan Giggs last kicked a football in competition. Yesterday, in a castle outside Cardiff, the next chapter of his career finally opened.

Giggs, 44 now, is the new manager of Wales and in many ways that should be a perfect fit. He is his country’s most decorated modern sportsman and is following three other former players of his generation into the job.

But unlike Mark Hughes, Gary Speed and Chris Coleman, Giggs begins his tenure — his very first spell in management — with hard questions being asked and eyebrows being raised.

Giggs, it should be underlined here, is thoroughly Welsh. We say that to counter the myth that he could have played for England. He couldn’t. He played for England Schoolboys all those years ago simply because he went to an English school.

Nevertheless, the former Manchester United forward is viewed sceptically by many of his countrymen largely because of his chequered appearance record for Wales as a player.

Giggs, as he stressed yesterday, played 64 times for his country. But, pressured throughout by his club manager Sir Alex Ferguson, Giggs went nine years without playing a single friendly for the national side. In his 2005 autobiography, he admitted that at times he put his own needs ahead of those of Wales.

So this is the issue that colours opinion of him and unfortunately it was this subject that coloured yesterday’s unveiling at Hensol Castle in the Vale of Glamorgan. What should have been a celebration — we lose far too many of our top players to punditry these days — felt at times a little like an inquisition.

‘I expect that people in football have got different opinions and some will support me, some won’t,’ said Giggs.

‘The only way to change their mind is to give it your all, which I intend to do. I intend to be successful, I intend to win games and that’s all I can do. Everything else is out of my hands.

‘The people who have got an opinion of me not giving my all, I can promise you that I did when I played for Wales and I’ll continue to do that as Welsh manager. I’m not on social media and this is one of the reasons why.’

Few people in football can do phlegmatic quite like Giggs and he needed a little of that yesterday. There was also a glint in those usually deadpan brown eyes at times.

You don’t play for United for two decades without a few people being unkind to you occasionally and it was clear that he knew what was coming when he arrived in a dark blue suit and matching tie yesterday.

‘If I win, these questions will not come up any more,’ he said yesterday and that is pretty much the size of it.

Giggs will indeed have to hit the ground running. There will be, it seems, no honeymoon period. His first game is a friendly in China in March — good luck with securing Gareth Bale’s release from Real Madrid Madr for that one — and beyondbey that the serious business bu of qualifying for thet 2020 European Championship.C

Coleman set the bar high by taking Wales to the last four of Euro 2016 and a Giggs believes qualifying f for the next one and a indeed the 2022 World Cup Cu finals to be a minimum mum requirement for him. It couldco be that he recruits his formerform United team-mate Paul Scholes to help him and said yesterday that he will be happy to hit the road — as Coleman did — to win hearts and minds of supporters at meetings across Wales.

Certainly, it is hard not to wish him well. Giggs admitted yesterday that he found it hard when his playing career ended as a substitute in a United game against Hull City in May 2014. Initially, there was a need for a psychologist to help him through.

‘I’d gone from school straight into Manchester United and done the same thing for years and then suddenly I was starting a new chapter where some of my days I wouldn’t be doing anything at all,’ he revealed.

‘I sought someone’s help regarding that and it was just about managing your week and your day. It was important.’

Giggs never played in a major finals for Wales. He came close to qualifying for the 1994 World Cup and also Euro 2004 in Portugal. On both occasions, Wales were denied in games they had to win.

So that is a motivation, too, for a man encouraged by Ferguson to take this challenge on.

‘Yeah, we spoke over the weekend,’ he smiled. ‘It was a short chat like it often is with Sir Alex but he said his phone is always on if I need anything.’

Giggs has never really acknowledged the pressure placed on him by Ferguson to ration his trips away with Wales during his peak years. From his generation, loyalty to the Old Trafford patriarch remains absolute.

Nevertheless, on the BBC in Wales yesterday his former United team-mate Clayton Blackmore told a revealing tale.

‘Ryan didn’t have much choice,’ said Blackmore. ‘I was there when Sir Alex told me and Mark Hughes, “You two can go, but Ryan’s not going. We’ve got to look after him”.’

Maybe it was with this in mind that Giggs conceded yesterday that he felt criticism of his attendance record was a ‘bit unfair’ and from the outside it does look and feel a little like that. It also, it must be said, no longer feels terribly relevant.

Giggs dealt with the issue with grace and equanimity yesterday but it remains to be seen if he keeps that up over the coming years. Every time Giggs tries to secure the availability of a player for his squad, history will be there to be revisited.

In Wales they say Giggs was always ‘ respected but never revered’. How strange the football world can be. Results, as always, will eventually settle the debate one way or the other.