Paul Scholes ponders another year at United but prepares to exit left
Manchester United's 36-year-old looks to be heading for his final home game for the club, against Blackpool on Sunday
For now, all that can be said for certain is that there will be no great fanfare. If it is true, and Paul Scholes really is to confirm the growing suspicion that he is leaving football, we all know he would rather slip away quietly. A few short lines on Manchester United's website, perhaps. Maybe a brief appearance on MUTV – the usual stuff about it being a privilege to play for the club, wishing everyone well, thanking Sir Alex Ferguson and the supporters. What we should not expect is for Sky's cameras to be invited into his living room at Saddleworth. Or a staged sit-down on the back lawn with the three little redheads – Arron, Alicia and Aiden – playing in the background.
This is one of the things the game's true lovers admire about Scholes: he thinks all that side of football is, well, bullshit. He will not be looking for a newspaper deal to make a few quid. We can forget about him popping up in the television studio every Saturday afternoon with Jeff and Phil and the others. Heck, he does not even have an agent.
Strangely enough, Scholes has always held that old-fashioned view that footballers should be judged on their touch, their passing, and their desire to want the ball when the heat of the battle is close to intolerable. Not the car they drive down Deansgate. Or the VIP passes that are pressed into their hands. Or their number of Twitter followers. Scholes's routine was always refreshingly old-school: "Train in the morning, pick up my children from school, play with them, have tea, put them to bed and then watch a bit of TV."
But this is now the time when Scholes, that rare treasure, has to contemplate whether it might be time to go, and that it is always better for a personally choreographed exit rather than someone else pointing it out. Gary Neville, three months younger, has already taken that jump and now it is Scholes's turn to decide whether to cut himself free before there is even the slightest possibility that he can place at risk one of football's great reputations.
Scholes will be 37 three months into the new season. His testimonial is pencilled in for the first week of August. The following month, Paul Scholes: My Story hits the bookshops. Hearing he has written a book feels strangely out of keeping with the rest of Scholes's life until further investigation reveals it will be dominated with photographs rather than his words. Naturally.
A testimonial, then a book ... these feel like telling clues. In previous seasons Scholes has always signed a new contract by April at the latest. It is now the third week of May and he has still not announced his decision. The club now do not expect one until June and, increasingly, there is the sense at Old Trafford that this could really be it. If Scholes plays against Blackpool on Sunday, his 675th appearance for the club could very well be his last in a competitive fixture at Old Trafford.
What a player the sport would be losing. What a footballer. Scholes in his pomp gave the impression he could land the ball in a bucket from 60 yards. Scholes made sure games were played at his tempo. Those passes could instantly change the direction of a match. He was someone who made football look mesmeric. More than that, he reminded us a pass can be every bit as beautiful as, say, a 25-yard shot into the top corner. But there were plenty of those, too. Scholes always had a ferocious shot and an eye for the spectacular, with 150 goals for the club.
Zinedine Zidane has talked of him being "undoubtedly the greatest midfielder of his generation". Xavi Hernández has said the same. Thierry Henry, too. Marcello Lippi, a World Cup-winning manager, was asked about Scholes once and replied: "He would have been one of my first choices for putting together a great team – that's how highly I rate him."
Then there are the people who have seen him close up. Rio Ferdinand says: "He'll do ridiculous things in training like say: 'You see that tree over there?' – it'll be 40 yards away – 'I'm going to hit it.' And he'll do it. Everyone at the club considers him the best."
There is no argument, either, from Sir Bobby Charlton, a man with nearly 60 years in the game. "Many great players have worn the shirt of Manchester United. Players I worshipped then lost with my youth in Munich. Players like Denis Law and George Best who I enjoyed so much as team-mates and now, finally, players I have watched closely in the Alex Ferguson era. And in so many ways Scholes is my favourite."
In total, Scholes has won 10 league titles, one European Cup, three FA Cups and two League Cups as well as 66 England caps, although it should have been well over 100.
He finished with international football seven years ago, at the age of 29, fed up of being squeezed out of the area of the team where he could properly spread his feathers. Every England manager since has tried, and failed, to talk him back. In hindsight, they probably should have tried hypnotising him.
His problem these days is that the legs can fail him. The vision is still there, the uncommon ability to pick out a pass, long or short, to understand the angles of a football pitch, always to want the ball and, unfailingly, to know the best thing to do with it – a man, to borrow that elegant line from Patrick Barclay, who plays with "a hundred years of football in his blood".
But Scholes has always been captive to his craft. He has his bad matches, when his touch deserts him, and there is a look of something close to self-revulsion on his face. Which is part of the issue. He wants to be seen – or to see himself – as someone who can still make an impact, and not just when passes are going astray and Ferguson introduces him to re-establish some form of control. Scholes has found it difficult drifting to the edges, playing the odd 20 minutes here and there, decorating matches rather than dominating them.
He has already stayed on longer than he anticipated. In 2008 Scholes talked openly of having "two years left at the most". Ferguson, however, thinks the midfielder can last one more season. United's manager is a man of great persuasive powers and Scholes will know him well enough to realise he is not saying it for the sake of sentimentality.
Equally, though, the sporting world is full of heroic figures who have blundered badly when deciding the time to retire. As Sugar Ray Robinson once said: "You always say, 'I'll quit when I slide.' Then, one morning, you wake up and you've slid." Neville could tell his old mate the same. Whatever happens next, there is one certainty: it will be the hardest question Scholes has had to ask himself in his professional life.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/may/19/paul-scholes-manchester-united-possible-retirementSad but I think he will end his career this season... what a Legend.. the best midfielder the prem has ever seen and definitely in the top 5 Central Midfielders over the last 2 decades ... Irreplaceable
