The Life of Ryan Giggs



'When I were a lad, we painted the touchlines and didn't sell our own weddings...' Ryan Giggs, the veteran who has played in every one of the Premier League's 16 seasons, tells Mike Pattenden why £120 a week did him no harm.



By Mike Pattenden for The Mail on Sunday

At 34, Ryan Giggs is a Manchester United veteran: 'I started on £29 which was the basic YTS wage'

Nothing quite spells out the difference the Premier League has made on the game of football than players’ wages.



Ryan Giggs – an ever-present fixture for Manchester United throughout the 16 years the Premier League has been going – was on a mere £120 a week in his first pro season in 1990.

‘I started on £29, which was the basic YTS wage, but my first proper pay packet was about £120. I’d not long left school so it was a fortune. My mates were still at college and I was earning more than a hundred quid a week.’



Conservative estimates now put Giggs comfortably on £75,000 a week – an astonishing 62,500 per cent wage increase.



Since its inception, the Premier League has changed beyond recognition – and Giggs has seen it all.



He was only 18 when he helped United to the title in the inaugural season of the Premier League in 1992–’93 and he has scored in every season since.



Ten days after the final league match of last season, he broke Bobby Charlton’s appearance record with his 759th game for the club. He has played an important role in every one of their ten Premier League wins.

Giggs is also quite unlike any perception one has of the modern footballer – he doesn’t ask for payment for this interview, he turns up when he says he will and is unerringly polite.



The modern age of footballers as overly pampered, spoilt millionaire ‘slaves’ is a heady contrast to the world the teenage Giggs found himself thrust into.



‘My job was to clean the apprentices’ changing room,’ he recalls.



‘They were left last and the place would be a total mess. I’d collect the bibs, cones and first-team balls. I had to pump them up and once I put in too much air.



'Our then-goalkeeper, Peter Schmeichel, came in looking for me because they were flying all over the place.



'Youngsters don’t do that any more – God knows why not, they should. They should be cleaning boots and painting lines on the pitch or whatever. It disciplines you and teaches you respect.’



Ryan with the FA Carling Premiership trophy following Manchester United's win over Derby County in 2001

Are young players spoilt and over-paid now?



‘People like Rooney and Ronaldo get away with murder now – stuff they wouldn’t have got away with when I was 19.



'Football has changed. It’s just jokes, but Wazza (Rooney) will say things like, “I want to be captain.” The kind of thing you wouldn’t dream of saying when you were that age.

‘Clubs have to invest for the future which means paying 16-year-olds a lot of money to keep them.



'When I came through, money wasn’t an issue – all I wanted was to play for Manchester United.



'Young players today are eventually going to find out the hard way about losing money on cars and flash suits they only wear once.’



In today’s modern game, the ‘Chelsea method’ – paying huge amounts to increasing numbers of foreign players to instantly bolster a squad – is also increasingly popular.

‘Some managers are forced to pay over the odds for players because they don’t have the time to develop a squad,’ says Giggs.

‘They’re desperate to buy a team and maybe fans then see players at their club who don’t deserve to be there.’



So is the President of UEFA, Michel Platini, correct when he states that the Premier League is simply buying the best players to the detriment of the rest of the world?



It was ever thus, thinks Giggs.



‘Fifteen years ago, players were going to Italy and their clubs dominated,’ he says.

‘Now, the best players come to Britain and we have the best league – it’s

a great spectacle.



'It’s fast and furious, but there’s decent technique. The spotlight is on everyone and patience is in short supply. You have one bad game and it’s a disaster.’



Giggs is talking to Live as he relaxes on his bed in a Johannesburg hotel room during the club’s pre-season tour of South Africa.



However, much of his summer has been spent making a film looking back on his stellar career.



Entitled True Red, it takes him back to his early days when he took his mother’s name rather than Wilson, the name of his black, rugby league-playing father.



Ryan playing for the England Schoolboys in 1989

He is also reunited with the man who first spotted his potential, Dennis Schofield, a Manchester City scout who ran Dean’s Youth FC.



‘That was the reason to do it,’ Giggs nods. ‘It brought back a lot of happy memories. I met a lot of people who helped me as a kid.’



He also recalls the day when Alex Ferguson turned up on his doorstep to spirit him away from Manchester City’s academy.

‘My first memory of the boss always comes back to me,’ he says.



‘I was playing a practice match and glanced up to the office windows and there was Alex.



'I was awestruck by him. One of the first things he said to me was I had all the coaches here to help me with football matters but if I ever needed anything outside football, the door was always open.



'He helped me because that time was a tricky one for me. My mum and dad were splitting up and he knew that.



'That was one of the things that stood out about him, knowing your mum and dad’s names. Little things like that made you want to play for him and sign for United.’

Rather than rose-tint the past, Giggs also recalls the bullying he was subjected too because of his mixed-race background.



‘Kids at school knew my father was black and I would get racist taunts. At my school there weren’t many pupils with different backgrounds.



'I wouldn’t wish the abuse on anyone. I was a quiet, shy person and sport offered somewhere to escape and something to look forward to.’



Ryan as a boy with his father Danny Wilson

Giggs also has mixed memories about his father from that time.



‘Everyone’s childhood shapes who they are and what they do, and it was two sides of the story with my dad,’ he says.



‘I didn’t like the relationship he had with my mum but there was another side where I looked up to him. My dad was my first hero.

‘I think my parents’ split may have contributed to that inner steel where I can block things out.



'When I was playing football, I never thought about the arguments between my mum and dad. I get on with my dad but I’m not going to let myself get close to him again because it would hurt my mum and people who mean a lot to me.’

Giggs’s eventual breakthrough into the Manchester United first team established him as a regular player and a pin-up – ‘I’d go to book signings and there would be roads blocked and traffic jams.’

That kind of attention also bought the inevitable downside: his share of tabloid kiss-and-tell stories and two stalkers.



‘I was a lad growing up in public and it was a culture shock,’ he explains.



‘I was cocky, confident; I’d just left school and I wanted to go out with my mates and have lads’ holidays. Then you get recognised and followed or photographed. Girls sell their stories to newspapers.



'I rapidly realised it was something I didn’t really like so I made a conscious effort to settle down and keep a lower profile.’



Last year, Giggs married Stacey Cooke – he is father to five-year-old Liberty and 22-month-old Zach – in a low-key wedding much at odds with David Beckham and Wayne Rooney’s huge affairs, which were sold to glossy magazines for millions.



He is scathing about these big-money deals.



‘We earn more than enough money from football and sponsorship, so who needs still more?’



Ryan in Johannesburg, South Africa in July 2008

As Giggs’s undeniable skill bought him plaudits on the pitch, off it he began to indulge in that other pastime of footballers – cars.



‘When I first started I had a club car – a Ford Escort 1.1 Mexico – but as soon as I could I bought my dream car, a BMW 3 Series. I’ve had a few since then. I bought Porsches and Ferraris, clothes and booze.



'These days I spend my money on my house, holidays and school fees.’



On Sunday, August 17, as Manchester United prepare to open their 17th Premier League season against Newcastle United, Giggs will hang his clothes on the same peg in the same corner of the changing room at Old Trafford.



He is aware that he can’t go on forever and has spent part of this summer taking his coaching A Licence at Lilleshall. Giggs, 34, is now happy being the old head passing on his experience.

‘I was lucky when I came through because I had players like Bryan Robson and Steve Bruce around me who were a great help,’ he says.



‘They’d put an arm round me. If I’d had a bad game in London or the manager had had a go at me and there was a four-hour bus journey home, I’d sit at the back and sulk.



'Then one of them would stroll back and sit with me and say things like, “Don’t worry, you can put it right next week. The Boss only does it because he wants you to be a better player.”



'They’d give you a little lift and it’s something I try to do now to younger players. It can be putting an arm round them or giving them a kick up the backside.’



It’s difficult to imagine Giggs kicking anyone up the backside but you don’t rewrite the record books as regularly as he has without passion and, for Giggs, winning the league title this season is just as exciting and important as it was 16 years ago.



Ryan Giggs’s ‘True Red’ DVD is out on September 22

