Reply With QuoteIve always blamed Fergie more than Giggs for the mystery hamstring strains that plagued Giggs's career around the time of international friendlies.
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Ryan Giggs made his international debut in 1991 and retired from International football in 2007. During this time Wales played 119 International matches Giggs playing in only 64 of them. Also during this period Wales played 43 friendlies and I can only find him playing in 9 of them.
To compare and contrast, David Beckham made his England debut in 1996 and played his last International match as a Manchester United player in 2003. During this time England played 67 International matches and Beckham played in 57 of them. In terms of friendlies, England played 35 during this period and Beckham played in 20 of them.
Both statistical periods are under the reign of Ferguson at Man U.
Ive always blamed Fergie more than Giggs for the mystery hamstring strains that plagued Giggs's career around the time of international friendlies.
The stats appear to show that there didn't seem to be a problem releasing Beckham for England Internationals but there was for Giggs for Wales. Whether it is to do with dodgy hamstring or lack of commitment who knows ? In terms of Beckham, Man U may have wanted him to play for England as it would increase his personal profile and, consequentially, theirs leading to more shirt sales.Originally Posted by The Bloop
Aren’t clubs playing in the English leagues obliged to release players to their national team for all games but only for competitive games regarding other countries? So perhaps Ferguson had no say in the release of English players. Perhaps now players have international release built into their contracts though.
Not entirely sure, the presumption being that he did have a say in respect of non English players. It's an interesting thought although not one that I can recall being wheeled out too often in the past in respect of Giggs. It always, officially, seemed to be injury related.
Giggs was much better than Beckham..
He never stopped Keane playing. Nor Irwin or indeed any other.
Only Giggs had a number of injuries that had miraculous recoveries.
I think he relied on Giggs far more than Beckham.
Giggs looked after himself, and played more games for Wales than Beckham played for England, or Shearer.
He could have played more meaningless friendlies or dead rubbers, but it really wouldn't have benefitted Wales at all. You could argue that it allowed other players some game time where otherwise they wouldn't have got any.
And who can blame Giggs for shagging his brothers wige either. He was probably never going to get her pregnant. Plus he was probably only giving others at chance at his own wife.
And there lies the answer Giggs was a game winner /changer much more than Beckham .
Giggs was injury prone due to his ridiculous pace , he was always carrying or prone to hamstrung pulls , due to that serious acceleration he possessed, so Fergie protected him , and they all feared the Scot ,he ruled by his decesion and his alone ,those who crossed him, felt the Fergie venom and were sent packing , ask Hughes ,Stam , Keene , Beckham to name a few big names.
If Giggs had played in these games, we may have had better results, which would have led to a better FIFA and UEFA ranking, meaning a better seeded draw for qualifiers.
Eh? Beckham had nearly double the number of caps.
No we wouldn't, they only started using FIFA rankings to seed qualifying draws very recently. The friendlies that Giggs missed had no effect whatsoever on our seedings.
My mistake, I misread the first post.
In fairness though Beckham played in several tournaments which probably added 4 or 5 games every 2 years or so.
Giggs carried on playing football at the top level until he was 40 years old. Gareth Bale's body is struggling to cope and he's only 28. Says a lot. Maybe sensible game management and missing meaningless friendlies against San Marino and Moldova isn't such a bad thing.
I'd also point out that most of the cretins banging on about the friendlies on social media almost certainly weren't at those friendlies themselves or probably any games for that matter, before we started doing well 2 years ago.
I compare Giggs international record with Jari Litmanen
Both were high profile players from small countries Wales and Finland and both played for leading European clubs (Litmanen Ajax, Barcelona and Liverpool) at the same time
Litmanen is 2 years older and made his international debut in 89 Giggs in 91
Both were vitally important to their national teams and would have had the same number of internationals to face in their careers
Litmanen made 137 appearances scoring 37 goals before retiring in 2010
Giggs made 64 appearances scoring 12 goals before retiring in 2007 3 years earlier than Litmanen despite being 2 years younger
Comparing the two - One is a national footballing icon for his country the other is Ryan Giggs
And no-one will give a sh!t about all of that if he takes us to the next European Championships
"""Real Madrid forward Bale has played just 26 minutes of Wales' past seven friendly matches and 53 of his 68 caps have come in competitive games - 77.95%.
So, while Giggs' record of turning up for friendlies is not as impressive as some of his contemporaries, it is certainly comparable to that of Bale. ""
At dodging friendly internationals.
Giggs was much better than Beckham on the field of play and at dodging mindless friendlies as Ferguson didn't want to lose Giggs to injury over above Beckham. And Giggs efforts were greater in terms of pace and ground coverage.
That conveniently ignores Bale has had numerous injuries that have kept him out of Real Madrid competitive games. Giggs had numerous injuries that conveniently healed in time for the next Man Utd game.
Bale has turned up most of the games aswell, just not played, as he was injured
Why is he injured all the time?
Some would claim he was injured by all those troublesome friendly games...
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