Ryan Giggs - Some Stats

[City123]

"""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. ""

Panama - Injured
France - Injured
Sweden - Pre Euro 2016 friendly, didn't want to chance him getting injured by playing full game
Ukraine - Not selected in squad
Northern Ireland - Not selected in squad
Netherlands - Not selected in squad
Netherlands - Not selected in squad

Those injuries were legitimate injuries that ruled him out of club games too, no miraculous recoveries

[Louth]

Friendlies? In fairness who gives a feck? Its a money making racket for the various FA's. Hand on heart, who mentions 'were you at the friendly when we beat ####?

[dembethewarrior]

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.

Yep. We caused a bit of a stink because we were clever with our friendlies in recent years helping us climb the world rankings...if imagine if this was around when Giggs was playing then more international teams would have used it to their advantage

[lardy]

Friendlies? In fairness who gives a feck? Its a money making racket for the various FA's. Hand on heart, who mentions 'were you at the friendly when we beat ####?

How about Brazil when Deano scored?

[the other bob wilson]

Friendlies? In fairness who gives a feck? Its a money making racket for the various FA's. Hand on heart, who mentions 'were you at the friendly when we beat ####?

Wales 3 Iceland 1 a few years ago included one of the best individual performances I've seen in the flesh and it was topped off by a superb goal. The player in question? A certain Gareth Bale.

As far as a Giggs v Bale comparison goes, there is a fair bit of research in this piece

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/wales/42718816

which, to my mind, is written from a pro Giggs point of view.

I'd prefer to use a more basic means of measuring the two players' commitment to their country. In the case of Gareth Bale, his words and his actions show that playing for his country is very important to him (I'd say the same applied to David Beckham as well), but with Ryan Giggs, although there were plenty of fine words about how much playing for Wales meant to him, his actions over a lengthy period suggested otherwise - to not play a single friendly game for your country over a period of nearly a decade is a disgrace and distractions about how many people were watching those matches do not make one iota of difference to that.

[City123]

Wales 3 Iceland 1 a few years ago included one of the best individual performances I've seen in the flesh and it was topped off by a superb goal. The player in question? A certain Gareth Bale.

As far as a Giggs v Bale comparison goes, there is a fair bit of research in this piece

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/wales/42718816

which, to my mind, is written from a pro Giggs point of view.

I'd prefer to use a more basic means of measuring the two players' commitment to their country. In the case of Gareth Bale, his words and his actions show that playing for his country is very important to him (I'd say the same applied to David Beckham as well), but with Ryan Giggs, although there were plenty of fine words about how much playing for Wales meant to him, his actions over a lengthy period suggested otherwise - to not play a single friendly game for your country over a period of nearly a decade is a disgrace and distractions about how many people were watching those matches do not make one iota of difference to that.

Elis James summed up that argument quite well by saying it's an honour to play for your country, it isn't an honour buying a ticket

[Pearcey3]

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.

Giggs was pretty ordinary for Wales and didn’t lift the side like Bale has done in the past. Besides what does it say to his team mates if he couldn’t be bothered to turn up for most friendlies?

[Pearcey3]

Wales 3 Iceland 1 a few years ago included one of the best individual performances I've seen in the flesh and it was topped off by a superb goal. The player in question? A certain Gareth Bale.

As far as a Giggs v Bale comparison goes, there is a fair bit of research in this piece

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/wales/42718816

which, to my mind, is written from a pro Giggs point of view.

I'd prefer to use a more basic means of measuring the two players' commitment to their country. In the case of Gareth Bale, his words and his actions show that playing for his country is very important to him (I'd say the same applied to David Beckham as well), but with Ryan Giggs, although there were plenty of fine words about how much playing for Wales meant to him, his actions over a lengthy period suggested otherwise - to not play a single friendly game for your country over a period of nearly a decade is a disgrace and distractions about how many people were watching those matches do not make one iota of difference to that.

Indeed. Giggs can hardly complain if half the squad pull out of friendlies going forward. Either way he won’t be Eales coach for long. If it goes well he will jump ship and onto a bigger job. If it goes badly he will get the boot.

[Ell.]

Unpopular choice..

https://www.jewishtelegraph.com/sport_3.html