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37-year-old Ryan Giggs will this season win his 12th Premier League title. He’s played over 800 games for Manchester United, over 60 for Wales and has collected an impossibly large array of team and personal honours during his remarkable career. In January, United fans voted him the club’s greatest ever player. It’s a credit to him that even in a club that has been graced by Bobby Charlton, George Best, Duncan Edwards, Eric Cantona and countless others, few would argue with the Welshman’s place at the top table.

Just so you know, there’s nothing new in the post, nor is there anything original. But just like many media titles - amateur, professional and those that inexplicably employ Oliver Holt - this site has carried such a paucity of praise for Giggs that it’s only right to redress the balance. Given the length of time for which he’s been at the top and the number of gongs atop his bowing mantelpiece, there will be a time when football will look back on Giggs’ career and ask the big question: Was he one of the very best of all time? For me he’s a distance off that, but I don’t think it’s wrong to consider it a possibility.

Giggs has been a permanent fixture in the Premier League, beginning as a much-hyped teenager and evolving into one of its elder statesmen during the twilight of his career. Whatever you think of the Premier League and its influence on the game, Giggs’ impact has been an enormous part of it and he can’t be held responsible for the prism through which cynics and traditionalists will scrutinise his career. In those early days he was apart from the crowd, football’s latest “first superstar”, as he became the selling point for the game’s new dawn. Ryan Giggs Soccer Skills was a popular choice of viewing for children in between their weekend training and matches, and the player was easily exciting enough to justify the attention placed upon him.

17 years after that show’s run, Giggs is still at Old Trafford and still putting in the type of performance that creates hyperbolic proclamations that the current season is his best ever. While I don’t necessarily agree with the specific sentiment, the fact that respected football figures like Martin Tyler are willing to ask with a straight face whether it might be the case speaks volumes. Giggs is consistent, well-respected and occasionally electric, and he’s got the medals to prove his worth.

To date, Giggs has won 11 Premier League titles, two Champions Leagues, four FA Cups and four League Cups, making him the most successful player in the rich history of English football. In 2009, Giggs finally won the PFA Player of the Year Award, adding the honour to an already lengthy list of personal triumphs. In truth, it wasn’t really the right year for it and perhaps was a collective admission from the players that Giggs had been shamefully overlooked on a few occasions in the previous decade.

Giggs’ quality has rarely dipped below excellent. As a young player he would dance up the wing at pace and he became one of the league’s most potent threats. He probably would have scored a few more goals too, if he hadn’t been behind Denis Irwin, David Beckham and Cristiano Ronaldo in various set piece pecking orders. 12 league titles (probably) and two (so far) Champions League triumphs on, Giggs has arguably become a much more rounded player. He is not just at home in a more central role, he’s superb there. He has an influence on the tempo of matches. His passing - though not necessarily spectacular - is perfectly weighted and blessed with his vision. His legs might not be as fast as they were but his creativity has improved tenfold, and he’s been adaptable enough to be an important part of the best team in the country as he heads into his late 30s.

It’s often said of Paul Scholes that he’s one of the last of the old school, a throwback to a less glamourous age when the footballers did their talking on the pitch and in the pub, and were more likely to retain some grasp of their roots. Like Scholes, Giggs has spent years at the very top of the game and yet has managed to avoid most of the other nonsense that goes on around it. Despite the talent at his disposal, Giggs hasn’t sought a big money move to Real Madrid, or amassed hundreds of thousands of pounds in parking fines, or launched a fragrance. There is no ‘Brand Giggsy’ and in an age in which top footballers are taking ever-increasing strides away from the supporters that make it all possible, there’s a lot to be said for players who generally just keep their heads down and be quietly brilliant for years on end. They’re still not like us, as such, but at least they’re on the same planet.

I suppose that leads us on to why Giggs, despite the trophies and the personal accolades, probably won’t be remembered alongside the likes of Diego Maradona, Pele, Alfredo di Stefano, Zinedine Zidane and the all-time greats, or even someone like Lionel Messi. It would be wrong to suggest that Giggs isn’t skillful, because he is, and the assuredness and accuracy behind his execution of the simple things is beyond what the overwhelming majority of his peers can do. But he isn’t always spectacular, and that might well hold him back in the collective memory. If anything, Giggs is a player’s player, a pundit’s player. The educated eye sees the importance of his contributions and just how talented a player he is, but there are many football fans around the world to whom the 30-yard screamer or the backheel pass will always be more impressive than a laser-guided ball out wide or just keeping the play moving for one of the best teams in the world.

Of course, Giggs also suffers from the George Best factor, namely being absolutely sodding brilliant but playing for a country with a limited chance of playing in major championships, let alone winning them. For many to consider Messi an equal of Maradona, he’ll have to win the World Cup even if he has to do it single-handedly. Giggs, like Best before him, essentially entirely lacks the international dimension to any discussion on world greats, and it’s a significant handicap.

But when all is said and done, and the Welshman finally hangs up his boots, he definitely won’t be underappreciated. In the final years of his incredible career we seem to finally be getting it, and it’s about time.

Tags: Manchester United, Ryan Giggs