On the goals thing alone Robben and Figo and Bale for that matter played mainly in 4-3-3 I'd have guessed with more emphasis on attacking, Giggs for large part of his peak played in a 4-4-2 where you don't get the same freedoms in attacking, if Giggs played his younger years now in a 4-3-3 we'd be talking quite possibly about one of the best players in the world in my opinion
How good was Ryan Giggs?
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On the goals thing alone Robben and Figo and Bale for that matter played mainly in 4-3-3 I'd have guessed with more emphasis on attacking, Giggs for large part of his peak played in a 4-4-2 where you don't get the same freedoms in attacking, if Giggs played his younger years now in a 4-3-3 we'd be talking quite possibly about one of the best players in the world in my opinion
Id say all the players you mentioned hit their own prime well past Giggs own prime. I dont think they are competetion as such is justs Giggs longevity meant that he was around when they showed they were word class. Bale is kind of hard when we compare their primes because he was a inside forward by then.
Giggs was kind of strange player because he had this incredible natural ability(more than anyone else in our team apart from Ronaldo imo), but he never quite hit the highest heighs enough to be the best player in the world for a season or 2. Eden Hazard should have been his replacement.
He was great but the wild thing is that you've had so many top players, I don't think I'd put him in an all time Man United 11. He might not even make the bench.
Wingers and wing-forwards are getting heavily confused and diluted here; that’s a flawed measure; Giggs was never a wing-forward and played his entire wing career as a winger. In the context of actual wingers, Giggs is in the very top bracket. He never played as a wing-forward so we’ll never know how good he could have been at it.
Figo was given a very different brief and position in Spain and wasn’t two-way like Giggs - you wouldn’t have one in the team expectant of doing the job of the other in their primes. In fact they’d be a perfect asymmetrical pairing for the wings; like a Ribéry Robben or some such.
Comparing Giggs to actual wingers, and few get near him.
Figo was given a very different brief and position in Spain and wasn’t two-way like Giggs - you wouldn’t have one in the team expectant of doing the job of the other in their primes. In fact they’d be a perfect asymmetrical pairing for the wings; like a Ribéry Robben or some such.
Comparing Giggs to actual wingers, and few get near him.
Supposedly, and Overmars said this:
“Ryan Giggs is fast, skillfull and sharp. With Luis Figo, he is the most fantastic winger I have ever seen in my life.”
Owen won it so Owen > Robben
People have this obsession with two things I’ve noticed - peak level as if it’s absolutely everything and the CL. Giggs played in an era where a winger’s role was very different to the modern winger who is essentially a suedo striker - goals garner more attention and accolades and we all know that. Wasn’t Robben a failure at Madrid?
Giggs was better at sliding tackles than many of the best defenders.
Oh, certainly. A lot of younger fans underrate him because they’ve only caught the latter part of his career (and it felt like a proper career to them because of his freakish longevity). He was insanely talented even though, I’d argue, he didn’t fully fulfill his early promise (which sounds ridiculous considering how successful he ended up becoming, but then that’s how highly I rate his natural talent). When he just broke through people were comparing him to Best and those comparisons didn’t feel unjustified.
That’s enough to answer your question about their reputation
Oh, Giggs was world class. It’s his standing in the all-time greats list that’s being debated. Fergie’s choice of world class players was… controversial though, to say the least. Who am I to question him, but that was an odd selection (that left behind the likes of Schmeichel, Keane, Rooney etc.).
World class puts him as an all time great, depending on how you label world class. You can't name many better wingers because there haven't been many. Robben and Ribery have not been better wingers. At best, they are up with Giggs - as most top-rank lists also suggests.
Best quoted himself saying he may one day be said to be another Ryan Giggs - he really was thought of that highly.
Ferguson did not put world class as a light achievement, that's for sure. I'd argue Schmeichel should be in there as should probably Keane. Rooney is not world class, so that I agree with. He's close, but too patchy. Another discussion
It really is astonishing. Individually, many did not really rate them that highly, which makes no sense.
World class puts him as an all time great, depending on how you label world class. You can't name many better wingers because there haven't been many. Robben and Ribery have not been better wingers. At best, they are up with Giggs - as most top-rank lists also suggests.
Best quoted himself saying he may one day be said to be another Ryan Giggs - he really was thought of that highly.
Ferguson did not put world class as a light achievement, that's for sure. I'd argue Schmeichel should be in there as should probably Keane. Rooney is not world class, so that I agree with. He's close, but too patchy. Another discussion
Fergie clarified that he was talking about attacking players who could create something out of nothing when he listed those 4 wc players after the controversy. But maybe he was just trolling.
Extrapolated to two-way, actual winger work on both sides of the ball, the number of wingers anywhere near him is fractional; for my money the best defensive work into transitional attacking there has been, period. By winger metrics, Giggs is in a company of maybe 5 players all-time.
I reckon he’d bang in 25-30 a season playing the inverted winger role
It's a poor argument (quotes usually are). George Best said "One day they might even say that I was another Ryan Giggs" in 1992, when Giggs just broke through, which is a testament to how incredible Giggs looked early on (personally, he's easily amongst the best teenage players that I've ever seen). It's 2024 now and no one in the right mind would say that.
That's your opinion, mine is different. You can find many other lists that would have Giggs lower than Robben. From the one on xtraimmortal (generally I trust it more than any of the "professional" lists as this one is done by proper nerds) to the one on the caf itself (and that's including the United bias). Both were exceptional talents as teenagers (maybe I'd rate Giggs even higher at that point) but Robben grew into a better and more influential player at his peak (while Giggs managed to maintain a very high level of performances for longer).
Ribéry wasn't better than Giggs in my book though, not sure when and why he appeared in our discussion.
I think Giggs could have been an attacking left winger but he was moulded as more all round left sided player.
Had Giggs played at a Galactico side like Madrid he could have been Amazing. If I remember correctly Makele did all the hard work and the forward players just focused on attacking , none of the tracking back or hard stuff when out of possession. This often goes forgotten when people quote stats on players.
When a team is built around a player, maybe the player is that good, but equally that player will thrive more then quality players who don’t have that luxury.
Hell even this season , Apparantly Hoijland has nearly as good a return as Haaland when you factor in goals to chances. With Giggs , you have to factor in that he was playing in an actual team, not a Galactico setup. He was expected to work hard with and without the ball. We will never know what he might have been like at a club with a less workman like team, but he was a fantastic player.
As somebody else said, he was unreal in his early years. He danced around defences with ease and would have been a perfect Galactico had his career started in 2000.
Had Giggs played at a Galactico side like Madrid he could have been Amazing. If I remember correctly Makele did all the hard work and the forward players just focused on attacking , none of the tracking back or hard stuff when out of possession. This often goes forgotten when people quote stats on players.
When a team is built around a player, maybe the player is that good, but equally that player will thrive more then quality players who don’t have that luxury.
Hell even this season , Apparantly Hoijland has nearly as good a return as Haaland when you factor in goals to chances. With Giggs , you have to factor in that he was playing in an actual team, not a Galactico setup. He was expected to work hard with and without the ball. We will never know what he might have been like at a club with a less workman like team, but he was a fantastic player.
As somebody else said, he was unreal in his early years. He danced around defences with ease and would have been a perfect Galactico had his career started in 2000.
When I think of Giggs I think of him in stages, the flying winger who could take on team on his own. Then there was the intelligent midfielder who never seemed fazed under pressure and would often find the pass or cross that would drag us back into games.
Interesting list, the extraimmortal one. It has Slippy G as the 8th best defensive midfielder of all time though which is a bit weird when he in reality was more suited as an AM.
Gerrard way ahead of Robson and keane. Lampard ahead of Scholes. What a crock of sh*t,
Well Scholes couldnt tackle. Zidane also listed as the best playmaker of all time. He was awesome and silky, but he's features too high all too often.
Lampard was in the AM list. These lists are bollox because they seem to work off basic stats. Scholes could control a game. He also showed up in big games and retained his levels. I don’t remember him slipping in the most important moment of his career to lose the league. The great Barca midfield under pep thought Scholes was the best player in the world in midfield. Says it all as far as I’m concerned.
Look at Scott McTominey getting all these goals. He’s basically allowed a freeish role to pop up at the right time to get more chances. Lampard, was obviously a better player, but he played in a world class Chelsea team that effectively allowed him a similar freedom to pop up for goals. I’d love to see mct on that Chelsea team with the likes of Makele and Essien doing all the hard work.
Again, looks like some players benefit more from the hype and the teams that they play with working with their strengths. Think Torres with Liverpool and Chelsea or even de Bruyne with Chelsea and city or Salah at Chelsea versus pool.
Ah nvm then. I was talking about Scholes defensive abilites.
Scholes was a yellow card tackler. I was talking purely as an attacking midfielder.
Sorry for being snarky , I just hate how underrated scholes is. One of the best of his generation for me. If he had a twitter account or was more media friendly he’d be more valued.
As with any list, I do have a lot of issues with it. Gerrard's place being one of them
To be fair they've included box-to-box to that defensive midfield category and he was certainly a box-to-box at one point (even though he was the best as the furtherest midfielder forward in a three).
I think so too. Had Giggs played in the modern game, he would've been different. Had he played under a different manager, perhaps he would've been instructed to not track back as much and thus stayed higher on the pitch, most likely earning himself more goals and assists but to the detriment of his overall contribution, which of course is harder to measure by stats. He probably would have been less injured as well.
I also don't think many younger viewers appreciate how ridiculously fast he was before the injuries reduced his explosiveness (by choice as he altered his running to avoid hamstring injuries). I'd argue there aren't many PL forwards faster than a prime Giggs. Heck, a 39 year old Giggs would probably rank as one of our current fastest (we have a slow team...)
Nah he just had to be better looking. As good as Becks was it was something driving his fame. Also he shunned set pieces and penalties and as such is considered less of a leader. Considering he was one of the best strikers of a ball ive seen its weird he didnt step up on set pieces when Becks left.
Agreed.
Kanchelskis wasn’t slow to be fair!!! Some of our counter attacking wing play in 92-94 was insane.
Yeh, that’s probably it. If he wasn’t ginger and looked like Figo he would of been bought by Madrid for 100mil+
Giggs said Kanchelski was the fastest player he'd played with but that he himself was faster with the ball at his feet. 92 was blitzkrieg.
That makes sense, I do recall a lot of times/goals where kanchelskis kicked the ball on front of him , running after the ball, moreso then dribbling with it like Giggs.
Ultimately, it is a matter of opinion. I loved watching Robben play, but ultimately I think Giggs had more to his game than Robben did. He was more unpredictable, at least as fast, more creative and also much more versatile - I don't think this should be disregarded when talking about the quality of a player. Take Messi, he has played RW, AM and ST all at the absolute highest level.
Thanks for the list, interesting! Rio at 56 as a defender is a little "interesting" though, or ridiculous. Or Gerrard rated as the 8th best DM at all time as he was rather rubbish in that position but class further forward (it is explained why he is classified as a DM, but I still disagree). Or, Lampard at 30th for greatest playmaker but Scholes at 47nd - Lampard was never a great playmaker and certainly not at Scholes' level. Lampard was great at scoring goals from midfield.
Giggs is the best winger I’ve ever seen. Comparing him to wide forwards isn’t right. He played in a 442 and supplied the 2 strikers ahead of him. And tracked back to help his full back.
And when his legs went he moved into central midfield and bossed games at the age of 40.
And when his legs went he moved into central midfield and bossed games at the age of 40.
As others have already argued, the players played in different formations/setups which had an influence.
On top of that though you're including international goals, of course figo and robben would score more. They were always high seeded playing against mostly minnows with good players surrounding them. Giggs was playing for a poor Wales side mostly against higher seeded teams.
Robben played most of his football against lesser opposition in Germany and Holland. Similarly Figo I'd argue was also playing against weaker sides on average in Italy and Spain. I have no doubt if Giggs spent his career in Munich or Madrid he'd also have more goals.
There are very few footballers who score more goals in England than they do in Spain/Germany/Italy/France/Holland over extended periods.
If we compare Robben and Giggs when they both played in the Premier league. Giggs got 18 goals and 40 assists while robben had 19 goals and 21 assists. Giggs had 0.46 goals/assists per game compared to Robbens 0.38 over the same spell.
During that spell Chelsea won 2 premier league titles and 3 domestic cups (excl charity shield) whereas united won 1 premier league title and 1 domestic cup. So robben was arguably in the more successful team during that period too.
I think the list is a bit off because it only nails down players in specific roles or positions. Like i wont disregard Zidane as one the best playmakers ever, but he wasn't a better playmaker than Maradona. I'd say Messi was probably a better playmaker as well but the players can only be on 1 list.
I think the thing about Giggs was that he was just really well rounded. Incredibly fast, one best dribblers of his era, great defensively, great passer and crosser but not as good as becks there, scored a decent amount for a 442 winger, good at set pieces. Good header.
He never hit the heights though where he was consistently carrying his team like Robben at Bayern. He had plenty mercurial moments, but I think Robben is one those players who would bern considered the best in the world if the 2 freaks weren't dominating.
My favorite movement in football ever. I thing the main reason we don't see that anymore is because wingers now switch side to their main foot inside and cutting inside is the standard dribbling strategy, so they go facing the goal for shooting and no looking for a cross
Actually Scholes stepped aside after Euro 2004 so thats on him. No way England were not calling him up and to be honest he would probably fight with Lampard for the spot (or a 4 3 3 with all 3 of them) while Gerrard was more defensive oriented of the three
He retired because they kept playing him out of position to accomodate Gerrard and Lampard.
Scholes himself has said that it isn't the reason he stopped playing international football
Really? I didn't know that, but thanks for clarifying. I think that makes sense, to some extent. I definitely think Schmeichel was world class as was Rio and Vidic, Keane etc.