Looking Back at Ryan Giggs' Remarkable Manchester United Career

Ryan Giggs left Manchester United on Saturday after 29 years at the club. While moving on makes perfect sense as he pursues his post-playing career goals, it is nonetheless a little heartbreaking to think that one of football's greatest one-club men has finally moved on.

His career numbers are staggering.

When he broke Sir Bobby Charlton's United appearance record—appropriately on a particularly special occasion given it happened in the 2008 UEFA Champions League final—it seemed as if his career was winding down. Instead, he played for a further six years, winning three more league titles in the process.

He made 963 appearances in United's shirt, 205 more than Sir Bobby. He made 46 more starts, remarkable given he played in an age of squad rotation and to the age of 40.

He is seventh on the all-time goalscoring list, with 168. Assist data has not been tracked for much of his career, but he would doubtless be right near the top of that chart, too.

He won more trophies in his career than most football clubs have. Indeed, were he a club, his 13 top-flight winners' medals would put him level with Arsenal in third place in English football, behind only Liverpool and United. That achievement is so momentous, so hard to process, that it is almost numbing to consider.

He featured in first-team action in 24 different seasons, scoring in all but the last of those. He won four FA Cups, four League Cups and two Champions Leagues.

And precisely because his longevity bordered on the superhuman, precisely because he was a champion so often, people occasionally neglect to discuss just how remarkable a footballer he was in his prime.

He was a vital part of United's greatest midfield, alongside Paul Scholes, Roy Keane and David Beckham.

Two quotes, from two of the finest ever to play the game, stand out from the endless tributes he has received. Alessandro Del Piero's suitably poetic compliment, per Sky Sports, reads: "Only two players made me cry when watching football, one was Diego Maradona and the other Ryan Giggs."

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Imagine being good enough at football, playing the game with sufficient verve and poise, to bring a tear to Del Piero's eye. In truth, it is easy to imagine someone being moved to tears at the recollection of, say, Giggs' goal against Arsenal in April 1999—for more about which, see here. 

Giggs' style was the kind that could occasionally bring a tear of frustration too. He would oscillate between the sublime and the ridiculous with rare frequency.

Indeed, before his goal against Arsenal, Giggs was sloppy. In his book about the treble-winning season, The Promised Land: Manchester United's Historic Treble, Daniel Harris wrote that Giggs "had contrived a performance careless even by his exulted standards" before eventually scoring.

But when he was good, he was magnificent. Good enough the late Johan Cruyff said, per Sky Sports: "Eric Cantona is a great player, but he's not as good as Ryan Giggs."

Given the context of Cantona's role at United, his catalytic, transformational, alchemical contribution, it was high praise indeed to single out Giggs ahead of him.

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The two players had an incredible understanding. Video compilations of Cantona's goals are replete with Giggs assists. Their celebrations are worthy of note, with Giggs wide-eyed and besotted by the brilliant Frenchman, who served as an inspiration to the Class of '92 generation.

It was not just the great and the good of world football who were fulsome in their praise. United alumni also said their piece. The late George Best, to whom a young Giggs was frequently compared, once said, per Sky Sports: "Maybe one day people will say I was another Ryan Giggs."

At the time, that seemed like a typically jokey Best sentiment—a dose of broad false modesty. In the end, though, Giggs proved worthy of the statement. Giggs may never quite have hit Best's highest highs, but he was not that far off. And he stayed at the pinnacle of the game much longer.

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And Sir Alex Ferguson, the man who knows Giggs best, his manager for all those trophy wins, used his unique ability with a turn of phrase to describe his longest-serving charge.

He said a lot about him over the years, from descriptions of him as a young man—"He was 13 and just floated over the ground like a cocker spaniel chasing a piece of silver paper in the wind"—to praise of his status as a "unique freak" in his later years, per BBC Sport. 

But the definitive praise for Giggs at his peak, the sentence that best encapsulated what it was like to watch Giggs play when he was a touchline-hugging, flying winger was also Sir Alex's, per BT Sport. "When Ryan runs at players he gives them twisted blood," he said. "They don't want to be a defender anymore."

That is how good Giggs was when he played on the left wing in Fergie's first two great teams—the domestically dominant hard men of 1994 and the indefatigable European conquerors of 1999.

Even by '99, he had begun to adapt. He had not slowed down all that much but was smarter than he had been at 20. By the time 2008 rolled around and Sir Alex had built his third great side, Giggs served a different function.

He generally played more centrally, as a schemer in central midfield.

He might not have been the best in class, or even the best at the club given Scholes' presence, but he was still good at it. Think of his pass for Michael Owen's dramatic late winner against Manchester City in September 2009, the way he got his head up, picked out the through ball and executed. That became the norm for Giggs.

No one would have predicted his reinvention. The change from improvisational, free-thinking left-winger to cerebral midfield assassin was yet another remarkable chapter in one of football's most remarkable careers.

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And while his time as a member of the club's staff will not be remembered particularly fondly, there is one exception to that. The moment he led the side out as interim manager following the sacking of David Moyes in April 2014 was sublime.

He described the appointment as the "proudest moment" of his life, per BBC Sport, and that pride was visible as he emerged from the Old Trafford tunnel, dressed in a United club suit and looking as sharp as a man could look, before he turned and directed applause at the Stretford End, which united in a chorus of his name.

For many perfectly sensible reasons, it was only an interim appointment, and he was not handed the top job in the wake of Louis van Gaal's departure in May, but that moment against Norwich City, that moment of connection between supporters and the club's longest-serving player, was special.

It was one in a litany of special moments—of trophies, goals and turning points in games, seasons and even eras—taken in by Giggs during his apparently endless United career.

Of course, nothing is truly endless, and all things must eventually pass. Giggs has gone, but the memories of his time at United will echo down the generations. His legacy is secure. No one who watched him can deny he is one of the club's true greats.

No one who watched can deny he is one of football's true greats.

Appearance and goalscoring data per The Website of Dreams.