Inter Milan away on Wednesday October 20, 2010, would be the making of Gareth Bale. But before we chart his remarkable ascent that balmy autumn day in the fashion capital of Europe, let’s now look at how his meteoric rise mirrored similar steps to stardom for a fellow Welshman: the great Ryan Giggs.
The comparisons between the two are relevant. Both were born in Cardiff, both ply their trade down that left wing and both are similar in style and outlook; honest, down-to-earth guys who put their football as their No. 1 priority after family. Both willingly made sacrifices to reach the top.
Is Gareth the new Ryan Giggs? In those characteristics of style, professionalism and sheer generosity of spirit, certainly. But in terms of their style on the pitch, there are a couple of differences to mingle in with the obvious similarities. Both maraud and terrorise down that left wing but Gareth reminds me more of Cristiano Ronaldo at times. That is partly down to his size, he is 6ft 1ins and weights just over 13st, like the Real Madrid man, and he has incredible speed…again like Ronaldo.
Giggsy is smaller and was always more of a dribbler than Gareth. He was also never as fast. Yet the beauty of both men was that they managed to get their crosses and shots in. They are both a nightmare for full-backs.
Of course, Gareth has a long way to go if he is ever to match Ryan’s long list of honours. Giggs is the most decorated player ever in the English game – after winning 11 Premier League titles, four FA Cups, three League Cups and two Champions League winners’ medals in 19 Premier League seasons.
He has also won the PFA Player of the Year and BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 2009.
Right now, Gareth’s biggest domestic honour is a Carling Cup runners-up medal, which he picked up while facing Giggsy in the 2009 final, and having played in a Championship play-off semi-final for Southampton in 2007.
But time is on his side while Giggsy’s days at the top are now numbered.
There was one huge difference in their family backgrounds. Giggs grew up against the backdrop of a troubled relationship while Gareth has known only warmth, happiness and stability in the home.
Giggs was born Ryan Joseph Wilson in Cardiff on 29 November 1973, to labourer and rugby-playing father, Danny Wilson, and children’s nurse and cook mother, Lynne Ceri Giggs. The couple met when they were still at school and by the time Ryan arrived on the scene, they were both still only seventeen.
Lynne was Welsh and hailed from the more tranquil Pentrebane in west Cardiff; Danny was born to a Welsh mother and a father from Sierra Leone, and would become a promising halfback with Cardiff Rugby Union Club. His mother Winnie – a hospital cleaner – and Danny senior – a merchant seaman – hailed from the then rough dockland area known as Tiger Bay.
Ryan’s first home would be with his mum and his dad on the Ely council estate. The surname on his birth certificate was registered as Giggs, and his mother gave her parents’ address in Pentrebane. The space where his father’s name should have been entered was left blank.
The relationship between Lynne and Danny hardly augured well from the start. Life was tough: at times, Lynne worked two jobs, and had to rely on her parents to look after Ryan. That was the one solid base the youngster had throughout his life – the love, care and reliability of his maternal grandparents, Dennis and Margaret. He would alternate his time as he grew up between staying with his parents in Cardiff and with Dennis and Margaret in Pentrebane. He would become a regular sight in the district as he played with a football and a rugby ball for hours on end outside his grandparents’ home.
Staying with them provided him with the stability he needed. The rows between Danny and Lynne would worsen as the years rolled by and their relationship was in no way cemented when another son, Rhodri, was born three years after Ryan. Indeed, Ryan has admitted that the arguments took on a more unpleasant aspect – not just shouting and crying, but ‘physical’.
Ryan has said that as he grew up and came to realise the way his father treated his mother, he found he liked him less and less, He was a self-confessed ‘mummy’s boy’ and drifted apart from Danny, rarely talking to him as he grew from boy to man.
The growing rift would lead to Ryan eventually changing his name from Wilson to Giggs when he was sixteen. He would take the decision then, two years after his parents’ separation, so ‘the world would know he was his mother’s son’. The rift would also, inevitably maybe, lead to him becoming a more inward-looking, insular boy.
Gareth was a much different commodity. He benefited from a settled upbringing with dad Frank and mum Debbie. It helped him become a much more naturally sociable, easy going lad than Ryan in his formative years – although Ryan would come out of his shell as his football started to do the talking and his dad left home.
And while Ryan’s father was often not around, Gareth’s dad was always there, supporting and encouraging his boy. Gareth said Frank would always have time to play football with him in the local park, even when he was exhausted after a hard day at work. Gareth told the Independent in 2008: ‘He liked playing football, was a parks player but maybe could have gone further himself. Unfortunately his family didn’t have the money and so on to help him with transport. But he’s always been there for me. He’s put in a lot of hard work, giving up his weekends and supported me.’
It helped too that he came from a more salubrious area than Giggsy’s. Gareth was brought up in Whitchurch in north Cardiff, a leafy area that was a village back in the 19th century but has since become a natural extension of the city. Locals say it is certainly a notch or two up from the more troubled housing estates where Ryan was brought up. It has its own golf club and is home to the Presbyterian Church of Wales and the Conservative Party in Wales.
Both Gareth and Ryan excelled at football at schoolboy level, and again Gareth would benefit from the support of his parents.
With his troubled early background, it was little wonder Ryan Giggs would suffer something of an identity crisis and strive to find himself in later years. Manchester United and Sir Alex Ferguson would play a vital role in helping him come to terms with his life and himself. Like a surrogate father and family, Sir Alex and the cosseted world of United provided him with the background he had in some ways been denied as a boy.
Fergie would protect him from the outside world and virtually wrap him in cotton wool – Gareth had no such immunity from fame, and no figurehead to put him in bubble wrap until he met Harry Redknapp. He was more able to look after himself, he was more confident and he was growing up among similar top talents to himself, such as Theo Walcott.
Ryan was at the time a one-off genius – the likes of Beckham, Scholes and the Nevilles would come through a few years later. Fergie knew he had a special talent on his hands with Giggs, but resisted the heavy temptation to throw the wonder boy into the first team at once. He decided on a softly-softly approach with the lad who would become a United legend – and in doing so, formulated a programme of development that he would similarly employ with the other young stars during the next 20 years of his reign.
He used Ryan sparingly, keeping him well away from the wolves of the media, whom he did not trust back then (and largely still does not now). Ferguson would tell the pack to back off; that no, the boy was not available for a chat after a particularly inspiring showing, and no, he was not going to be doing columns, adverts or promotions until he, the manager, decided the time was right to do so. Fourteen years later Ferguson would sum up his methodology for treating Ryan and his so-called ‘fledglings’ over the years when he spoke about how new boy Wayne Rooney would be handled. He said, ‘We won’t ask the lad to climb a mountain tomorrow. The important thing is that he is a major player in five years’ time. We have a job to do to make sure he fulfils his potential. We have a reputation for looking after young players here. He will get the same protection the others have had.’
Of course, United were more wary than other clubs may have been with Giggs – little wonder given that they’d had the original whiz kid in George Best under their wings. Two decades on, United as a club still felt some guilt over Best – that they had not done enough to help him, and to get help for him. It hadn’t been the done thing in the Busby era; you didn’t talk through problems, you just fronted it out. Busby was hardly a therapist or a psychologist, and he never wanted to be.
Ferguson was from the same sort of upbringing – the idea that ‘we’re all big boys who don’t cry’ – but, to his credit, he matured and moved on as the years rolled by. He knew that Ryan Giggs would need his attention – and his protection. He knew there would be comparisons with Best and that some pundits would sniff out Ryan’s background – that he was from a broken home – and suggest he could easily go the way of the late, great Georgie Boy.
So he determined, from day one, that it would not happen: that Ryan would not be George Best Mark 2, he would be Ryan Giggs Mark 1.
Paul Parker, the former United fullback who played in the United team of Ryan’s early career, summed up Ferguson’s influence in this way: ‘The boss brought Ryan through from a troubled childhood and always saw him as one of his own. Ryan [also] got very close to Paul Ince, and Incey took him under his wing. Ryan would also socialise quite a lot with Lee Sharpe. But he was always his own man and made his own decisions.
‘He didn’t go out looking for publicity. Apart from doing a few promotional things for his boot company, he was content to be known as Giggs the footballer.’
Fergie’s protectiveness helps explain why it was only in August 1993 – three years after he joined United and a good two after his debut – that he was allowed to have an agent to find him marketing deals. The lure of the boy was apparent when the agent quickly tucked up a £500,000 deal for Ryan with a boot manufacturer. Then, the press got their bite of the cherry, as he did his first major interview in the men’s magazine, FHM.
Gareth had no such father figure within the game early on. A Spurs source said: ‘It was only when Redknapp became Spurs boss in 2008 that he was given some sound guidelines and advice. Juande Ramos, understandably, had enough on his plate learning to speak English – and trying to keep his job! He was never going to have the time to mentor young lads like Gareth. Harry was what Gareth needed. He spent time with him, told him he needed to raise his game and how to do it and encouraged him to reach for the sky. He always knew Gareth was good enough to become world-class, he was willing to wait and be patient – people claim he wanted to sell Gareth in 2009, did he hell! Why would he sell a player he knew had the pace, skill, talent and potential to be another Giggs or Ronaldo? He nurtured him like Ferguson nurtured Giggs in that sense, yes.’
Bale and Giggs also had very different journeys from Wales to England. At 16 Bale trained at Southampton’s satellite academy in Bath, but returned home to his parents before finally moving to England when he signed for Saints. It was all gradual and softly-softly, slowly-slowly.
Ryan’s move to England was much more abrupt and traumatic. The United winger attended Hwyel Dda infant school in Ely but surprisingly remembers his time there not for playing football – he never played for the school team – but for learning the Welsh national anthem ‘Mae Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau’ (‘Land Of My Fathers’).
One day in 1979 six-year-old Ryan came home from school and found his mother and father deep in conversation. Danny had been offered the chance to switch rugby codes – to swap from union to league – by Swinton, a team in Salford, a few miles north of Manchester. It would be the turning point of his life, a move for the better, although both Ryan and his mother Lynne were against it at the time. It would mean moving away from her mother and father, Ryan’s beloved grandparents.
Danny insisted they had to go. He talked of it being a new start for them all; the money was good and he could make it in the big time. The family moved into a house owned by the club and Danny was welcomed as a conquering hero.
But the move meant more adapting for young Ryan. Growing up in multiracial Cardiff, they had never thought about the colour of their skin. In north Manchester, they had to learn how to cope with racist taunts and being laughed at and abused. Ryan would later admit it was a shock to hear the abuse when he attended Grosvenor Road School in Swinton, but that he dealt with it by dismissing it with contempt.
Gareth, of course, had no such problems and, when he did encounter difficulties at school or youth football, his dad Frank was right behind him.
Ryan found another way of deflecting the abuse and getting his schoolmates to see him in a different light – through his sporting prowess. He excelled at rugby and football. His progress in rugby surprised everyone – apart from his father – as he was such a sprightly, wiry figure. Yet he stuck with the game all the way through comprehensive school from the age of ten to fourteen, and turned out for local side Langworthy and Salford Boys. He did well at stand-off and out on the wing – and was also good enough to represent Lancashire, playing one game for the county.
It was a busy time, but somehow he had enough energy in his tank to keep his hand in at football, playing up front for Sunday League outfit Deans FC and representing Salford Boys at football as well as rugby.
It was at Deans that he would make an impact – even though his first game for them ended in a crushing 9-0 loss – and at Deans that he would meet the man who would put him on the first rung of the professional ladder. The team was coached by milkman Dennis Schofield, who set him up for a trial with Manchester City.
Only problem was Ryan was a staunch United fan and hardly endeared himself to the City youth team bosses by wearing a red United top for training! His dream of playing for the Red Devils became reality, thanks to another man who had his interests at heart – a newsagent by the name of Harry Wood.
Wood was a steward at Old Trafford and he persuaded Alex Ferguson to take a look at the boy. Ryan headed to Old Trafford for a week-long trial and the rest is history. Returning home from school on his 14th birthday, Ryan saw a gold Mercedes parked outside the house. He hurried anxiously inside and saw Sir Alex Ferguson sitting in an armchair, sipping a cup of tea out of some of the best china Lynne could find. Ferguson didn’t beat about the bush, quickly offering his protégé a two-year deal as an associate schoolboy with Manchester United.
Ryan was fourteen, captain of England Schoolboys, and he had signed for Manchester United. The world was now at his feet…literally.
Gareth also played rugby at Whitchurch High, but was never at the level of Ryan. However, as we also noted in Chapter One, he certainly excelled at a similarly early age at football – when he was told not to use his left foot! – and also had a panache for hockey and, hardly surprisingly given his incredible pace nowadays, distance running.
And just as Ryan became at 17 one of the youngest lads to play for United back in March 1991, so Gareth became the second youngest to pull on a Southampton shirt in April 2006, at the age of 16 years and 275 days.
In May 2006 Gareth notched up another record – this time for his country as he became Wales’ youngest international at 16 in his debut against Trinidad & Tobago. Ryan had not been that much older (17) when he played his first game for the national team, against the Germans, in 1991.
Dean Saunders, manager of Wrexham and assistant to John Toshack as Wales boss for three years, certainly believes there are similarities between Ryan and Gareth that cannot be ignored.
And he knows what he is talking about when it comes to top Welsh forwards – he is still fourth on Wales’ all-time scorers’ list with 22 goals from 75 internationals. He also confirmed the view that Gareth is a really nice guy and a great pro.
In November 2010, Saunders said: ‘I could see what is happening to Gareth now two years back. He’s always been a pleasure to work with and it’s been obvious for some time that he has a terrific talent.
‘His tremendous ability to do things with the ball in full flight reminds me of Ryan Giggs and I can’t pay him a higher compliment than that.
‘He’s a totally down-to-earth lad who keeps his feet on the ground. He just loves the game and I can’t see any of the adulation affecting him. I can see him staying loyal to Spurs and Wales is very fortunate to have him.’
Inevitably, given the natural link between the two players, there were suggestions that Bale might be a ready-made replacement at Manchester United when the ageing Giggs finally decided to hang up his boots. Also, as inevitably, those suggestions were in the main from Manchester United fans. Back at the Lane, the Tottenham supporters could only shake their heads at the perceived arrogance of their Old Trafford counterparts…as if Spurs weren’t a big enough club to provide a proper platform to achieve Gareth’s ambitions.
One United website, manutdonly.com, put the argument for Baley to replace Giggsy at Old Trafford this way: ‘Going through the names [of players they would like to see join United] there is just the one that stands out and that is the Tottenham wing-back Gareth Bale. He has been immense this season and has really begun to shine on the European stage. The unfortunate issue for Manchester United is that Ryan Giggs is getting older, if age was not a factor then the Welsh wizard would simply be playing into his fifties, he is that good.
‘Sadly that will not be the case and trying to find a long term replacement for such a gifted player can surely go one way, and that’s in the direction of North London to Tottenham Hotspur’s Gareth Bale. He certainly has the promise to be as good as Ryan Giggs over a period of ten to fifteen years but at the end of the day only Bale himself will be able to make that decision.’
For another view on the Bale/Giggs debate, I asked a footballing expert for his analysis. Andy Bucklow has worked for the Mail for many years and is widely respected for his views on the beautiful game. Bucklow had this to say: ‘Ryan Giggs and Gareth Bale comparison websites were springing up from the minute Bale hit his spectacular second-half hat-trick against Inter in the San Siro…and hardly died down after Bale’s even more effective performance in a winning cause in the return at White Hart Lane.
‘Indeed, the feeling of out with the old, and in with the new was reinforced when Giggs made his 600th Premier League appearance against a side with Bale in the opposition in January 2011, in a tightly fought game in which neither the Old Maestro or the Young Pretender were anywhere near their best.
‘But direct comparisons between the two are erroneous, if not quite in the “Is Bale now better than Ronaldo?” category which did the rounds after Gareth had spent 90 minutes destroying the reputation of Macion, the best right back in the world, no less, according to FIFA.
‘Bale and Giggs are Welsh, and, yes, both are highly skilled natural left-sided players who can (and still can in Giggsy’s case) demolish any defence on their day. But if the end product is the same, the mechanics are more than subtly different. And it will be at least another five years before we can even begin to compare properly the effectiveness of the pair. Both sprang to prominence as 17-year-olds, and the talent in each was obvious. But whereas Giggs was eased into the team to play an almost instant part at the start of Manchester United’s 20-year glory period, Bale’s evolution into the player all major European clubs now covet and fear in equal measure has been rather fractured.
‘Barely a year earlier, it seemed Bale’s early promise at Southampton, and irregular progress through the ranks at Tottenham, had hit the buffers. There was talk of a loan deal to Championship also-rans Nottingham Forest, and the statistic that it took Spurs two dozen games and three managers to win a Premier League game with Bale in the starting eleven was still fresh in the memory. This was never a problem that the young Giggs had to encounter.
‘But, putting their differences in playing style to one side for a moment, I believe the one obvious thing that links both players, more than so than the ability which helped divert Bale from a road to nowhere on to the road to world-class stardom, is temperament. Giggs has always been blessed with a calm, level-headed persona which neglected to embrace more senior colleagues at the time (most notably Keane and Cantona). The odd polite query of a dodgy ref after a Paul Scholes mistimed tackle aside, Giggs has carried this demeanour throughout his career and into his last years as a pro.
‘Bale is blessed with the same gift, and there’s no doubt that his own level-headed mindset helped him through the mini crises in his early years at White Hart Lane to allow his burgeoning ability to burst into bloom in what seemed like overnight. The game is littered with histories of young starlets, who failed to deliver on early promise, either because they couldn’t handle the pressure, or didn’t have the mental strength to clear the inevitable hurdles placed in the path of every career.
‘Bale has indicated, so far, that he will not be one of these. His stable family background obviously helps, and this was something not enjoyed by Giggs, but it also takes something from within oneself. And the relative successes Bale has enjoyed in the past season are the fruits of this. Like Giggs, he comes across in interviews as the sort of sensible lad any father would want their daughter to marry. Compare this to the behaviour of other would-be superstars, most notably Balotelli at Manchester City.
‘Where Giggs was the luckier of the two at the start of a stellar career was that at the beginning of the 1990s, he was assimilated into a team of hardened, yet hungry pros – Bruce, Schmeichel, Hughes, Robson, later to be joined be Cantona and Keane – at a time when the smell of impending and overdue success was becoming intoxicating. Yet, as a 17-year-old he was still encouraged to go out and play his natural game without fear – “like a piece of silver foil flitting about in the wind”, according to Ferguson.
‘Bale didn’t have it quite so easy, trying to make an impact in his first couple of seasons at a struggling Tottenham, who were facing the unthinkable prospect of relegation under Juande Ramos before Redknapp transformed the club from laughing stock to members of the Big Four. Even then though, Bale was still more of a slow-burner than Giggs had been, and despite flashes of brilliance, and no one doubted the boy’s potential, it was only into his third season in 2010/11 at the Lane that all the pieces started falling into place.
‘Without ever having Giggsy’s dribbling ability, Bale, with pace to burn, is more direct, and his shooting ability more powerful and accurate, than the early Giggs. Bale is obviously also more versatile at this stage of his career, as he can already play full-back, wing-back and out and out winger, whereas I can’t recall Fergie ever considering giving Giggs a stint in the back four. Ryan’s crossing was also occasionally more wayward as a youngster than Bale’s.
‘Having said all that, while Bale still has the whole of what could be a stellar career ahead of him, he’ll do well to come even close to Giggs’s personal trophy haul, or matching the United star’s longevity. Hard as it is to imagine now, at some point in his late 20s or early 30s, one of Bale’s biggest assets – his pace – will gradually drop off and he will have to adapt his game. That adaptation might even have to come even sooner if teams decide the best way to negate his effectiveness is to double up on him.
‘Then there is the challenge of consistency. No one expects him to put in the performances, such as those which so shook up Benitez and Inter, every week, but now Bale must show that even if he doesn’t always get star man in the ratings, he’s capable of putting together regular eights out of ten. The odd blip aside, Giggs has done this for 20 years.
‘Giggs also had to reinvent himself, replacing quickness of foot with quickness of thought. He possessed an intelligence to draw on all his experience to play in a deeper, more considered midfield role is a template for Bale later in his career, as is Giggs’s ability to prolong his time at the top level by looking after his body, yoga and all.
‘Whether Bale’s career is still flourishing at Tottenham in two, three, five, or even ten years’ time is questionable. Giggs’s record-breaking appearances for one club is also something that is unlikely to be surpassed in the brave new world of £200,000-a-week pay packets, but even he once seemed destined to leave Old Trafford for Italy during a rocky period in 2002/03. I think at some time soon, you’ll see Bale terrorising defences in the Nou Camp or the Bernabeu if he’s chasing medals, rather than the piles of lucre in the vaults within the City of Manchester Stadium.
‘One place where he could have already picked up a gong or two to start off his collection, of course, would have been Old Trafford, but, in contrast to Sir Alex Ferguson’s successful purloining of Giggs from Manchester City’s youth academy two decades earlier, Bale is likely to join the likes of Paul Gascoigne and John Barnes on Fergie’s list of those who got away. Just as Gazza opted to join Spurs, and Terry Venables, when Fergie thought he had a deal all sewn up, so Bale did likewise with Martin Jol, when Fergie refused to match Tottenham’s bid of £5 million, rising to £10 million. There’s not much Fergie has had cause to regret during his unsurpassed tenure at Old Trafford, but there’s little doubt that’s one he’d like to have back. He had already shown his willingness to invest heavily in youth four years earlier with a £12 million plunge for a little-known winger called Cristiano Ronaldo. Not to mention the £7.4 million the maestro paid out in 2010 for the even lesser-known Bebe.
‘Fergie originally saw Bale as a promising left-back, but now must wonder if he has lost out on Giggsy’s long-term replacement. If he were to buy him now, it would cost him ten times as much as the original £5 million quoted years ago.
‘The one area where Bale can eclipse Giggs, of course, is on the international stage, by inspiring Wales to the final stages of either the World Cup or European Championship. Bale leading out Wales as captain in Brazil in 2014 or Russia 2018…with Giggs as manager? Now there’s a thought.’
There was one other area in which the two men similarly excelled – scoring goals that established them as world-class talents against Italian teams. In the 1997/98 season Ryan scored a cracker against Juventus in the Champions League, flying past two challenges before finishing perfectly in the bottom left hand corner. And, as our next chapter illustrates, Gareth was quite capable of matching that landmark – as Inter Milan found to their cost in the San Siro in October 2010…