Ryan Giggs has to make a decision if Jose Mourinho joins Manchester United, but Zinedine Zidane can sway him
Inside Football: Zidane spent seven years waiting for the Real Madrid job, so could Giggs serve under Mourinho before fulfilling his destiny as United manager?
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Your support makes all the difference.There was a time when Ryan Giggs regarded Champions League semi-finals as nothing more than part of the job during his playing days at Manchester United.
The most decorated player in the club’s history played in seven semi-final ties in the competition, emerging victorious on four occasions, but it has been a while – five years and counting – since United and Giggs have had to plot their route to the Champions League final and it is anyone’s guess as to when they will do so again and, more pertinently, whether they will do so together.
But with Zinedine Zidane preparing to lead Real Madrid into their semi-final second-leg against Manchester City in the Santiago Bernabeu on Wednesday evening, it seems an appropriate juncture to question how Giggs will negotiate the fork in the road that is approaching at Old Trafford.
The two men are Champions League royalty, although Zidane lies in Giggs’s considerable shadow having won just one European Cup after 80 appearances in the competition. Giggs lifted the trophy twice and, with 143 Champions League appearances, is behind only Iker Casillas and Xavi in the all-time charts for games played in the tournament.
Zidane is just a year older than Giggs and the pair were regular rivals on the pitch for the best part of a decade between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s, yet while Zidane has now been trusted with the top job at Real following the sacking of Rafael Benitez in January, the increasing volume surrounding Jose Mourinho and United suggests that Giggs is once again facing a decision over whether to stick or twist at the club he has served for all of his professional career.
If United dispense with Louis van Gaal’s services this summer, as appears increasingly likely, and turn to Mourinho, what will that mean for Giggs?
The Welshman worked on David Moyes’s coaching staff following Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement and quickly realised that the former Everton manager’s approach to the game was not in keeping with his own.
But when the Moyes experiment was cut short as a disastrous failure after just ten months, Giggs accepted a role as Van Gaal’s assistant after learning, during his four-game spell as caretaker manager post-Moyes, that he was still unprepared for the biggest job of all at United.
Giggs is unlikely to wait around for another four years at United, but it is all about timing and Zidane is benefiting from waiting for the right moment at Real
If the 42-year-old is asked to play a secondary role once again under Mourinho, will it prove a step too far for a man with an undimmed ambition to manage at the highest level?
Or will the pragmatist in Giggs adopt the view that, like Zidane at Real, the long game is the safest one to play because it offers him his only realistic hope of getting the job he wants above all others – the role of Manchester United manager?
Zidane spent seven years being groomed for the Real job before president Florentino Perez handed him the opportunity earlier this season.
The 43-year-old has been employed as presidential advisor, special advisor to the first-team – ironically after Mourinho requested he worked more closely with his Real squad in 2010 – sporting director, assistant coach to Carlo Ancelotti and coach of Real’s second team, Castilla, during his seven-year apprenticeship, but he now has the top job.
Giggs is unlikely to wait around for another four years at United, but it is all about timing and Zidane is benefiting from waiting for the right moment at Real.
Under the Frenchman, Real have lost just once in La Liga and are on the brink of the Champions League final. They are unlikely to overhaul Atletico Madrid or Barcelona in the final two weekends of the league season, but Zidane has nonetheless put the club on course for silverware in the biggest competition of them all.
He could have cut short his apprenticeship on numerous occasions and taken his first managerial job elsewhere, but Zidane remained attached to Real, perhaps understanding that the easiest way to get the manager’s job would be from within, rather than risk it all going wrong somewhere else.
If Giggs chooses to walk away from United this summer, he will do well to identify many of his former team-mates who have left and found their way back.
The negative publicity currently surrounding his private life may yet prove a reason for the United hierarchy to look elsewhere anyway, but it would be a bold move by the Glazer family or executive vice-chairman to tell Giggs that his time at the club is up this summer.
Club legends tend to choose if, and when, they go and Giggs will be no different at United.
But with Gary Neville learning the hard way at Valencia that the wrong job can quickly see your ambitions unravel, Giggs may study Zidane’s progress with interest.
Zidane has watched, learned and bided his time and he may end up with a European Cup on his CV less than six months into the job.
Giggs can forget about that kind of start to management at United right now, but if Mourinho can turn the ship around and point it in the right direction, who knows what position Giggs and United will be in two or three years down the line?
How Sanchez success can be questioned is anyone’s guess
It is difficult to find anybody at Watford who believes that Quique Sanchez Flores has been anything but an unqualified success this season.
The Spaniard, in his first season in English football, has guided the club to Premier League safety and an FA Cup semi-final and Vicarage Road is facing a second successive campaign of top flight football for the first time since the 1980s.
Despite this, the club’s Italian owners, the Pozzo family, are preparing to review Flores’s future at the end of this campaign.
Perhaps they regard Leicester City’s remarkable rise under Claudio Ranieri as the template for all unfashionable clubs to follow, but whatever their logic, Flores has already worked a minor miracle this season, so it would take something very special to better it next year.
Bayern's dominance a weakness where Premier League prevails
So Mats Hummels has told Borussia Dortmund that he wants to leave this summer and sign for Bayern Munich, potentially becoming the third key player to leave the second biggest club in Germany for the biggest in the space of three years, following Mario Gotze and Robert Lewandowski.
For all of the Bundesliga’s qualities, healthy competition continues be the one thing that the Premier League holds as its trump card over Germany’s top flight.
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