Ryan Giggs to Swansea: Unpredictable world of football means No 2 must seize the moment

COMMENT: The notion of the baton passing from Louis van Gaal to his assistant seems to have receded at United

Manchester United assistant manager Ryan Giggs (Getty Images)

Ryan Giggs was always the Class of ’92 modernist: the member of that select group who was ahead of his time, continuing with the new-fangled yoga sessions run by a specialist Sir Alex Ferguson engaged, while Gary Neville’s initial interest dropped off, just like Roy Keane’s.

He accelerated into his coaching qualifications, working through Uefa B, A and Pro licences, accompanying England’s Under-20s to Turkey in the summer of 2013, attending Warwick University’s Business School and becoming the first individual to complete the mandatory qualification for Premier League and Champions League managers whilst still playing. The signal of his intent to manage Manchester United one day could not have been clearer.

But the ground has shifted in the two years since. Though United’s search for their next manager will begin in earnest next summer, the notion of the baton passing from Louis van Gaal to his assistant seems to have receded – not least because it looks, 18 months out, as if the club will still need an agent of change when that day comes. Someone from the outside who can shake things up and take the club on much further. Quite understandably, there have been no assurances that Giggs will be the man, come the summer of 2017.

With that timeframe in mind, you imagine the 42-year-old must have been pricked by the news that his old friend Neville would be taking the plunge into management. Who knows what Valencia holds in store, with its unremittingly demanding supporters and those 6am Spanish lessons, but Neville was the modern one when he said “yes” to proprietor Peter Lim’s supplications. Giggs knows that. He is the one left behind, trying to cohere with a Van Gaal football philosophy which is utterly at odds with the one he had come to know. It is why Swansea’s search for a manager and interest in Giggs is an opportunity he should seize, should it comes his way – if only to signal that he has ambitions and no intentions to get stuck.

Certainly, there would be some tribal differences to smooth over if Huw Jenkins were to take what would be as much of a risk for him as it would be for Giggs, with his side a point clear of the relegation zone. Swansea fans won’t need reminding that Giggs was born at St David’s Hospital, Cardiff, and that his mother was such a Cardiff City devotee that she once ran on the pitch at Ninian Park to give John Toshack a birthday present. They’re made them that way in the Ely district. But Toshack was certainly forgiven by the Jack Army for starting out on the wrong side of football’s tracks.

The BBC’s Class of ’92 documentary featuring Giggs, Neville and Co gave the impression that the Welshman was more reserved than the man now out on the Iberian Peninsula, though appearances can certainly be deceptive. If you can judge a man by his friends then the fact that Giggs was even closer to Paul Ince, than to Nicky Butt, his great partner in wind-ups, tells us something important about the teak toughness at his core.

Ferguson always felt that his intelligence and the respect Giggs would command from players marked him out as a future manager, notwithstanding a relative quietness which he felt need be no barrier. But to manage Manchester United “your personality has to be bigger than the players”, Ferguson reflected in his autobiography. “Or you have to believe it is. There is only one boss of Manchester United and that’s the manager. Ryan would have to cultivate that side of himself. But so did I, from 32 years of age.”

Football history is littered with the stories of players who waited around for their managerial inheritance – Liverpool’s Phil Neal being one of the prime examples. Neal saw himself as Joe Fagan’s natural successor and anticipated the man remaining at the Anfield helm until 1987, allowing him to serve his own apprenticeship. Then, to Neal’s dismay, Kenny Dalglish was appointed. “The dreams and ambitions I had striven for for a decade had been shattered,” he later wrote.” It is a salutary lesson for Giggs. If opportunity knocks he should seize it.