Interview with Giggs Ⅰ: The coach will feel lonely. I turned to psychologists

Recently, Ryan Giggs accepted an interview with foreign media. The Wales manager discusses the loneliness of his job, what Manchester United should do next and why he turned to a psychologist.

I think every manager feels that loneliness,” Ryan Giggs says as he identifies the usually unspoken difficulty at the core of his work. The manager of Wales since January 2018, Giggs has had nine games to get used to the isolation.

“I’m lucky to have great staff around me and, during the week, you’re constantly in meetings and on the training ground. But it’s that hour before the game, when the coaches take the lads out to warm up, that you feel it. You’re alone in the dressing room and you’ve done everything you can. That’s a lonely time. There’s nothing left to do. You’re on your own.”

We sit in a hotel room overlooking Old Trafford. Giggs won 13 Premier League titles and two Champions League finals as a player for Manchester United, the club with whom he was associated for 29 years from a boy to an icon who took charge as a caretaker manager for four matches in 2014. Giggs, who then became Louis van Gaal’s assistant for two seasons, finally left United in July 2016. Eighteen months later, bruised by the even more intense loneliness of looking for work in football, Giggs was appointed as manager of Wales.

The 45-year-old, who still lives in Manchester, soon reflects on the rise of Ole Gunnar Solskjær, his former teammate, who has had such success in the Premier League since replacing José Mourinho and becoming interim manager at United. But Giggs concentrates first on Wales.

Last September, in his first home game, Wales produced a vibrant display of the attacking football Giggs epitomised as a player. They swaggered past the Republic of Ireland, winning 4-1 in an exhilarating and clinical performance. Yet, in their most recent match, Wales lost to Albania, 42 places below them in the world rankings. Unlike a club manager Giggs has had to reflect on that loss for nearly three months.

“It is difficult having such a long break. That’s the tough part about international football. But I keep in contact with the players and yesterday I got the lads together for a little debrief in London and to make sure we’re looking forward to the [Euro 2020] qualifiers in March. When it’s September, October, November, you’re on a roll. But this gap between games is big. You can see why some managers miss that day-to-day contact. The difference is that I was never a [permanent] club manager. I’ve gone straight into international football.”

Statistics can be misleading but, under Giggs, Wales have lost five of nine games. “If we’d have beaten Albania, I would have called it a successful year,” Giggs says. “But we played Spain, Uruguay, Mexico. Denmark twice. Almost all in the world’s top 10. We used experimental squads, experimental systems. So we’ve used this first year to see what we’ve got while looking forward to the Euros. Against Albania we actually played really well first half. We should have won 3-0 but missed easy chances. Then they get a penalty which may not have been one. But sometimes you learn a lot more from defeats.”

A crunch period is looming. On 24 March Wales face Slovakia in Cardiff. It is their opening match in a qualifying group that includes the World Cup finalists Croatia as well as Hungary, Belarus and Azerbaijan. “We need a good start against our main rivals because, after Croatia, I would say it could be between us and Slovakia. They have a new manager but they’ve got talented players. Marek Hamsik stands out. He just broke the goalscoring record for Napoli, overtaking Diego Maradona. So this first game against Slovakia is a big one.”

Old Trafford does not cast any shadows on a rainy day. But it’s hard to escape the club that has dominated Giggs’s life. He joined United on his 14th birthday and played his last game aged 40. Giggs admits he shed tears in his car after his retirement was confirmed following the final match he was in charge of United as caretaker manager – against Southampton in May 2014. “I’d had three weeks in the job and I put myself under so much pressure. I felt the players had given a lot and my own playing career was over. It was also not knowing what was next. So when I got in the car all my emotion came out.”

He is much more relaxed now. During a morning in which he runs a session with young men from the Laureus-supported Street League programme, which uses football to help people get back into employment and education, Giggs is impressive. As a Laureus academy member he is an engaging communicator – whether encouraging the men to stay true to themselves or answering their questions. When asked to name the best player he faced he helps the group feel as if they are in the tunnel next to an imposing Zinedine Zidane – and out on the pitch as he describes the Frenchman’s strength and balletic skills. But he always comes back to them and tries to boost their self-belief.
Ryan Giggs takes a coaching session for the Laureus-supported Street League programme, which uses football to help people get back into employment and education.

Giggs explains that, after leaving United, he needed the help of a psychologist to restructure his life. “It helped fill the gaps of what I was going to do day-to-day. From leaving school, until 42, I’d done the same thing every day. So it was more the structure and preparing myself for life away from United – rather than any mental issues. It was trying to find something to help me get through the day, the week, the month, the year. If you’re finishing the same thing you’ve done for 25 years, it’s quite scary. But I soon realised there’s a life outside football, I had a good 18 months travelling, doing TV work, spending more time with the kids.”

Thank you for reading. Later, we will bring you an interview with Giggs (II), welcome everyone to continue to pay attention~