How A Midfielder With F Tier Genetics Outplayed Everyone

So, listen to this. If I asked you who is the one midfielder that Zidane, Figo, Xavi, Ronaldinho, Guardiola and Pirlo named as the best of his generation, who would you guess it was? Surely it's gotta be some kind of superhuman athlete, right? Well, no. It was the tiny ginger kid from Salford who was not only asthmatic but grew up with a developmental disease in his knees that likely led to his repeated injuries and two surgeries, all of this paired with ocular migraines that forced him to play part of his career with blurred vision and intense headaches. Yeah, these were F-tier genetics. In a sport dominated by the 1% of humans born with unmatched speed, strength and agility, Paul's goals had no business making it to the top. But, in reality, it felt almost like God had to nerf him for everyone else's sake, because even with terrible eyesight, not even his own teammates were safe around him. As Gary Neville said, you could be walking around Carrington minding your own business and suddenly a ball would smash into the back of your head. You'd turn around and see Scalzi 50 yards away just laughing. But, don't get me wrong, freakish passing accuracy wasn't his only skill. His football IQ was off the charts. Nothing ever fazed him. At any second, from kickoff to the final whistle, he knew exactly where every player was. His own teammates nicknamed him Sat Nav because he played like he had GPS installed in his brain. As the director of United's Academy said, he was tiny. Paul had no real pace or power, no strength, but none of that matters now, because he has the greatest football brain we've ever seen at Man United. However, the key word there is now. A lot of people at United don't really like to admit it, but, for a long time, Scalzi was a borderline reject at their academy. As Steve Bruce would confess, everyone remembers that great youth team, but they forget that there were doubts about whether Scalzi would make it, not because of lack of ability, but because of his physicality, especially that problem with his knees. He's talking about Osgood's Slaughter, a disease that ironically affects teenagers during their growth spurts, making it so painful to run that any sports activity should be instantly stopped upon diagnosis. Yes, 5'7 Paul Scalzi was unlucky enough to develop this, which, added to his general lack of sprinting power and poor stamina from his asthma, made it so that, as Neville said, he struggled to even get up and down the pitch, and though Scalzi himself theorized, I was never a great runner, but that forced my brain to become sharper. Well, that was great and all, but it was hard for any coach to notice it when they had David Beckham right beside him, looking like a million bucks. Scalzi himself was so convinced he was never built to be a footballer that he began disregarding any of the advice that was given to him. By the age of 17, in his own words, Eric Harrison rang my dad saying he was worried about my drinking, and he replied, well, he's allowed to enjoy himself, isn't he? But I was drinking Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, sometimes on a Monday. He was wasting away whatever little chance he thought he had of making it, and here's where something I always found funny comes into play. Paul Scalzi wasn't actually part of the famous class of 92. Forget that one picture, look at every other one. When they won that FA Youth Cup, the first since the days of George Best, he wasn't even in the team sheet, everyone else, Beckham, Nicky Butt, Keith Gillespie, Gary Neville, they all got their debuts that year, but not Scalzi. Matter of fact, Lee Sharp himself accompanied Sir Alex the day he went over to watch their training session and decide what kids he would bring in and as he told it himself, Brian Robson asked Sir Alex why he was ignoring Scalzi and he told him that being that short, he had no chance. But as he said that, Scalzi got the ball at the edge of the box, faked the shot, dragged it, the defender slid past him, he shuffled in between two center backs, faked it again, got the keeper down on one knee and scooped it over him. Robson turned to the manager and went, are you sure you know what you're talking about? But nothing changed and honestly, I think it was seeing all of his friends on TV that may have unlocked Scalzi's remaining potential, because the next year, he was the one dragging his teammates to a second FA Youth Cup final, becoming the only one to score in it as they got humiliated by Leeds 4 to 1, getting named as the club's young player of the year ahead of everyone who was already up training with the first team. Then, becoming an European champion while playing with England's under 18s over summer, pretty much forcing Sir Alex to bring him up the ranks as well and after almost a full year waiting for his debut, he was brought into a match with a whole crowd mocking him for being a ginger and still, he scored twice. 3 days later, he came back and scored again, so when Cantona went full karate kid on a fan and got banned for 6 months, with everyone still struggling to figure out exactly where to play him, Scalzi got his breakthrough as a second striker. But though on only his second season, he managed 14 goals in just 18 starts, scoring at a higher frequency than everyone in the league aside from Alan Shearer, Robbie Fowler and Les Ferdinand. Fergie insisted on bringing in 3 new strikers over the following years, sharing him Solskjaer and Dwight York, again forcing Scalzi into the background, treating him like an ugly duckling while he made sure to stick up for every one of his former academy teammates, opening up space in the squad for every other one of them, no matter how many times he was told he could never win the league with a bunch of kids. Regardless, when it came to Scalzi, just like before, he had to wait until 1997, his 5th season with the first team, for Roy King to infamously clash with Alfie Haaland and get sidelined for a full year, so that Sir Alex was once again forced to use him as a temporary fix, transforming him into a makeshift box to box midfielder, but this time realizing that, that's where he should have been all along. Even with United squandering an 11 point lead in King's absence, once he was back, Sir Alex had finally realized Scalzi's place was nowhere near the bench, so he figured out a way to play both of them in midfield side by side and the result was arguably the best midfield duo in premier league history. With King doing the grunt work and Scalzi making the team tick, they first wrestled the title off of Arsenal's grasp with 2 games to go, then Scalzi himself put in a man of the match performance in the FA cup finals, scoring and assisting against Alan Shearer's Newcastle to secure the double and maybe most important of all, the two combined against Inter and Juventus, forcing the two Italian giants to bend the knee, scoring one each to put United in the Champions League final, one step away from the first ever English treble, only for both to end up suspended after receiving one yellow card too many. Which begs the reminder, as silky as Scalzi could be on the ball, he clearly learned a thing or two from Keane when it came to being rough off of it, this is a guy who would retire with more Champions League yellow cards than anyone else in history, even to this day only Sergio Ramos has surpassed him and that year he paid the price for it, watching his team perform one of the greatest comebacks ever without him, joining the celebration reluctantly in a suit and promising himself to get back there and do things right the next time, though it would take a while for that. After two more seasons went by as United kept cruising to the title, absolutely dominating the league, then out of nowhere Sir Alex broke the English transfer record to bring in Juan Sebastian Veron, which meant Scholes had to be sacrificed once again, being pushed up the pitch into a number 10 role where, to make it all that much worse, no matter how obvious he made it, that he wasn't happy there, then the very next season, even with his first knee surgery sidelining him for two months, he ended up putting down 20 goals and 6 assists, easily the best numbers of his career, popping off as the title race began heating up, going into St. James Park having to win against a 3rd place Newcastle that had only lost one home game all season and dropping maybe the best performance of his career, hitting a ridiculous hat trick before putting up 2 more against Blackburn and a 6th against Tottenham, closing in an 8 point gap to snatch the title from Arsenal, guaranteeing that he'd be stuck in that role for years, whether he liked it or not, in other words, becoming a victim of his own success, and though I'm sure he'd stroke his ego to listen to Venice Leroy completely ignore David Beckham as he claimed Scholes was the greatest he ever played with, the reality is that that would be United's only league title in the space of 5 years, their worst form in a decade, all while Gerrard and Lampard slowly became world beaters themselves, bringing far more star power to the pitch than Scholes ever had, ultimately meaning that, at the 2004 Euros, as controversial as it may have been, national team coach Sven-Goran Eriksson pushed Scholes off into the left flank so that Gerrard and Lampard could take over the center of the pitch, effectively sabotaging his own tournament. As Andy Cole would say, playing Scholes on the left was like putting a square peg in a round hole, it was embarrassing when he played there, and no matter how many times I'll deny it, everyone knows that was the real reason why, at 29 years of age, 7 seasons before he hung up his boots for good, he shocked everyone by quitting the national team at the end of the tournament, only getting further humiliated over the next year, going completely trophyless, while Gerrard took Liverpool to the Champions League title and Lampard took Chelsea to 2 Premier League titles in a row, rising up to the podium of the Ballon d'Or alongside Ronaldinho. As you ask anyone then, there was no debate, Scholes just did not sit at the same table as those two, all his 4 Ballon d'Or nominations that ever brought him was the infamous record of being the most nominated player to never receive a single vote, but what no one knew then was that none of the 3 versions we had seen of Scholes were his true natural form. Listen, no matter how much time had gone by, trying to turn that tiny asthmatic kid into a box-to-box midfielder had never been the answer, he was never gonna match the sheer power of Lampard and Gerrard, he was being forced into a battle against his own body, his own limitations when all along he should have been put into positions where his brain could take over, he wasn't meant to be the one soaking in the limelight, the casual fans poster boy walking up to the stage to take all those fancy awards, Scholes was never even Man Utd's player of the year, he was always meant to be your favorite player's favorite player, the kind of talent who can only truly be recognized by those who stood alongside him, his natural habitat who was backstage working from the shadows as his team's puppet master, all along it was there under everyone's noses when he took Scholes off, things had a tendency to fall apart, they all said it, he makes the team tick, and after a season where he was barely even there, diagnosed with a blocked vein behind his right eye that had him sidelined for months and forced to play the rest with blurred vision and terrible headaches, in its absence everyone finally noticed the power of his invisible hand, even the new national team manager Steve McLaren came begging him to come back to the national team, but he refused, Sir Alex however did something different, he pulled him deep into midfield, made him his maestro and nothing was ever the same, that year, at 32 years old, Scholes didn't score or assist anywhere near as much as he used to, but in the end, he had made Man Utd champions again, he was in the team of the year, only lost the PFA player of the year award to CR7 and like never before, every player in the league was in awe of him, as Henry said, whenever we played United, Scholes was the one we were scared of, he was the best in the league, indestructible, and trust me, that wasn't just a premier league thing, the next year, even with a second knee surgery ruling him out for three months, once back, his champions league performances sent shockwaves across the world of football, having already assisted the opener in the quarter, Scholes went into a semi-final against Barcelona, into a midfield battle against Xavi, Iniesta, Deco and Yayatori and not only made a of them in the first leg, but opened the second by scoring the only goal of that round with a volley from 30 yards out, that was the kind of performance that had Rio Ferdinand calling him the best at the club, regardless of what Ronaldo and Rooney may have thought of that, the kind that had the legendary Marcello Lippi claiming that, if I was building a super team, he'd be the first player I'd buy, and as for Xavi and Iniesta, they would not forget it anytime soon. A couple weeks later, Scholes had become an European champion again, by the pre-season, according to Darren Fletcher, even players like Ivan de la Pena who shared the stage with legends like Figo, Ronaldo and Rivaldo were fighting for his shirt, looking up at him as if he was a god, and though further complications with his knee robbed us of the chance to watch him battle it out with Xavi and Iniesta in a champions league final, as the first rumors of retirement began floating around, Scholes decided to play one more year, even if he himself admitted it would probably be his last, and ended up instead, experiencing the kind of revival that saw him join the 100 club and finish the league season with the highest pass completion rate of any player, popping off against AC Milan and becoming the highest scoring midfielder in champions league history, he was balling so hard that at one point Gary Neville just had to kiss him on the lips, even Capello couldn't resist a second attempt at getting him back to the national team, and at the request of Sir Alex himself, Scholes delayed his retirement, with Fergie choosing to ignore transfer rumors of Modric, Schneider and Ozil in order to keep the old man for one more year, deeming him impossible to replace. As payback, Scholes opened the season with man of the match performances in both the community shield and the league's opener, by the end of August he was being named player of the month, and by the end of the season they were back in the champions league final, back against Xavi, and they were all terrified of this 36 year old, as Xavi himself admitted, for me he's a role model, and I really mean this, he's the best midfielder of the past 15 to 20 years, he has it all, if he'd been Spanish, he might have been rated more highly. That final would have been the perfect send off, but seemingly not learning from what happened in 2009, Ferguson chose to keep on a bench, and United lost. 3 days later, Scholes announced his retirement, there was a ceremonial match the whole 9 yards, but 3 months later, as Fergie himself began thinking of his own retirement, United were battered 6 to 1 by a Man City now fueled by oil money and desperate to ruin his parade, so midway through the season, as they topped the league's table 3 points above United, who were now being ravaged by an injury crisis, Ferguson knew he had to do something radical. So, the next week, as the fans prepared to watch Man United face off against City for the FA Cup, they noticed Paul Scholes sitting on a bench in a coach's kit, everyone assumed he was just there for team morale, but an hour later, Sir Alex brought him on and despite having had to go down to the store the day before because he didn't even own a proper pair of boots, he came in and hit 71 passes in just 31 minutes with a 97% completion rate, surprising everyone by how easily he got back to it, causing such an impact that the next day at the Ballon d'Or ceremony, Sir Alex was caught off guard as Messi, Niesta and of course Xavi approached him asking what had happened with Scholes, then watching as they led United to an 8 point lead by April, only for the fairytale ending to be ruined again by the infamous Aguero moment, eventually being coaxed by Sir Alex into staying for one more season, as the two looked for a way to go out in glory and indeed they found it, taking what is still to this day United's last league title and Scholes' 11th more than any Englishman in history, leading a reporter to ask him how would you want to be remembered, to which he replied I don't care, people remember you how they want to remember you Dante, maybe as a good footballer I suppose, though given that since that day, he has been named by Pirlo in his all-time 11, by Zidane as his toughest opponent and by Socrates as the only English player I'd want in Brazil, I doubt that's the case, and I think Figo said it best, I was always starstruck when I saw Paul Scholes, because you never see him, on the pitch you can find him, off the pitch he disappears.