Ryan Giggs

[Uncle Ethan]

BBC Wales saying Wales squad announcement cancelled and Welsh FA aware of an "incident" involving Ryan Giggs.

[jwdd27]

Arrested on suspicion of assaulting his girlfriend, it seems.

[caja-dglh]

Sucks when there isn't enough time to get a super-injunction.

[Satchmo Distel]

I feel the thread title should be changed lest it seem we are making light of violence against women.

[Patrick Thistle]

Am I right in thinking he's got previous for this?

[Sporting]

I think it's important to say that he has denied the accusations.

[DCI Harry Batt]

I feel the thread title should be changed lest it seem we are making light of violence against women.

Yes, it should.

I think it's important to say that he has denied the accusations.

Why is it important to say that?

[Sporting]

Well, innocent until proven etc.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

While immensely disappointing, and extremely off putting, I can't say I'm massively surprised by this. Particularly since it's 'all just a little bit of history repeating'.

The Class of 92 are not exactly a shining example of robust mental health, and the ability to cope with life after football. Butt has been charged with something similar. Scholes seems to be in serious trouble. He's put on a mountain of weight in a very short time, and seems to have problems with drink and gambling. His marriage has broken up and he was cautioned after throwing a huge party for his son's 21st during the oldham lockdown. Gary Neville seems to be unravelling under the strain of having to come up with about 20 hours of Sky sports broadcasting pretty much off the top of his head every week, and there are stories about an extremely awkward midlife crisis. Phil Neville may be the most functional and stable of all of them, but I think his stability is a function of him having a turnip for a head. All of them are trying to sell their houses, and GNev is selling the site he had for his planned hobbit home. Grant Wahl's book about beckham paints him as a manipulative passive-aggressive control freak, who is very pleasant and charming to deal with directly, but expresses his wishes through 'his people'. He also has spoken a bit about struggling with obsessive compulsive disorder, which is no barrel of laughs. He apparently has an interesting private life. Keith Gillespie was also in this group and he has gambled away every penny he ever earned and then some more on top of that, and the last of the group, Robbie Savage, is a tumour on the brain of british society.

Being a footballer doesn't seem to be very good for you. Throw in Rio ferdinand, the bizarrely erratic and melodramatic Evra, and the increasingly out of control Roy Keane, who judging by his perfomance on Sky yesterday seems to be turning into the Colonel Kurtz of Gammonhood. He was talking about the current squad not being the sort of people that you would want in the trenches with you, and while I would hope that the current man utd squad don't wind up as infantry cannon fodder in some anachronistic army, I reckon he's about one week away from invoking the Blitz, and demanding that Winston Churchill be made man utd manager. Maybe best just stay in England Roy. You're their gammon god now.

[Antepli Ejderha]

Has he been suspended by Wales yet?

[Sean of the Shed]

Robert Page will be in charge for this month's internationals.

[Satchmo Distel]

The Class of 92 are not exactly a shining example of robust mental health, and the ability to cope with life after football.

Physical abuse, if proven, is not something that should be discussed in the broad context of mental health. It's an entirely different level from Scholes piling on the pounds, etc.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Well that kind of depends doesn't it? There's definitely a mental health element to these things, particularly since there is a very large component of learned behaviour to patterns of abuse. There's a very good reason why he's not called Ryan Wilson. This sort of behaviour is always wrong, but the reasons for engaging in it are complicated. But reasons are not excuses. There's lots of people who grow up in traumatic situations who manage to not pass it on.

[Antepli Ejderha]

Robert Page will be in charge for this month's internationals.

Thanks for this. A sensible move from the Wales FA.

[Bizarre Löw Triangle]

Giggs has previous - he beat up his then girlfriend in a nightclub in 1996. He should never have been appointed Wales manager in the first place.

https://www.thefreelibrary.com/SOCCE......-a061060941

[3 Colours Red]

Robert Page will be in charge for this month's internationals.

I always wanted him to get the job anyway. If he does well, then the FAW have a difficult decision to make.

[anton pulisov]

Being a footballer doesn't seem to be very good for you. Throw in Rio ferdinand, the bizarrely erratic and melodramatic Evra, and the increasingly out of control Roy Keane, who judging by his perfomance on Sky yesterday seems to be turning into the Colonel Kurtz of Gammonhood. He was talking about the current squad not being the sort of people that you would want in the trenches with you, and while I would hope that the current man utd squad don't wind up as infantry cannon fodder in some anachronistic army, I reckon he's about one week away from invoking the Blitz, and demanding that Winston Churchill be made man utd manager. Maybe best just stay in England Roy. You're their gammon god now.

Roy Keane seems to be the one with the most 'normal' family life.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Roy Keane seems to be the one with the most 'normal' family life.

Well we don't know anything about it. You only find out about these things when they go badly wrong.

[Hot Pepsi]

Being a footballer doesn't seem to be very good for you.

I think it was George Clooney who observed that very famous people tend to get stuck being who they were whenever they first got famous. In his case, he had gradual success in his 20s, with plenty of ups and downs, before becoming huge at about 32 when ER started, so he was able to handle it fairly well and keep it in some perspective. And he's mostly been able to keep it together since then. He also had the good sense to move to Europe to get away from Hollywood.

But very famous footballers like these guys never knew much adversity at all. They were hot shit teenage prospects and hit the big time before 25 - some before 20. The first time something really doesn't go their way - something more important than not winning a football match for which they are paid an astronomical sum to play in regardless - probably doesn't happen until sometime in their late 20s at the earliest. Or maybe they have a moment like Beckham vs Argentina (it was Argentina in 1998, right?) where it seems like the whole world hates them. That can't do much for one's ability to trust.

Of course, some of them do have tragedies along the way, but as young men surrounded by people who only care about them insofar as they can help make them money, they're probably not getting the kind of support they need to really process those things.

And then, of course, with all athletes the good times end at a fairly young age. Sometimes suddenly. Then there are no longer thousands of people screaming your name. Whatever they go into next will not be nearly as thrilling and they'll probably not be nearly as good at it as they were at playing football. A lot of them probably never got a proper education. It's a difficult adjustment.

[Bizarre Löw Triangle]

This discussion is veering dangerously close to abuse apologism imo. Troubled upbringing or not Giggs has had the time and resources to resolve whatever underlying issues he may have without taking it out on the women in his life.

[Hot Pepsi]

I don't want to apologize for abuse. I was addressing the point that that whole generation of ManU stars seems to be struggling with reality in one way or the other and I'm suggesting that the fault doesn't solely lie with them. We all have to accept responsibility for our decisions, but we are all, to some extent, products of our environment and it's clear that the environment surrounding top footballers is frequently not conducive to producing well-adjusted, morally responsible, self-aware men.

[Antepli Ejderha]

This discussion is veering dangerously close to abuse apologism imo. Troubled upbringing or not Giggs has had the time and resources to resolve whatever underlying issues he may have without taking it out on the women in his life.

Plus his adultery and treatment of his brother.

There are a lot of issues here, domestic abuse is one of them and seemingly the most serious. However as he's taken out super injunctions in the past their might be other things.

[Sam]

He's a fucking bellend on a level his former teammates (to my knowledge, and excepting what TAB says about Butt) are not.

Grant Wahl's book about beckham paints him as a manipulative passive-aggressive control freak, who is very pleasant and charming to deal with directly, but expresses his wishes through 'his people'.

A decent author wouldn't write themselves into the narrative like that. [/humour]

[Uncle Ethan]

Sorry hadn't been on this thread sinc eyesterday. Title was written before the charges were identified. Appreciate Snake changing it.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

I think it was George Clooney who observed that very famous people tend to get stuck being who they were whenever they first got famous. In his case, he had gradual success in his 20s, with plenty of ups and downs, before becoming huge at about 32 when ER started, so he was able to handle it fairly well and keep it in some perspective. And he's mostly been able to keep it together since then. He also had the good sense to move to Europe to get away from Hollywood.

But very famous footballers like these guys never knew much adversity at all. They were hot shit teenage prospects and hit the big time before 25 - some before 20. The first time something really doesn't go their way - something more important than not winning a football match for which they are paid an astronomical sum to play in regardless - probably doesn't happen until sometime in their late 20s at the earliest. Or maybe they have a moment like Beckham vs Argentina (it was Argentina in 1998, right?) where it seems like the whole world hates them. That can't do much for one's ability to trust.

Of course, some of them do have tragedies along the way, but as young men surrounded by people who only care about them insofar as they can help make them money, they're probably not getting the kind of support they need to really process those things.

And then, of course, with all athletes the good times end at a fairly young age. Sometimes suddenly. Then there are no longer thousands of people screaming your name. Whatever they go into next will not be nearly as thrilling and they'll probably not be nearly as good at it as they were at playing football. A lot of them probably never got a proper education. It's a difficult adjustment.

https://soundcloud.com/secondcaptain...ngroom-culture

This episode of Second Captains, from about 2 years ago, from the time of the Belfast Rugby rape trial, is extremely good on topics like this. And if people didn't catch it at the time, it's really worth listening to, in that it explains all the various ways in which society tries to turn young people who are good at sport into conscience free monsters, and how it's a miracle that these issues aren't a thousand times worse, and the steps you need to take to deal with this problem. One of the things that Richie Sadlier does in his day job as a therapist, is run Consent classes for young sports people, and here he and sinead O'Carroll run through how and why that works. The purpose of this isn't to excuse anyone, it isn't to mitigate anything, just to help people understand what the problems are, what the scale and the scope of the problem is and move towards dealing with it.

Essentially if you're good at sport at a young age, and even if you're not going to make it at the top level, essentially by the age of 12 adults from all over your county are going to know who you are, let alone what it does to your status among your peers, both male and femalie, and the process of treating you differently at every turn has already started. To take HP's George Clooney example, sports people are closer to child stars, than people who make it in their twenties. The way that society treats you, interacts with you, and teaches you to behave is fundamentally different to the rest of society, is already happening and the damage is done. And the damage is done even if you don't make it. And all sports do this to their young people, and they do nothing to take care of it.

I want to make it abundantly clear that this is not meant to minimize or mitigate anything. The show is really good and I would recommend to everyone to listen to it.