Paul Scholes is keen on a return to coaching and the former Manchester United midfielder admits that, if he received an offer that “rocked my boat”, it would be considered.
Scholes currently has no role in football on the playing side having previously coached at United. With Ryan Giggs, Nicky Butt and Phil and Gary Neville, the so-called Class of 92, the 40-year-old owns 50% of Salford City. Peter Lim, a Singapore businessman, retains the other 50%.
Scholes did some brief coaching of Salford last season and he admits a permanent position appeals. “Yeah, I didn’t do a lot [at Salford] but I enjoy it. It’s the thing I miss about football, I suppose, being with the team, day-in day-out, getting a team ready for a Saturday afternoon or getting yourself ready for a Saturday afternoon, it’s the most difficult part. If there was something leading that I fancied and I was interested in and it rocked my boat then …”
Scholes turned down the chance to coach at Oldham but says he has not received many offers since he retired in 2013. “I had the one with Oldham that was difficult to turn down but maybe in the future it might be something – but it’s definitely something I’d like to do in the future. I don’t care about people’s [relative lack of] ability and I don’t think I’d get frustrated. It depends what level you’re at. If you’re coaching or managing at Premier League level you have players who can do that anywhere, or at least you should have.
“If you go down the leagues, you have to understand what level you’re working with and, if you get frustrated, then it’s not going to ever happen for you. That’s why a lot of managers don’t succeed where they should do.”
Scholes has a newspaper column and is a TV pundit but he is ambivalent about the work in front of the cameras. “It’s all right,” he said, before admitting the cameras that filmed him for a TV documentary about Salford annoyed him. “A pain in the arse, I’ve said that before. I just wanted to go and watch football without being mithered.”
Giggs, who is Louis van Gaal’s No2 at United, stated that his involvement in Salford is security against the unstable nature of football. While he, Scholes and Butt are all adamant they would never coach or manage Salford full-time, Giggs said of owning Salford: “The stats are there, it’s a precarious occupation. You know, 18 months, two years is the average for a coaching role or management. It’s just in contrast to being an owner where you know you are going to be involved in 15 or 20 years time. In the current job, you don’t because it’s not in your hands. The stats are there that coaches and managers don’t hang around for 15 or 20 years.
“Football has been a huge part of my life, the biggest part of my life. So I want to be involved it in 15, 20 years’ time. Instead of wondering in what capacity, will it be media, will it be coaching? This is a more stable way of being involved.”
Butt is content to have Lim on board at Salford. “To get someone like Peter in who we’ve known for 10 15 years now that we trust, we’re already in business with him, so we know the kind of person he is and the kind of drive he’s got and the expertise: it would have been really really stupid on our behalf not to have him on board,” he said.
How do the Class of 92 know Lim? “Just through United,” said Butt. “He used to run cafés, sporting clubs in Singapore, the red cafés football franchises, and we’ve just become really good friends with him, go over to see him quite a bit with families and stuff and he comes over here and we go out for meals, he’s just genuinely a good man who’s really interested in helping, he’s got numerous hospitals, numerous businesses, with him it all seems to be about giving. He’s a very clever man.”
Class of 92: Out of their League starts on BBC1 in early September
