Opinion: Our writers’ favourite Scholes goals
Among the myriad joys of Paul Scholes was his sense of timing, one of the outstanding examples of which came against Panathinaikos in 2000. With United 2-1 ahead at the end of a tight Champions League encounter with Greece’s finest, the Reds maintained possession for over a minute to run down the clock. Then, with the 29th pass of an epic move, Scholes upped the tempo with a diagonal pass to Dwight Yorke, drifted in behind Teddy Sheringham to accept the striker’s delightful flick and then applied the most graceful coup de grace with an impish chip from the edge of the area. Pure class, pure Scholesy.
IAN McLEISH – ARSENAL (APRIL 2004)
It’s not an edge-of-the-box worldie, a Barca-busting classic or a last-minute derby clincher, but in the context of the match and the season, and in the midst of the sheer visceral thrill of a pumped-up semi-final, this is undoubtedly one of my favourite Scholesy goals. In April 2004, life at United wasn’t especially rosy. Arsenal’s ‘Invincibles’ were 12 points ahead of us in the league at this point and ready to wrest the Premier League trophy back from our grip. With all due respect to Sunderland and Millwall, contesting the second semi-final the next day, this game at Villa Park was looking like the de-facto FA Cup final. And with Wenger’s men holding the advantage over Chelsea after the first leg of their Champions League quarter-finals (we’d been put out early by Porto), there was already growing talk of a Treble for the Gunners, just five years after our glorious campaign. Shudder. The truth is, that season, they were just better than us – although, despite that, in three games in the league and the Community Shield already in 2003/04, they still hadn’t beaten us. And in a one-off game, with Fergie at the helm and a bitterly fought rivalry firing up our players, who’d bet against us? What made this goal extra special in the circumstances was the quartet of players responsible for it, four men who hated to lose and particularly loved beating Arsenal. A loose ball was picked up in the middle of the park by Roy Keane, and, four touches later, the ball was in the net. The captain quickly laid it off to Gary Neville, who played a brilliant forward pass to Ryan Giggs, who centred it for the oncoming Scholesy to smash it past Jens Lehmann. Get in there!
