Scholes earns final shot at redemption with screamer

I DON’T want charity, if I play in any final, I want it to be on merit, not sentiment” — Paul Scholes, earlier this month, responding to Alex Ferguson’s insistence that, should Manchester United reach Moscow for the Champions League final on May 21, the ageing midfielder would be the first name on his team-sheet.

Ferguson does not usually do sentiment, but having seen Scholes robbed of the chance to play in the final against Bayern Munich nine years ago, sentiment was going to play a part all right.

But Scholes needn’t worry. When Ferguson draws up his team-sheet in the Luzhniki Stadium next month, Scholes’s name will be first on it. And it won’t be charity. If ever a player earned a place in a cup final, Scholes did, with a spell-binding display to drive United to victory against Barcelona at Old Trafford last night.

As if to emphasise to Ferguson he was no charity case, Scholes rubber-stamped his worth with the goal that sealed United’s ticket to Moscow.

With the sense of burning injustice that accompanied Roy Keane’s suspension in 1999, Scholes became something of a forgotten victim of the yellow mist that descended on the Stadio Delle Alpi during the epic semi-final victory against Juventus.

Keane had dragged United to the final, never more so than after he had received his booking for a nothing tackle on Zinedine Zidane, so it was though his defining moment in the Nou Camp had been taken away from him. Scholes? Nobody can even remember how he picked up the booking that resulted in him sitting alongside the Cork man in the stands as United triumphed against Bayern Munich. Yet there he was in the Nou Camp, in his grey club suit, sheepishly marching alongside Keane, each holding the European Cup, through a guard of honour formed by team-mates that had just won the trophy on the pitch. Scholes couldn’t have looked more depressed had he just been wheel-clamped.

As the seasons have passed, United’s travails in Europe had seen Scholes’s hopes of redemption in another Champions League final fade. Keane’s died along with United’s decline.

The San Siro semi-final against AC Milan last season appeared to be Scholes’s final destination in this competition, but his 33-year-old legs have sustained him through another campaign and Barca had provided another shot at redemption.

This was his moment and he knew it. Like Mark Hughes in the 1991 European Cup-Winners’ Cup Final against the same opponents, it was the opportunity to banish years of frustration and right the wrong once and for all.

Hughes had unfinished business against Barca, having spent two tortuous years at the Nou Camp before returning to Old Trafford in 1988. Dismissed as a one-dimensional target man by the Catalans, he scored twice in Rotterdam as Ferguson’s side emerged victorious.

Scholes was possessed of the same determination against Frank Rijkaard’s collection of inconsistent superstars. He was quick in the tackle and the heartbeat of United’s play. Rio Ferdinand may have been wearing the armband, but Scholes was the leader of Ferguson’s men.

The old ghosts were still there, though. As a player that collects bookings like a honey-pot attracts bees, Scholes appeared terrified of even attempting to whisk the ball off the toes of Lionel Messi whenever the Barcelona prodigy appeared on the radar. Once bitten, twice shy.

With Cristiano Ronaldo subdued again on the big stage, Scholes bore the responsibility of unlocking doors for United. And with Wayne Rooney sidelined with a hip injury, Scholes’s burden was even greater.

The former England midfielder perversely shines when Rooney is absent, though, as if freed to attack the spaces Rooney often claims as his own. If Rooney had been fit, he would most likely have already taken the position from which Scholes scored.

But fate decreed that Scholes was to be there and never has a player been more deserving of the joy created by the swing of a boot.