Giggs not planning to jump ship

Wales captain Ryan Giggs has vowed to continue playing for his country until the end of his career.

And the Manchester United star, 32 in November, believes he will still be around leading his country five years from now.

Giggs will complete a personal ambition of captaining Wales against England in Cardiff – standing opposite his friend David Beckham – convinced he can still achieve the seemingly impossible task of taking Wales to a major finals.

Cardiff-born Giggs has brought hard-nosed reality to his role as Wales skipper, insisting the youngsters in the Welsh team seize the moment and play “the game of their lives.”

Giggs has never been a dreamer. He only wants achievers and it is a quality that has been driven into him by his Old Trafford mentor Alex Ferguson, and something he aims to force feed into Wales’ new generation.

He will take personal pride in shaking Beckham’s hand before the game, saying: “It’s great for me to captain my country in such a big game, and against friends like David Beckham and my United team mates.

“Becks is captaining England and maybe the pair of us 10 to 15 years ago, when we started out in Manchester United’s youth team, would never have dreamt of achieving something like both of us captaining our countries together.”

But sentimentality is soon swept from his mind: “It is still my motivation to get to a major championships, we have come close. I have always felt we can do it, we just didn’t take it against Russia to get to the Euro 2004 finals (in a play-off).

“I still believe that in the four or five years that I have still got left playing for Wales, there will be another chance to get to a finals. I intend to be around to see it happen.

“When I finish I will be able to say ‘I have done everything I can for my country’, I am sure of that. But I am a long way from that point yet, I am thinking of what I can still achieve for Wales and the end is a long way off.

“I will be sticking with the Wales set-up right to the end of my career. It is a rebuilding process and I aim to be part of it. The end for me is still four or five years away.”

And he urges his young colleagues to grab their chance of glory.

“I hope the players will produce the performances of their lives. You shouldn’t be scared, you should want to mark Wayne Rooney and David Beckham out of the game. You should want to score goals against Rio Ferdinand and class defenders.

“Our youngsters will be nervous because they haven’t played in front of 70,000, but if they want to be top players they have got to play in this sort of atmosphere and enjoy it.

“I sense a team spirit and an atmosphere that is good. We need to get minds sharp and be ready for them.

“You need to enjoy it because it might not come around again. You must come off at the end having given everything, that’s all that can be asked of people. England are quality, and if they perform to the best of their ability it will be hard for us.”

But he added: “We must not think like that, we have got to do what we want to do and get a decent result.

“I’m motivated now by seeing the young players coming through. That excites me. Seeing young players getting the chance to cement their places in the team, we are building for four or five years and that is what we are slowly doing now.

“The signs are there that we are on the right lines, we have come up with some decent performances of late.

“The youngsters could freeze, but I am confident that won’t happen. We have been confident and enjoying training and everyone has been looking forward to it.

“I am not a vocal captain, I try to lead by example. When I was a kid I looked up to Ian Rush and Mark Hughes and the way they conducted themselves so now I hope the youngsters can do that with me.”