If the intent was to avoid fanfare and fulsome tributes, it
failed. No matter how low key the announcement appeared and
although it was widely expected, it was news nonetheless. The
confirmation that Paul Scholes was leaving Manchester United's
playing staff generated the paeans of praise that seem to embarrass
Oldham's favourite mute.
Ten days earlier, however, United did manage to release a
midfielder without undue attention. Timing was a factor: the
statement that Owen Hargreaves would depart was made some 90
minutes before a dramatic conclusion to the Premier League season
which featured Blackpool's relegation at Old Trafford, while United
paraded the trophy. It became a footnote.
The differences between the long-serving local and the
Anglo-German-Canadian Welshman are considerable. The countdown to
Scholes' exit proceeded over a couple of months, with his
valedictory appearance coming against Barcelona while Hargreaves
was a lesser-spotted figure, infrequently in the directors' box,
let alone on the pitch, even before he officially joined the ranks
of the club's ex-players.
Scholes' artistry, modesty and loyalty accounted for his
accolades. A man who cost United nothing gave them plenty in a
676-game career. In contrast, Hargreaves made just 26 starts from a
four-year spell that, including transfer fee and wages, cost in
excess of £30 million.
Scholes remained an influence until the end, a factor in the
comeback against Blackburn that clinched the trophy. Hargreaves
became a strange hybrid of forgotten figure and unfunny joke, his
final two seasons entailing a 30-second cameo against Sunderland
and a five-minute outing against Wolves before, inevitably, he
departed injured. Scholes' future, on the United coaching staff, is
assured; Hargreaves' is uncertain, with his problems seeming both
physical and psychological.
Yet the sense of disappointment should not detract from the
memory of what a formidable performer Hargreaves was, albeit
briefly, for United. In the Champions League-winning campaign of
2008, he played three different positions in the last three rounds:
his favoured central midfield role in the quarter-final against
Roma, right-back in both encounters with Barcelona and then on the
right of midfield when United met Chelsea in Moscow.
His versatility was a consequence of a combination of attributes
that no team-mate possessed: Darren Fletcher and Anderson can also
offer energy in midfield, while Michael Carrick screens the back
four. None, however, could ally defensive discipline with such
forceful running. In a country where natural holding midfielders
are a rarity, Hargreaves was an exception. He was also more than
that.
It explains why neither United nor England have found a suitable
alternative. The manner of Barcelona's supremacy in two Champions
League finals has been such that it is hard to argue one player
would have made a game-changing difference. Yet, if speed, stamina
and an intelligent understanding of the game are required to
disrupt the Catalans' passing and pressing game, Hargreaves is
better equipped than any of his team-mates to try.
The same is true, too, of England's World Cup defeat to Germany.
It is not merely a grounding in the Bundesliga that suggests
Hargreaves might have kept track of Mesut Ozil rather better than
Gareth Barry managed to do. If that was the nadir for the
Manchester City midfielder, the fact he has 46 caps, predominantly
as a holding midfielder, is a sign of an inability to replace
Hargreaves.
Nothing benefits a reputation quite like absentia in defeat, of
course, and Hargreaves' standing, which was transformed in England
by the 2006 World Cup, remains rooted in the past. A two-year
spell, beginning with his exploits in one adopted country's
colours, but on another's shores, and culminating in the final
months of his first campaign at Old Trafford cemented a status as
one of the most efficient players of his generation.
Three years after he effectively faded from the first-team
picture, however, it appears the search for a new Hargreaves has
been put on hold. Scott Parker, the closest equivalent, has been
belated granted a chance in a national team where Steven Gerrard,
Jack Wilshere and Barry have been deployed out of position.
At Old Trafford, meanwhile, the priorities appear different:
newer, younger defenders, a successor to Edwin van der Sar in goal,
a man to accept Scholes' mantle as the creator and, possibly,
Dimitar Berbatov's replacement in attack. It is, arguably, only
against elite opposition, where no two of Sir Alex Ferguson's
central midfielders have formed a long-term partnership and where
the selection of a trio is often both enforced and an
acknowledgement of inferiority in that department, where Hargreaves
has been missed. But on such games are trophies decided.
The need for a newcomer is complicated by the difficulty in
locating one. Because, while his many ailments prompted mockery and
there had long been a quiet acceptance around Old Trafford that his
United career belonged in the past tense, as a defensive central
midfielder, Hargreaves had every quality except one: fitness.