How many times did Paul Scholes play left midfield for England?

Ask most people and they will either tell you that the reason Paul Scholes didn’t have the England career he deserved is because we had nobody else to play on the left wing and so he was shunted out there, or that he was sacraficed as Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard played centrally. But how often did it really happen?

The problem position

Remember the days of England’s problem left side of midfield? When John Barnes was coming to an end, for over 10 years there were struggles to find the individual to play down the left channel. Wayne Bridge and Ashley Cole played in tandem, experiments were made with Jason Wilcox, Trevor Sinclair, Kieron Dyer and Stewart Downing, along with many more.

In the early-00’s, this became an obsession when discussing England. Have England now produced several naturally left-sided or left-footed players to fill the void and mute this conversation? Perhaps so. The fashionable 4-2-3-1 and 4-3-3 formations have meant that wide players who cut inside are en vogue and the left-sided problem has now been forgotten.

The peak of the debate was probably Euro 2004, where England had four exceptionally talented midfielders – captain David Beckham, Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard and Paul Scholes. Sven Goran Eriksson understandably wanted to make use of this talent and in trying to select all four experimented with a midfield diamond as well as using Gerrard and Scholes in wide areas.

Scholes won his penultimate cap – and scored – in England’s final group game of Euro 2004 against Croatia

How often did Scholes play on the left?

On reflection, Paul Scholes’ England career seems defined by how often he played at left midfield. He supposedly retired because of it and it is believed he played there so often that he was “wasted” in that area.

According to the excellent englandfootballonline.com, under Glenn Hoddle – between his debut in 1997 until 1999 – Scholes won 14 caps, scored 4 goals and played as a left midfielder once. He made two appearances when Howard Wilkinson was caretaker in 1999 and 2000, but played in the centre on both occasions. For Kevin Keegan, from 1999-2000, Scholes scored 6 goals in 14 appearances but did not feature down the left.

Scholes’ final England manager was Sven Goran Eriksson, between 2001-04, where he won most of his caps. He played 36 times under Eriksson and after 20 appearances for the Swede in a central role, Eriksson opted to experiment with Scholes at left midfield. He fulfilled this role a further six times.

In summary:

Hoddle – 14 caps, 4 goals, 1 appearance at left midfield
Wilkinson – 2 caps, 0 goals, 0 appearances at left midfield
Keegan – 14 caps, 6 goals, 0 appearances at left midfield
Eriksson – 36 caps, 4 goals, 7 appearances at left midfield

In total, Scholes played for England 66 times, playing at left midfield on eight occasions. Is that enough to define or even supposedly ruin an international career?

Scholes’ struggles

When Frank Lampard began regularly playing for England in 2003, it was here that Eriksson started experimenting. With Michael Owen and Wayne Rooney as forwards and the aforementioned quartet in midfield, he found it tough to leave anyone out.

What is also worth noting is that after Scholes scored against Greece in an away qualifier in June 2001, he’d then scored 13 goals in 35 caps for England. A fantastic record for a midfielder at international level, especially one not taking penalties. However, over the next 31 caps, he scored just once more before international retirement. It became a huge burden with which he was regularly questioned and a long barren spell that seems so unlikely now, for a player so well remembered for chipping in with his share of goals.

At Manchester United he also scored far less goals as his career went on and he offered different qualities to the team, but for England it was headline news and much scrutinised.

Despite the goal barren, Eriksson remembers Scholes fondly too, saying in his book: “Scholes was England’s best football player. It was impossible to take the ball from him, and he never mishit a pass. He did not belong on the left flank but that’s where we needed him most.”

What is also telling is how much Scholes struggled with his asthma at tournaments, in hot and humid conditions. Eriksson claims that when England practiced penalties at Euro 2004 before their quarter-final with Portugal, that Scholes did not join in. “If I last an hour that’s good,” Scholes said, according to his manager.

Of course, Scholes did on occasion also play wide left under Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United. When Juan Sebastien Veron joined the club, he would deploy Scholes on the left when either Ryan Giggs was injured, or even to play the Welshman further forward.

Beckham and Scholes congratulate Veron after scoring against Olympiakos in October 2002

“Playing on the left was never a problem. I played on the left for United I don’t know how many times. I probably had my most successful time scoring goals in that position so it was never a problem.

I just got fed up (with England). When you are going to a team, you want to be part of a team and play well, but there are individuals who are after personal glory. That is the biggest problem with English players – most of them are too selfish.”

Paul Scholes, ‘My Story’ (2011)

A midfielder reborn

His form unquestionably dipped in the mid-2000’s and he had to find a way to combat that – Ferguson’s method was using him as a deep-lying playmaker later in his career. Not playing international football also helped with recovery, too.

Scholes had a resurgence at club level late in his career and generally it seems that it is on reflection that people like to see his talent lost and wasted. A place in the 2006-07 PFA Team of the Year, along with being a key part of the side that won the 2008 Champions League allowed Scholes to gain recognition in the twilight of his career. League titles in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011 and 2013 cemented Scholes’ legacy.

As late as 2010, Fabio Capello tried to talk Scholes – then 35 – out of international retirement to go to the World Cup in South Africa. It was acts like this that reminded people of those final few appearances under Eriksson, where he featured wide left in rotation with Gerrard.

In summary, Scholes was a hugely talented player – and some say the best of a generation – but his England career was not stifled because he played eight out of 66 games at left midfield.

Richard Clark | @richardtheclark | @BlogoftheNet_