HE is regarded as one of the greatest footballers of his generation but Ryan Giggs has never been far from controversy.
His name conjures up pictures of two distinctly different men – the pitch legend who dazzled at Manchester United and the love cheat accused of abusive behaviour.
Earlier this year, Giggs’ brother, Rhodri – left deeply wounded after Ryan’s infamous affair with his wife – told the legendary player to “grow the f*** up” after “banging everything in sight.”
As The Sun reveals Giggs is about to become a dad again aged 50, could it be that he has finally taken on his brother’s advice?
A source said Ryan – who already has two kids – and lingerie model Zara Charles, who has a child from a previous relationship, were “thrilled at the prospect of becoming parents again”.
The source added: “They have a solid, loving relationship and are building a long-term future together.”
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It follows a tumultuous few years after Giggs was arrested in November 2020 on allegations of assaulting ex-partner Kate Greville as well as being a coercive and controlling partner.
He was also charged with assaulting Kate’s sister, Emma.
Giggs stepped back from his role as Wales manager as scandal engulfed him for a second time – the first being the notorious affair with his sister-in-law, Natasha.
While the case against him collapsed at court, his reputation had been yet again tarnished, with his own barrister called him a “cheat, a womaniser, a liar and an adulterer”.
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Girlfriend Zara Charles, 36, stood by him throughout the case.
But, as they look forward to a new life together, the question will be whether Giggs can rebuild the image he once had as a clean-living family man.
Rollercoaster childhood
Giggs made his name playing for the most famous football club in the world after he was scouted at the age of 14 by Sir Alex Ferguson in 1987.
Ferguson pulled up outside Giggs’ family home in Salford in a gold-coloured Mercedes and signed the young player after watching him perform at Manchester City’s School of Excellence.
The Giggs family moved to the Manchester suburb when Ryan was just six and he said his first memories were making friends with kids in the street and playing football.
His dad, Danny Wilson, is a former rugby union and Wales international rugby player, while mum Lynne worked as a children’s nurse.
But their marriage was not an entirely happy one, according to Giggs.
He wrote in his 2006 autobiography: “It was a fiery relationship which would occasionally spill over into real unpleasantness. There were many arguments, and too many of them became physical.”
His parents finally split when he was 16 and Giggs said it may have “contributed to that inner steel where I can block things out”.
He said: “When I was playing football, I never thought about the arguments between my mum and dad. Everyone’s childhood shapes who they are and what they do.”
String of flings
Giggs’ grit and determination on the field made him one of the most decorated players of all time.
He made his first-team debut aged 17 and went on to become the first player to win two consecutive PFA Young Player of the Year awards.
As his star rose on the pitch, his boyish looks – along with fancy cars, a luxury house and designer gear- bought inevitable adulation from women.
His first high-profile relationship was with TV presenter Dani Behr.
One of the first big showbiz-footballer couples, they split after a year and Dani later said: “It was difficult because of manager Alex Ferguson.
“I lived in London and Ryan was in Manchester and he didn’t like his team travelling a long way to that was difficult. He controlled Ryan.”
Dani went on to date Les Ferdinand before marrying restauranter Carl Harwin in 2005.
There were three people in my marriage and one of them was Ryan Giggs
Damian Burke
It girl Davinia Taylor, the daughter of a multi-millionaire, was his next regular girlfriend in 1995 but Giggs said it never got to the moving-in together stage because she was only 17 to his 22.
The pair were seen arguing in a nightclub, which allegedly ended in Giggs throwing a glass in Davinia’s direction that smashed on a nearby pillar.
When the couple split, brief flings with models Paula Hamilton and actress Patsy Kensit followed, but it wasn’t long before he and Davinia were back on with talk of wedding bells.
But it all came to nothing when the heiress told the papers that Ryan didn’t give her enough attention and spent too much time with his pals.
Giggs’ legendary football career
During his glittering career with Manchester United, Ryan Giggs became known as one of the best players Britain has ever produced. His career in stats:
1986 – The year Sir Alex Ferguson watches Giggs score a hat during a match for Salford Boys.
1987 – Ferguson turns up at Giggs house and signs him u,p promising to turn him professional within three years.
1989 – Giggs captains England at schoolboy level, playing at Wembley against Germany.
1991 – He makes his Manchester United debut aged 17.
963 – Times played for Manchester United between 1991 and 2014
632 – Number of appearances in the Premier League
109 – Goals scored in the PL
162 – Number of goal assists in the PL
13 – Number of Premier League medals
4 – FA Cup medals
9 – FA Community Shields medals
64 – Number of times Giggs played for the Wales national team between 1991-2007
2007 – given an OBE for services to football
Their final split came as Manchester United stablemate David Beckham started dating ‘Posh Spice’ Victoria Beckham and they became the couple of the moment.
In 1998 Ryan and new sweetheart Emma Gardner suffered heartbreak when they lost a much-wanted baby.
Ryan said the miscarriage taught him there is more to life than football but, again, long-lasting love was not to be.
Giggs finally met the woman he was to marry, Stacey Cooke, in 2002 at a music festival.
By the time they wed in a low-key ceremony in 2007, they already had four-year-old daughter Liberty and baby son Zachary.
The marriage was rocked by Giggs’ infidelity as an exasperated Stacey stuck by him.
Three years after son Zachary was born, Giggs had a six-month fling with Welsh model and Big Brother contestant Imogen Thomas.
He took out a super injunction to stop The Sun revealing their affair, which led to weeks of speculation until MP John Hemming used parliamentary privilege to name the footballer in a Commons debate in 2011.
Giggs lost £150,000 in legal fees in the process.
It soon emerged the Premier League star had also been sleeping with sister-in-law Natasha Lever, who was married to his younger brother Rhodri, also a footballer.
The affair started when Stacey was pregnant with the couple’s first child.
Natasha revealed that she aborted Ryan’s baby weeks before marrying his brother Rhodri, who is three years younger. She said the cheating footballer gave her £500 toward the costs of the procedure.
Stacey was devastated but the pair stayed together.
His relationship with brother Rhodri has never recovered.
‘Grow the f*** up’
In January Rhodri laid into his brother on The Central Club podcast, saying he could have done serious damage to his brother had he sold stories about the affair.
Rhodri said: “I’m not that bitter and not that twisted, but he needs to be careful, because I could have.
Giggs’ love life under the microscope
By Jo Hemmings, relationship expert
To say Ryan Giggs has had a chequered relationship history would be an understatement.
Being catapulted into fame at a young age – Giggs was only 14 – followed by his parents splitting up two years later after a fiery and abusive relationship, it’s perhaps no wonder that he ended up in a series of poor relationships alongside reckless and controlling behaviour.
Without the anchors of a stable parental relationship, nor the usual hanging out with friends and growing up in a typical teenage environment, it seems that Giggs took a long time to understand the maturity, compromise and effort that having an enduring relationship takes.
It’s almost as if he has lived his life in reverse – stardom when just a teen and all the adulation that goes with that, robbed him of the opportunity to grow up in a healthy, grounded environment, looking to the future for his ambitions rather than living them out at young and impressionable age.
Now he’s 50, a moment when a lot of men take stock of their lives for personal and professional reasons, wondering if they have achieved enough, Giggs – with the blessing of his former wife Stacey – seems to have found the emotional security and balance missing from his youth and can focus on his personal life and fulfilment moving forward.
“A lot of people could have, but they didn’t, and it’s all from him making the choices he’s made, no one else. You can’t go through life and this nice, innocent family man when you’re banging everything in sight. How old is he, 48, 49? He needs to grow the f*** up.’”
Giggs’ long-suffering wife Stacey finally walked away from the marriage in 2016 after tiring of her husband’s womanising ways.
The Sun reported how the final straw came when Stacey heard the footie hero had flirted with waitresses at a restaurant he owns close to their £6million mansion in Worsley, near Manchester.
You can’t go through life and this nice, innocent family man when you’re banging everything in sight
Rhodri Giggs on his brother
Their divorce was a costly affair.
He fought over giving his wife a chunk of his extensive fortune but they came to an agreement out of court.
A year later Giggs was pictured with PR expert Kate Greville on holiday in Italy. They met when she was tasked with helping to plan the launch of Giggs and Gary Neville’s Hotel Football business.
It was the start of yet another stormy relationship.
Kate’s ex husband Damian Burke claims she dumped him by text and told a pal: “There were three people in my marriage and one of them was Ryan Giggs.”
His words echoed that of late Princess Diana who famously said there were three people in her marriage.
In August 2022 Giggs appeared in court charged with causing Kate, 37, actual bodily harm and engaging in controlling and coercive behaviour between December 2017 and November 2020.
He also denied assaulting Kate’s sister, Emma.
Giggs was accused of headbutting Kate during a row as well as trying to control her.
She told Manchester Crown Court how she “became a slave to his every need and every demand” and alleged that Giggs once told her she ‘did not deserve to be a parent’ during a blazing row.
Giggs was also accused of having ‘full-on’ relationships with eight other women during the ‘toxic’ six-year relationship
During the case an email emerged in which Giggs accused Kate of making him look stupid over a trip to Scotland with his friends.
He wrote: ‘’Only an evil, horrible c*** does that. Utterly astonishing. Now I look like a t*** telling my three of my friends I am going to Scotland at the weekend. I simply cannot believe you f****** did that. I am so f****** mad right now and I am scaring myself because I could do anything.’”
Giggs’ own barrister told the court that being a cheat, a womaniser, a liar and an adulterer isn’t a crime.
Chris Daw QC told jurors his client was not on trial for “being flirtatious”, being a “compulsive womaniser”, an “adulterer” or a “liar” or a “cheat”.
The QC said. “If they were crimes, just think how many prisons we would need.”
After a highly-charged four-week trial a jury was discharged after failing to reach verdicts on any of the charges.
A retrial was planned for July 2023 but the CPS dropped the charges shortly before.
Prosecutor Peter Wright KC said Kate had “indicated an unwillingness” to give evidence in a re-trial as giving evidence in the first trial had “taken its toll” on her and her sister, Emma.
New chapter
Giggs, who has won 64 caps for his country, stepped down as manager of the Wales international team in the wake of the allegations.
He is now a director at Salford City, which he part owns.
Giggs has had a glittering career, winning 13 Premier League titles, two Champions League trophies, four FA Cups and three League Cups.
Nobody can doubt his prowess on the field and he has been compared to the late, great George Best.
Whether he can now deliver off the field and finally commit long-term to a loving relationship remains to be seen, but friends are confident.
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A source said: “Ryan was nervous about what his kids would think but they’ve got to know Zara over the last few years and really like her.
“They’re happy because they know he’s happy.”
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
