Ryan Giggs is the Premier League’s most decorated player and a successful former Wales manager, so why is he seen by some as being out in the cold in football?

Despite all that he has achieved in the game, 18 months after domestic abuse charges against him were dropped, the 51-year-old’s only role in the sport is as director of football at Salford City – the League Two club he co-owns with his friends and former Manchester United team-mates.

Formally found not guilty after his ex-girlfriend declined to give evidence in a retrial, Giggs – who always denied the charges – was said to be determined to rebuild his managerial career.

But with even the Premier League yet to find a place for him in their Hall of Fame, and more than four years since his final match in charge of Wales, some wonder when – or whether – he will make it back.

More than a quarter of a century has passed since Giggs scored one of the FA Cup’s iconic goals, his mazy run and finish against Arsenal in 1999 securing Manchester United’s place in the final.

On Saturday, in the same competition, Giggs will return to the national spotlight when Salford City make the short journey to nearby Manchester City in a game being shown live on BBC One.

Giggs has been a regular presence in Salford’s Moor Lane dugout in recent months and will surely relish the occasion against the club where he started his playing career before joining Manchester United aged 14.

But for many viewers, it will be a first sighting of Giggs for some time, and a reminder of the way his managerial career was derailed by controversy.

A key member of Manchester United’s historic 1999 Treble-winning squad, Giggs had spells as both player-coach and interim manager at Old Trafford. He then became Wales boss in January 2018 and led them to qualification for Euro 2020 – played in the summer of 2021 because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

But following his arrest on suspicion of assault in November 2020, he stood down, before formally resigning from the role in 2022.

Giggs then stood trial, with jurors failing to reach majority verdicts on charges he had assaulted his former girlfriend Kate Greville and her sister Emma in the same incident in November 2020.

The jury also failed to reach a majority verdict on the charge that he had subjected Greville to controlling and coercive behaviour during a three-year period.

Denying ever assaulting a woman, Giggs admitted to being unfaithful in all his previous relationships.

And while his barrister Chris Daw KC said the allegations of physical abuse were the lies of a “scorned” woman, a number of abusive messages he sent to Greville were read out in court, with Giggs admitting threatening her in one.

The Crown Prosecution Service’s (CPS) subsequent decision in 2023 to withdraw the charges, after Greville said she felt “worn down” by the process and could not face testifying again, meant the abandonment of a planned retrial.

Giggs had been cleared, with Daw saying his “deeply relieved” client intended “to rebuild his life and a career as an innocent man”.

But with his reputation – already tainted by extra-marital affairs – having suffered a further blow from the revelations in the original trial, his future was uncertain.