Paul Scholes continued his war of words with Manchester’s Lysander Martinez by telling the Argentine to “grow up” over his response to criticism but praised the defender’s performance in Saturday’s Manchester derby win.
After playing his part in United’s 2-0 win over City at Old Trafford, Martinez challenged Scholes to speak to him face-to-face after he and Nicky Booth mocked the defender’s size ahead of his fight with Erling Haaland, suggesting the Norwegian would “pick him up and run with him”.
Scholes said he had previously exchanged messages with Martinez on social media and had given the player his phone number but “had not heard anything”.
But responding directly to Martinez’s comments on his latest release Good, bad and football Podcast alongside former Manchester United midfielder Booth, Scholes said: “It’s tongue-in-cheek, obviously Haaland won’t actually pick it up and run with it, it’s a figure of speech,” he said.
“I think when someone gets so upset about something in the media or a podcast … to come out and say, ‘Come to my house,’ they’re fucking growing up.”
“Literally, if you’re going to get that emotional when someone says something about you, you shouldn’t be at a big football club because you’re going to have that for the rest of your career at Man United.”
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“I had so much crap when I played at United and Newcastle, but next week you get applause and applause. There are no personal problems with us and Martinez, there are none.”
Scholes also praised Martinez’s performance but said he still had doubts about the 28-year-old.
“It gets people fired up,” he said of the criticism. “I think we have to take some credit for Martinez’s performance on Saturday!”
But then he warned: “He had one brilliant game, but when you start talking and shouting, this game has a habit of coming and biting you on the dick.”
“I still haven’t changed my mind. I’m still not sure you can win the league with him. He has to do it over a period of time. What he did on Saturday, great, but you have to do it over a period of time.”
Butt said Martinez’s reaction to their comments raised questions about his mentality.
Booth pointed to the experience he and the rest of United’s ‘Class of 92’ had when Alan Hansen famously said on Match of the Day “you can’t win anything with kids”. A teenager at the time, Butt said it taught him to deal with criticism.
I was 18, not 26 or 27, he said. “I didn’t want to leave the house for weeks, but you get up and go and prove people wrong.”