Paul Scholes earns a salary of about £3 million a year, which is more than enough to meet his needs. It has bought him a couple of racehorses and a nice house in Saddleworth, near Oldham. It has paid for a holiday home, where he takes about a dozen of his family and friends every summer. For a man of basic tastes, that amounts to a life of plenty.

You could mount a very strong argument that his income is still way below the market rate if Rio Ferdinand can earn at least 50 per cent more from Manchester United and Frank Lampard can demand at least double that figure from Chelsea — but it is not a case that will be put with any great force by Scholes himself.

There are no outrageous demands, no holding the club to ransom, no leaks from agents about clandestine approaches from Juventus. Contract talks are concluded in a matter of minutes because Scholes, like Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs, seems grateful for the opportunity to play for a great institution rather than regarding United as fortunate to have him.

When he hangs up his boots, we will miss his tight turns, his raking passes and the increasingly rare, cannonball shots. But most of all we may miss what he represents, which flies in the face of just about every trend in modern football. Scholes is anticelebrity, anti-greed, the very opposite of flash and grasping. That does not make him unique, but it does set him among the last of an old and dying breed.

It is one of the reasons why Scholes will carry so much goodwill on to the pitch in Moscow tomorrow night, along with the knowledge that this European Cup final has been a long time in coming.

Scholes, famously, was suspended from the 1999 final when victory over Bayern Munich completed the historic treble. Roy Keane was absent too and it was the captain’s omission that attracted all the sympathetic headlines. Not for the first time, Scholes had been overlooked. It has been the story of his understated life, although you will not hear him complaining.

When he scored the superb winner against Barcelona in the semi-final, second leg, every media outlet craved a word from the match-winning hero but Scholes refused all approaches. What was to be gained by talking? He had already reminded us of his prowess on the pitch, a well-timed nudge as it happened, given that he had not scored in eight months.

Indeed, there had been a sense earlier in the season that he might, finally, be drifting to the margins of the United squad, after a period when his future in the game had been threatened by an eye condition.

That illness was the greatest crisis in his club career, far surpassing the brief threat which arrived in the form of Juan Sebastián Verón in 2001-02. The Argentinian took Scholes’s place in midfield, forcing the Englishman to take up residence as a second striker behind Ruud van Nistelrooy. He looked very unhappy there and had a well-publicised spat with Sir Alex Ferguson over playing in a Worthington Cup game at Arsenal, when he refused to board the coach to London.

It was a reminder that while Scholes may prefer to keep his head down, he is no pushover. He showed his single-mindedness by retiring from international duty immediately after Euro 2004, in large part out of anger that he had been shoved out to the left wing by Sven-Göran Eriksson. He had become a father and was also increasingly tired of the circus that trailed the England team.

The nearest he came to reversing his decision was at the start of Steve McClaren’s reign, but he eventually declined the offer to return and has no intention of allowing Fabio Capello to change his mind despite the Italian’s approaches. Capello knows that Scholes, at 33, has technical qualities, and an ability to retain possession, which would make him precious in an anxious England team.

They are among the virtues that led Sir Bobby Charlton, in his autobiography, to describe Scholes as his favourite United player of all time — quite an accolade when one thinks of Charlton’s breadth of experience from Duncan Edwards to George Best, Denis Law to Eric Cantona.

“I love both his nous and his conviction that he will find a way to win, to make the killer pass or produce the decisive volley with such instant authority and nerve,” Charlton wrote.

He went on to describe Scholes as representing “the very heart of Old Trafford”. “Paul is so good now that it is always the greatest disappointment for me when I do not see his name on the teamsheet.” There appears no danger of omission in the Luzhniki Stadium with Scholes promised a place by Ferguson. He will start, but will he finish? Fatigued, he needed to be taken off after 77 minutes of the semi-final against Barcelona and the United manager will surely be concerned about the composition of his midfield against a team as powerful as Chelsea.

With Keane alongside him, Scholes could form the other half of a two-man partnership. With the Irishman gone, Ferguson has increasingly sought to depend on a three-man line across the middle to protect Scholes from being overrun by younger and more dynamic opposition.

“I’m not telling the manager who to pick,” Giggs said, “but Scholesy deserves to play because he’s a great player. His form has been brilliant and his goal against Barcelona got us to the final. To play with a player like him is a privilege. He does things other players can’t do.”

Scholes stands alone to the extent that his team-mates, such as Giggs, do not have a clue what he will do when he retires, a day that cannot be so far away. Perhaps he will sit at home and try to figure out what to do with all the money that has been a happy by-product, not the motivation, of his playing years.

Life and times

Paul Scholes was born on November 16, 1974 in Salford.

Supports Oldham Athletic and his childhood hero was Frankie Bunn, the Oldham forward

Hates the media and rarely gives interviews. Prefers to spend his spare time with his family or playing golf.

Has won eight League titles at United, three FA Cups, one European Cup and one League Cup.

Scored on his full England debut against Italy in June 1997

Retired from international football after Euro 2004. Scored 14 goals in 66 appearances.

Nearly left Old Trafford in 2001 after he was picked to play in a second-string League Cup team away to Arsenal.

Only glaring weakness in his game is his inability to master the fine art of tackling.