When does the great performer say that it is time to go, that he can no longer muster an echo of a thunderous past? Will he be the first - or last - to know?
No doubt the cynical view is that Gary Neville is merely reaching down for the handiest piece of hype for his Old Trafford testimonial next week. Yet he does happen to be raising one of the most poignant questions in sport.
When does the great performer say that it is time to go, that he can no longer muster much more than the faint echo of a thunderous past? Will he be the first – or the last – to know?
Neville is emphatic that in the case of his 36-year-old former Manchester United team-mate Paul Scholes it is not yet the moment. He argues Scholes should risk one more Indian summer at the start of the next season, when he will be bearing down on his 37th birthday.
"He is still too good to retire," says Neville, "but, of course, being him he will listen only to himself and not someone like me."
If this is true, and Scholes confirms the growing suspicion that he is about to quit, it is reasonable to presume he conducted his most biting conversation with himself while walking off the Wembley pitch last month after receiving an inevitable red card for his horrendous tackle on Manchester City's Pablo Zabaleta.
Even by his own standards in the area of the game he never began to master, it had been a monument to poor timing and faulty technique – and some even suggested raw angst. However, for some observers the implications seemed to run far deeper – and even to the point of making them wonder if this was breaking point, the moment when Scholes finally realised he was jeopardising one of football's great reputations.
Of course, Scholes still has an impact, can still influence substantial phases of matches in a way that underlines why midfielders of the quality of Sir Bobby Charlton and Xavi Hernandez are among his fiercest admirers.
Charlton declares that the craft and the eye of Scholes are reminders of why he first became enthralled by the game.
Xavi says simply that Scholes has been the best, most constructive midfielder over the best part of two decades and that had he been born in Seville or Sitges rather than Salford he would always have been held in much higher regard. "Ask anyone who has played against him, seen close up all his qualities, and they will tell you he is the best."
That is maybe the ultimate achievement of the player who has always insisted that the age of celebrity passes him by. Now comes the challenge that has always agonised, for different reasons, the most distinguished of sportsmen, and which today besieges two who long ago sailed into the category – the sublime Roger Federer of tennis and cricket's supremely combative Ricky Ponting.
When do they say, "I have given my best, now I will pack away the rest?"
History tells us it is not so easy. Gareth Edwards, arguably the greatest scrum-half we will ever see, once confided he was suffering sleepless nights deciding on whether to take one last Lions tour. "You know it is so much harder now and that the time to go must be close if it isn't here already," he said, "but then you also think, 'in a year or two's time I won't have this choice, it will all be over and you just have to get through the rest of your life.'"
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| Paul Scholes is shown the red card at Wembley last month after his horrendous tackle on Manchester City's Pablo Zabaleta |
The most magnetic sportsman of the 20th century, Muhammad Ali, did not get it right and strong men cried the night his former sparring partner Larry Holmes had the job of picking him apart at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas in 1980. Ali looked beautiful coming into the ring, but the effect was created entirely cosmetically. He had used diuretics in the build-up and inside he was a shell. Holmes hit him at will over seven rounds, at one point raising his arms in bewilderment that the great champion continued to take such punishment – and then the corner man Angelo Dundee threw a towel in the ring.
When the best of Sugar Ray Leonard had deserted him, he refused to listen to warnings that he was heading for a brutal denouement against Terry Norris at Madison Square Garden. After training one snowy afternoon, he was asked again why he carried on, and perhaps for too long. He said: "It is because I am fighter and it is the best thing I do, the best thing I will ever do. So I go on as long as I can." He took relentless punishment from Norris and agreed, finally, that it was over.
Ten years earlier, in 1981, during his great fight with Tommy Hearns, Leonard's wife Juanita had repeatedly cried out at ringside, "It's over, baby, it's over." But Leonard recovered to win that fight and five years after the defeat by Norris he was still shutting his ears. At the age of 40 he was beaten by Hector Camacho, a TKO victim in the fifth round.
Paul Scholes may not face such hazards. But still he has to answer, some day soon, the hardest question he has ever asked himself.
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