Manchester United spent the bulk of Erik ten Hag’s first summer in charge trying to sign Frenkie de Jong from Barcelona. The new manager had nurtured the midfielder’s rise at Ajax and saw him as the key to enacting the style of play he wished United to adopt.
De Jong’s ability to take the ball from the defence and zip into attack while calmly evading pressure was so highly coveted by Ten Hag that United were prepared to pay Barca €85 million ($93m/£73m) for him. And when they learned that De Jong was not interested in swapping Catalunya for Manchester, they kept on trying to convince him for over a month. They finally threw in the towel in late August and signed Casemiro, a brilliant player in his own right, but of a very different profile to De Jong.
Until his alarming drop off in form this season, Casemiro raised United’s competitive spirit and gave them more power and muscle in midfield, but their style of play was markedly similar to before. They still lacked a figure like De Jong who could lead their transition into a team that wanted to play with fluidity, but last summer decided not to go shopping for a mobile defensive midfielder like the Dutchman.
The reason why was that they knew they had their own midfield gem on their hands, a teenager called Kobbie Mainoo who had already had a taste of first-team football and was ready for more. And after recovering from a freak ankle injury that set his breakthrough into the first team back by four months, Mainoo finally made his full Premier League debut against Everton on Sunday, and the 18-year-old looked like the most comfortable player on the pitch.
After just 72 minutes of action, it looks as if United have found the player they were searching for when they began their doomed quest to sign De Jong. Mainoo may be young and inexperienced, but he has the capacity to transform the Red Devils’ style of play and rescue their season.
GettyOozing class in a hostile environment
It was more than 10 months since Mainoo’s last start for United in the Carabao Cup against Charlton Athletic and in that game, only aged 17 at the time, the youngster was very much feeling his way in the game. He had the added advantages that United were flying at the time, playing at Old Trafford and against a team two divisions below them.
It was a very different atmosphere to the one he found himself in on Sunday, with Everton fans crying injustice at their 10-point deduction and their team playing with fire in their bellies. It was not a game for the faint of heart, but Mainoo was the picture of calm.
“He’s gone in here at Goodison Park, in what could have been the most ferocious atmospheres for many a year in a hostile environment, and he looked class,” said former United captain Gary Neville on Sky Sports. “We know he’s class, we know he’s got class, he’s got that ability, but he looked class in that environment. I always judge players when it’s the most difficult part of the game. When Manchester United had their most difficult period in that first half just before half-time for 20 minutes, I thought he was the only player who showed up, the only player who still looked like himself.”
GettyLooking more like a Man City player
A cliched take on Mainoo’s performance would be to say that he slotted right into the United team on his debut and looked like he had been playing with his senior team-mates for years. But it would be completely untrue.
In fact, the 18-year-old looked on a much higher plain than the other red shirts, playing with a sense of confidence and intelligence that had scarcely been seen in this United team all season, if not for several years. Indeed, as Neville remarked, Mainoo looked like he had learned his football on the other side of Manchester.
“The biggest compliment I can pay him, and it hurts to say this… he looked like a Manchester City player,” Neville said. “Honestly, I was watching him and thinking that’s a player that Pep Guardiola will be looking at and thinking, ‘I want him in my midfield, that’s what my midfield players do’.
“Thankfully, Man United have got him because he looks so composed, so graceful, always looking over his shoulder, knowing where everyone is, letting it run across his body. At 18, to be doing that out there, he’ll have tougher games, he’s got a long challenge in front of him, there’ll be injuries, ups and downs, there will be other players coming in, he’s playing at a club with huge demands. But that was very, very good.”
Getty ImagesKey to unlocking a new style of play
Mainoo led United’s build-up from the back, frequently calling for the ball from defenders and scanning his surrounding area before he got it, allowing the Red Devils to keep possession for long periods and keep Everton at bay.
He ended the match with the highest pass completion rate (82 percent) of all the United players to start, completing 38 passes, just four behind Diogo Dalot, who ranked highest for the visitors but played over 20 more minutes than his teenage counterpart.
The only midfield or forward player to play more passes than Mainoo was Bruno Fernandes, and if he can replicate his performance at Goodison then United could turn into a totally different side to the one we have seen for much of this season, limping to victory against the weakest opponents in the league and being outclassed by the likes of Brighton, Manchester City and Tottenham.
Ten Hag admitted that Mainoo could open the door to a whole new style of play than the reactive approach United have taken for much of his reign. “Sometimes you have to adjust and be more pragmatic. But if we have players on the pitch we fill in the positions with the players who are available, I know that we can play very good football,” he said at Goodison.
“We want to be comfortable and play from the back — with the first and third goals, we saw that. We want to take initiative in and out of possession.”
GettyThe partner Onana needs to thrive
Ten Hag was hired by United for his success with Ajax, who he turned into one of the most exciting teams in Europe and took to the brink of the 2019 Champions League final, outclassing Real Madrid at Santiago Bernabeu and also knocking out Juventus on the way.
But Red Devils’ fans have not seen much of the Johan Cruyff school of football under the Dutchman, as Ten Hag was forced to abandon his early ideas about how his United side would play after his side were torn apart by Brighton and Brentford in his first two competitive games in charge.
However, Ten Hag’s ruthless decision to boot out David de Gea and sign Andre Onana over the summer underlined his desire to make United a more attractive team with the ball. The Spanish shot-stopping supremo was not comfortable whenever he was given the ball by Lisandro Martinez, and after some hairy moments, he mostly resorted to booting the ball down the pitch.
The arrival of Onana was supposed to usher in a different style, but instead United found themselves with the opposite problem to before: a goalkeeper who wants to play out from the back but a set of outfield players who are too scared to do so. Martinez has been injured for most of the campaign, and while Harry Maguire has staged a remarkable renaissance, he still seems much more comfortable launching the ball forward rather than playing intricate passes and dancing around pressure, as do Victor Lindelof and Jonny Evans.
But in Mainoo, United at last have a player who wants to take the ball from his own area and recycle it further down the field. He was on the same wavelength as Onana and allowed United to slow the game down when they needed to.
GettyFeeding attackers & snuffing out danger
He does not just want to play neat, short passes, however. Against Everton, Mainoo was often looking to release Anthony Martial and Marcus Rashford in behind.
His passing vision can also get the best out of Rasmus Hojlund, who is still waiting to score his first goal in the Premier League. The Danish striker keeps making clever runs in behind, but has all-too-often been left frustrated by not getting the service he needs.
Mainoo also ticks the other boxes that United want to see from any defensive midfielder: awareness and desire. He made a superb goal-line clearance in the first half, rushing back to hook the ball away after Dwight McNeil had followed up on the rebound following Onana’s save from Dominic Calvert-Lewin.
The teenager’s desire was also on display when he made an eye-catching tackle on James Maddison in his only other previous Premier League outing, a 10-minute cameo against Leicester last season. The England midfielder tried to give Mainoo the runaround and managed to dribble past him, but as he shaped to shoot on goal, the youngster produced a perfectly-timed slide tackle to block the effort.
GettyLeading United out of Hell?
As with the emergency of any youngster, amid all the praise for Mainoo there have been calls to remember that he is just 18 and has just made one league start, even if it was an outstanding performance.
“It was impressive and there’s no point getting carried away by it because the reality is he’s got 17 or 18 years in front of him and he’s got a lot of work to do,” warned Neville. “He’s obviously got technical ability and skill, you don’t play for Manchester United in the first place if you haven’t got that, you don’t get picked by Erik ten Hag if you haven’t got that, but what you don’t know is how they’re going to handle it.”
And in an ideal world, United would be able to drip-feed minutes to Mainoo as City have done with Rico Lewis and previously did with Phil Foden, rather than keep him in the deep end. But the Red Devils have some serious ground to make up, especially in the Champions League, where they have lost three of their four matches. So just three days after surviving the bearpit atmosphere of Goodison Park, Mainoo will be bracing himself for another venture into the lions den at Galatasaray.
Ten Hag was asked in the pre-match press conference whether the Turkish giants’ infamously intimidating atmosphere, which has become synonymous with the greeting ‘Welcome to Hell’, was the right setting for a player of Mainoo’s youth and inexperience. The manager responded with a deadly serious answer which underlined his faith in the teenager: “If they are good enough, they are old enough.”
So United will be marching into Hell with an 18-year-old as their greatest weapon. Luckily for them, he has all the tools, not to mention the courage, to get them out alive. — Goal
