If there is much more of this, the anguish over Marcus Rashford’s suitability for inclusion on the Spoty shortlist will be no more.
During his Champions League cameo, he showed himself as adept on the pitch as he is in the political arena, the RB Leipzig defence going the way of the British Government against the unanswerable cogency of his attacks.
There are some Manchester United moaners yet to be convinced by Rashford, who believe him over-rated and symbolic of a team that blows hot and cold. Chatrooms ache with laments about his failure to kick on. Before the hat-trick there had been glimpses this season, the fine goal at Brighton, the embroidery at Newcastle, the winner in Paris, but outside of that too many duds.
It might be argued that Rashford’s better performances come with England, where the personal loading is not so great and responsibility is shared among Harry Kane, Raheem Sterling and Jadon Sancho. At United, Rashford ran himself into a stress fracture of the back in the service of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, who, in the pre-Bruno Fernandes period, could not rely on Anthony Martial, Paul Pogba, Juan Mata or Dan James to deliver an edge.
Post-lockdown, Rashford found himself campaigning on two fronts, sporting and political. This would be a risk for the most established athlete. Though Rashford seems to have been with us an age already, he turns just 23 on Saturday. The bar was set high with those goals on debut against Midtjylland in 2016, repeated days later against Arsenal. There was little scope for backward steps.
Rashford began his charitable drive last year, providing essential items to the homeless at Christmas. He extended that in the early days of lockdown to the provision of food for kids no longer receiving meals at school. And in June the game-changing open letter shaming the Government into a policy U-turn to supply school meals during the holidays.
This moved Rashford from sports bulletins to the main news. Not only had he become a national figure in a radical new context, he was transformed into a folk hero, a symbol of good. Simultaneously the football season was about to resume, and Rashford, recovered from injury, was asked to play his way into form while at the same time holding the Government to account more successfully than Her Majesty’s opposition.
Though United dragged themselves into third place in the Premier League they ran out of gas in the Europa League. When United began this campaign after a short intermission Rashford struggled to find a rhythm. The brilliance of his social media strikes against the state contrasted with his faltering form, making him an easy target for hardliners too ready to believe his priorities were elsewhere.
And then came the defenestration of RB Leipzig, a starburst that lit up Europe bringing with it Mbappé-levels of love and suggesting Rashford might yet become the great statesman on grass that he is off it.
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from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3823j4e
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