WEMBLEY — Kobbie Mainoo is going to get used to having his name up in lights, but the big screen at Wembley will always provide a buzz.
10 seconds after being named player of the match in the FA Cup final, Mainoo was running alongside Alejandro Garnacho towards a jubilant, bouncing end of the national stadium.
It says plenty about this club that Manchester United were such underdogs against supposed peers. It says more about certain members of this team that they still won, defiant and determined.
This has always been the great fallacy of Erik ten Hag’s self-protectionism, his insistence that everything was impossible after finishing four places in the Premier League table behind Aston Villa. Whether he stays or goes, there are individuals here that he or someone else should delight in using. This was their FA Cup final but it was Ten Hag’s too, particularly if he follows Louis van Gaal if he loses his job after winning this trophy.
It isn’t easy supporting United. Many will scoff at that, those who watch their team traipse around lower reaches of less glamorous leagues. But that misses the point: bitterness stems from emphatic failure to match ambition and they have fallen further behind their history and potential than most.
These, then, are days to behold. When you don’t only get to celebrate the magnitude and magnificence of the moment, but to feel upbeat about the future. Who knows if something can ever build here until every element of the club has been given a deep clean. But where there is great talent and a connection between academy graduates and supporters, hope will always live.
Mainoo deserves star billing because he is the star boy. Nobody aged 25 should be this composed in their first major final, let alone a kid of 19 who has been in the team for six months. Mainoo’s goal was the highlight, ending a sumptuous flowing move, but his ball retention, positioning and timing of his passes were the difference in midfield and thus the final as a whole.
Joining him, literally in that immediate post-match blur when they ran and danced together as if in their own private rapture, was Garnacho. No teenage winger is anything other than raw and inconsistent; these are inescapable truths of development. But Garnacho has a fine ability to be where danger occurs, whether he is causing or benefiting from it.
Those two goals, as a collective, were deeply significant. There have now been 143 FA Cup finals, stretching back into the Victorian age of gentry and ceremony and former public schoolboys wrestling with provincial amateurs. Never before had two teenagers scored in the same final, let alone for the same club.
And now we’re going to talk about Marcus Rashford, for whom full-time brought salvation after another of the most difficult weeks of his career. Being left out of England’s European Championship squad caused little surprise based on club form, but became an inevitable milepost of his struggle over the last 12 months. He was excellent at Wembley until his second-half substitution and received a standing ovation as a result.
After the game, tears flowed and as such demanded over-analysis. Perhaps this was simply relief, an officially documented high point that will be held onto like a life float. Perhaps this was simple joy.
Or perhaps this was a moment of reflection from a local kid who got famous and important to his club a little too quickly and has suffered ever since. There is talk of Rashford leaving this summer. If that is to be the case, it would be a desperate shame. Players such as him mean something.
There are other ingredients besides. Lisandro Martinez started eight Premier League games this season and it is no coincidence that the defence looked more settled upon his return and with cover in central midfield. Diogo Dalot’s improvement this season demands continued faith. Bruno Fernandes suffers for his own consistency of performance and selection. If United have 100 problems to solve, the only one that would involve Fernandes would be if he were to leave.
This is a purely positive spin, you understand, and so only resonates for a while. This is still the team that finished eighth in the Premier League and equalled its own record for home defeats in a season. There have still been too many times when the attack looks lost and the midfield non-existent. If Ten Hag does go, it is not because of this Saturday but all the others.
And if it is someone else’s honour to take this enormous clumsy beast of a football club forwards, they will find deep imperfections and, in places, scars. They will also inherit several wonderful young footballers and several more crying out for some coaching and cajoling.
Manchester United can still be good. They can still beat Manchester City. They can still shine when their youngest and brightest lead them on.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/eHZd8G5
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