F365 Says: The fight to prove that Martial matters

Daniel Storey

It’s hard to move for young, talented French footballers. Their senior squad for the friendly against England contained eight players aged 22 or under and seven more aged 23 and 24. Below them, Moussa Dembele, Christopher Nkunku, Jean-Kevin Augustin and Maxime Lopez await their chance. France’s production line of young quick attacking players over the last three years is like nothing we have witnessed before.

One forward omitted from both France’s senior and Under-21 squads over the last ten months happens to be the fourth most expensive signing in Manchester United’s history. Anthony Martial’s last senior international start came in Barysaw, Belarus, substituted after 57 minutes of a World Cup qualifier that finished 0-0 in September 2016. A month later he played the last 25 minutes in Amsterdam. Since then, nothing.

Martial is getting used to life in the wings rather than on the wing. Having joined Manchester United as a 19-year-old weighed down by the pressures of an extraordinarily high fee – the highest ever paid for teenager at the time – Martial made doubters look foolish by winning the Premier League Player of the Month award in his first weeks in England and being United’s top league goalscorer in his first season. Only three outfield players played more league minutes for United in 2015/16. Martial was emphatic justification for faith in the exuberance of youth.

There were plenty enough reasons to maintain that positivity going into 2016/17. With a full pre-season under his belt and fully settled in England, Martial was deemed a likely key ingredient in Jose Mourinho’s recipe for success at a club who were second favourites for the Premier League title. Any concerns over the manager’s historical lack of faith in youth were eclipsed by Martial’s rapid development.

The best-laid plans of mice and Martial often go awry. Phil Jones, Marouane Fellaini and Marcos Rojo were three of the 12 outfield players to play more minutes in the league for United last season. Perhaps more damning is that Martial managed only 21 more minutes than Wayne Rooney. Consider too that a third of his 18 starts came in the final seven games of the Premier League campaign, when that competition became of secondary importance to Mourinho. Martial’s last start in the Europa League came in the last-32 first leg against St Etienne.

Martial’s problems are multi-layered. He split up with his partner last summer, with the mother of his child and his baby moving back to Paris. There were subsequent reports of homesickness and injuries to knee, calf and foot between September and December. None were serious, but can easily erode the confidence of a young player. When he was selected, Martial’s spark of light had dimmed. He became wasteful in front of goal and demonstrated a previously unseen lack of conviction in wide areas. The lasting image was of him holding his head in intense frustration.

There is also a sense that Martial has suffered for being Van Gaal’s man and not Mourinho’s. Look again at the list of the Dutchman’s last five permanent arrivals for which United paid a fee: Martial, Morgan Schneiderlin, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Memphis Depay, Matteo Darmian. Three have left, while the other two started 20 fewer combined league games under Mourinho than during Van Gaal’s last season. These are United’s personae non grata.

What’s more, Martial is hardly the type of player on which Mourinho would typically hang his hat. United’s manager might not have a diagnosed complex with young attacking wide players who don’t naturally track back, but his record is hardly glittering. By April, Mourinho was criticising Martial publicly: “Do I think Anthony is player with great potential? Yes. Do I think he can play successfully for me? Yes. But he needs to give me things that I like.”

“He [Rashford]was always a player that I trust, always a player that I play, always a player that I support,” Mourinho said in that same interview. “Because he was always coming in my direction, in the direction I want from a player, what I want as a Manchester United manager.” Count the five first-person personal pronouns for all the evidence you need. If you don’t impress Mourinho with your mentality, your days are numbered.

It was ever thus, for Mourinho is not a manager to suffer wide forwards gladly. Playing for the Portuguese is a privilege to be earned rather than afforded, whatever the transfer fee, and the accusation from Mourinho is that Martial and Rashford are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Few at Carrington would dispute that assessment.

That criticism came after Martial was left out of Manchester United’s match-day squad against Chelsea, and then was only afforded seconds against Anderlecht in the Europa League days later. Mourinho did praise the Frenchman’s form when he was picked later in April and during May, but it is impossible not to conclude that Martial has shifted backwards in the pecking order. With a central striker at the top of the shopping list and Ivan Perisic wanted as an option in wide areas, the queue is getting longer.

The official line is that Martial is not for sale, but the Independent’s Miguel Delaney has written that that position could change if Perisic does arrive in Manchester. More concerning is that very few clubs seem to be interested suitors, at least not for the likely asking price. It is difficult to see how either buyer or seller budges enough to make a move likely.

If Martial is treading water at club level, he is sinking beneath the surface for France. You can ill-afford to stand still given the current conveyor belt of talent, and that is particularly true of the season before a World Cup summer. Martial, Kylian Mpabbe, Antoine Griezmann, Ousmane Dembele, Alexandre Lacazette, Kevin Gameiro, Kinglsey Coman, possibly even a returning Karim Benzema; good luck getting that list down to four or five names for Russia, and that’s without the now inevitable break-out star of French football in 2017/18. Right now, Martial doesn’t figure. Can he really reverse that trend in the next ten months?

This is not intended as inflammatory criticism of a player struggling for form, and I’m certainly not about to use Martial’s cars or clothes as sticks to beat him like other choice outlets. Yet following the failure of Memphis at Old Trafford, Martial is also fighting for his future at Manchester United. European football’s Golden Boy of 2015 has suffered a tumbling fall. As ever with Jose Mourinho, redemption is far longer journey than the one into ignominy.

Daniel Storey