Man Utd starlet Mainoo can follow England staple at Euro 2024 after Southgate sees the light
The Kobbie Mainoo hype train has well and truly left the station and it seems as if Gareth Southgate is belatedly on board after adding the Manchester United youngster to his England squad for the upcoming friendlies against Belgium and Brazil.
Putting aside fears that it’s all part of a PR push from Southgate to get INEOS and United fans on side after recent links to succeeding Erik ten Hag in the summer, it feels like a pretty obvious U-turn. As the banner at Old Trafford states: “If you’re good enough, you’re old enough.”
Mainoo isn’t simply good enough at this point. He is undeniable and any idea of placing the 18-year-old in the Under-21s would have just been delaying his inevitable ascension to the senior squad.
It’s not as if he isn’t accustomed to playing under extreme pressure either. The scrutiny at United is unlike any other club in England, particularly when the vultures are circling to pick apart a mostly ailing team.
He has arguably been Ten Hag’s best player since making his first start of the season at Everton in late November. That would have come months earlier but for a serious ankle injury sustained in pre-season.
While it has been far from ideal being thrown into a United side in the midst of a largely miserable campaign, perhaps it also has worked in his favour – Mainoo felt so different to what United fans had seen in midfield. He was, and is, the calm in a sea of chaos, the Xanax to the anxiety attack that is the haphazard nature of everything.
That was evident again in Sunday’s all-time FA Cup win over Liverpool – a game in which this writer was at and has still not come down from – as he provided United with the tiny bit of composure lacking almost everywhere else.
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He received the ball on the half turn with ease, his passing was sharp, his interceptions were plentiful and the dribbling that led to his stunning winner at Wolves last month was on show once more as he danced around Liverpool’s midfield almost at will on occasion.
He still has areas he needs to work on, of course, and his best position is still to be decided – he could probably be whatever he wants having played further forward in his academy days.
For most at United, his rise has not come as a major shock – he was the best player (ahead of Alejandro Garnacho) in the 2022 FA Youth Cup-winning side, while Ten Hag has long earmarked him for a big future at the club.
Now, everyone else is realising it, and in truth, England just love a wonderkid in the build-up to a major tournament don’t they? It’s football heritage at this point.
From Michael Owen in 1998 and Wayne Rooney in 2004 to Marcus Rashford in 2016 and Jude Bellingham & Bukayo Saka in 2021, it has become a staple of the Three Lions tournament template, alongside national hysteria and devastating failure, of course.
We can maybe forget Theo Walcott in 2006, as that just defied any logic from Sven.
Like Rooney, Mainoo has skipped Under 21s, albeit United’s greatest goalscorer was barely 17 when he debuted in 2003 and was already England’s best player by the time Euro 2004 rolled around.
Owen amazingly joint-top scored the Premier League in his debut campaign while only months over the legal UK drinking age before usurping Teddy Sheringham at France ’98 and then scoring that goal against Argentina.
Southgate referenced both Bellingham and Saka’s relative greater experience at the time of their debut when explaining his original decision not to select Mainoo. Bellingham had made 54 appearances for Birmingham City and Borussia Dortmund upon call-up at 17, while a 19-year-old Saka was 44 games into his Arsenal career.
Mainoo has played 23 games in comparison, although his 20 this season would be a far higher figure but for that injury. Maybe Southgate has eventually taken that into account.
His meteoric rise is most similar to Rashford’s in the spring of 2016, albeit he has already played five more times for United than his now-teammate when Roy Hodgson drafted the 18-year-old forward in after a spectacular start to his Old Trafford career.
Rashford had also not played for the Under 21s, although he did once shortly after the Euros (scoring a hat-trick) in Southgate’s last set of fixtures before unexpectedly replacing Sam Allardyce.
The major difference, though, and the one he shares with Bellingham, is how much harder it is to play in midfield at such a young age, where both the responsibility and level of maturity required are simply greater.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer labelled Bellingham the “most mature 17-year-old he had ever met” on a recent episode of The Overlap, and it appears Mainoo is cut from the same cloth.
He plays less like an 18-year-old in his first full season of senior football, and more like a 28-year-old seasoned pro – telling five-time Champions League winner Casemiro what to do was just one of numerous examples of this.
It is one of many reasons why it does not appear too soon for him to be called up, alongside his blindingly blatant talent and England’s relative lack of depth in midfield. Jordan Henderson’s continued selection is just strange at this point, but at least the Kalvin Phillips’ pick-at-all-costs approach has been ditched.
Mainoo had not started a league game for United the last time England played in November. Now he is in the 26-man squad for Belgium and Brazil. Only 23 will travel to Germany in the summer. Will he be one of them? Will he be a starter? Neither would be too surprising at this point for England’s latest teen star.
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