Rom’s proving he can be candidate for skipper role
WHEN Wayne Rooney returned to Everton last summer United took a mere day to confirm Michael Carrick would inherit the captain’s armband.
Carrick announced his retirement in March and ended his playing career in May yet there has not been a puff of white smoke from Old Trafford to signal his successor.
Carrick was a logical appointment that avoided scrutiny and derision yet there are no more playing survivors from Sir Alex Ferguson’s last great side.
Carrick’s replacement could signal a breakaway from the ‘Old United’ Ferguson’s followers pine for and stamp Jose Mourinho’s identity deeper on an at times rudderless squad.
Mourinho contradicted himself over the captaincy in the US a year ago. “I don’t like a lot the criteria of the captain,” he stressed. “To be the player with more time in the club. Because sometimes you have somebody with the armband that doesn’t have the qualities to be the captain and is just the captain because he arrived before other players.”
Carrick was the longest servant in the wake of Rooney’s Merseyside homecoming and Antonio Valencia, who now holds that honour, led United in all 39 of his appearances last term.
Valencia’s English recorded on film amounts to the words ‘fiftyfifty and ‘Eric Bailly, the best centre-back in the world’. His press conference in Seville was conducted in Spanish and the replies were monosyllabic and succinct but he was the outstanding performer in 2016-17 and Mourinho has a strong rapport with the Latino players.
Chris Smalling skippered United 15 times in Mourinho’s first season while Juan Mata, David de Gea and Paul Pogba have also stood at the front in the tunnel.
Mourinho’s previous captains were Jorge Costa, John Terry, Javier Zanetti and Iker Casillas, all defensive players and that sequence has largely continued at United with defenders primarily deputising for Rooney and Carrick.
An outside contender has emerged at the World Cup, though.
One of the most evocative images in Russia was captured in Moscow when Romelu Lukaku held court with his team-mates.
With the rest of the squad huddled around him, Lukaku addressed his compatriots ahead of their second game with Tunisia.
Photographers swarmed around the huddle in Kaliningrad, too, where the substitute striker stood in the middle of a ring of red to deliver another pre-match talk against England, despite starting on the bench.
Lukaku is not a shirker and often fronts up in mixed zones regardless of the final score. He is an articulate and frank talker who chimes with supporters and has gained respect from opposition fans.
“I think the manager in his mind thinks that I’m like his sergeant on the pitch,” Lukaku said. Or his captain.