Whatever happened to United’s likely lad?
He should be reaching his peak – instead, Tom Thorpe is out of the game
WHO was the only person to captain United to two Premier League titles and an FA Cup in the 2010s?
The answer is Tom Thorpe.
It’s something of a trick question of course, because the titles in question were in the Reserves league and it was an FA Youth Cup that Thorpe lifted as Under-18s skipper in 2011.
But the fact is still illuminating in itself, especially when you consider that Thorpe, who celebrated his 28th birthday this week, is now without a club and outside of football completely. Having grown up in the same Old Trafford academy year as Paul Pogba, Jesse Lingard and Ravel Morrison, he should be enjoying his peak years. Instead, it has been almost three years since he kicked a ball in professional football.
Even the road to his very brief United debut against West Ham, when he replaced Angel di Maria under Louis van Gaal as an 89th minute substitution, was long and painful and full of frustrations.
His first ever senior appearance, while on loan at Birmingham City in February 2014, was cut short after just 14 minutes when he suffered knee ligament damage. He played only five more times for Birmingham that season.
As his United contemporary and fellow FA Youth Cup winner Will Keane says, it’s often about luck for youngsters, and Thorpe did not get many breaks.
“I think a lot of it is about timing and taking your opportunity,” says Keane, now playing as a striker for Wigan. “I know Thorpey hung around in the reserves for a few years, maybe he could have gone out and got that loan experience at a younger age, which would have stood him in greater stead.
“He was always a really bright lad and as a centre-half he was really good on the ball.”
Thorpe told the M.E.N in May 2015: “At a club like United you don’t necessarily want to be trying to force yourself out of the window on loan because you want to see where your opportunity might lie.”
Seeing Van Gaal blood Paddy McNair and Tyler Blackett gave him a “confidence boost”, though Thorpe was also frustrated that the pair got picked ahead of him.
After Thorpe was released by United in 2015, Rotherham boss Steve Evans thought he could be a cornerstone of his side following promotion to the Championship.
“This is a young man that I have targeted since the first day he was released by Manchester United,” Evans said when signing Thorpe in July 2015. “He has everything that is good with the modern footballer. He has height, strength, speed, awareness and technical ability.”
But was Rotherham the right destination for Thorpe after leaving the golden corridors of Carrington?
It’s easy to suggest not, with the benefit of hindsight. Evans was gone by September and Thorpe had trouble establishing himself at the heart of the Championship’s most vulnerable defence under Neal Redfearn.
Greg Halford played alongside the Mancunian and knew something was missing.
“Yeah he found it tough at Rotherham,” says Halford. “Obviously there was a certain way that we had of playing there. Not everyone can adapt to the way that a manager wants to play. But you could see he had something about him.
“He never really got his feet under the table. We didn’t get off to the greatest start, he didn’t really have a pre-season with us, so we didn’t know each other’s game that well and it was tough for him.”
Like Keane, however, Halford noticed a “really switched on” lad in Thorpe. “He handled himself really well, his professionalism was up there with the best.”
Thorpe found another admirer in Bradford boss Phil Parkinson, who took him on loan in January 2016 in another injury-hit spell.
Parkinson signed him again the next season, taking him on loan to Bolton, where Thorpe finally got a run of games as Wanderers were promoted.
“I always felt he was going to have a good career in the game,” says Parkinson. “I really thought Tom had potential and I liked his versatility as well. He could play at the back and at Bolton he was good in central midfield, he could pass the ball.”
Injury again curtailed Thorpe’s involvement but he cannot have thought, after playing 64 minutes in Bolton’s 1-1 draw with Wimbledon in March 2017, that he would never play in English football again.
Rotherham released him in the summer of 2017, though – and Parkinson did not come calling.
Eyebrows were then raised when Thorpe agreed a move to the Indian Super League side ATK, based in Kolkata. But when another short stint soon came to a close, Thrope’s career stopped dead.
He can now be counted among a lost generation of former United starlets. He has a private Instagram page, but otherwise, Tom Thorpe remains virtually invisible.
The word is that he is content with his very private life. He is done with interviews and doesn’t want to look back at the past.
But one nagging question remains: Just why didn’t things work out? Why did this outstanding young United skipper end up virtually finished by the age of 25?
Parkinson perhaps sums it up best: “Sometimes players just want to pursue something else in their life. There is more to life than football, maybe that was a reason for Tom.”