‘I’M NOT A SUPERSUB AND I CAN STILL MAKE MY MARC’

MARCUS RASHFORD said that he is making progress despite being in danger of becoming a supersub for both club and country.

France superstar Kylian Mbappe is 19 and has taken the World Cup by storm with the sort of performances that the Three Lions were hoping Rashford would be producing by now.

But Rashford, 20, has found it difficult to hold down a starting place for England while being a bit-part player at Manchester United.

The striker has made 26 appearances this calendar year, 16 have been as a substitute and he has been taken off in five of the other 10 games.

Rashford said: “You have got to be patient. You need an open mind because there are a lot of top players that all bring different qualities to the game.

“And at the level we’re playing at here, being in an England camp or whether it is at your club, you have to really understand that and you can almost take bits from other people’s game to try to bring your own game on. Every player will tell you that it is always frustrating when you don’t start.

“But if you don’t start you have to look at the positives because you get maybe two extra days of training, whereas if you had started you would have been recovering.

“You have to take as much as you can out of those days and development-wise, it has not stopped me developing. If it had stopped me developing, then it’s more of a problem.

“Jose Mourinho has got 20-25 players in the Manchester United squad and he has to pick the best team to play each game and everyone has different attributes and suits different styles of play.

“So finding the right balance of that is a tough job to do for a manager.

“But he got it right most of the time last season, but we need a bit extra to push for the title.”

A lack of game time has not affected the confidence of Rashford (with England boss Gareth Southgate, above) and he said he would happily take a penalty in a shoot-out if he is on the pitch against Colombia. He added: “It’s something we’ve been working on for a while now. Not everybody is a penalty-taker for their clubs. It’s more just practice and repetition.

“It’s something you might not need, but we have to be prepared if it does go to penalties at the end of our matches.

“It’s more if you feel comfortable taking one, which I do, that’s the way to go about it.”