Greenwood on fast track to be United great
Lording it in Hong Kong to breaking club records, the striker’s rise is no surprise to those who know him best
To put Mason Greenwood’s dizzying ascent to the top tier of Premier League footballer into context, consider this: four years ago, while his current team-mates Paul Pogba, David de Gea and Marcus Rashford were playing in front of 75,000 fans at Old Trafford, Greenwood was preparing for an under-16 friendly against the Hong Kong Football Association Academy at Tsing Yi Sports Ground.
It was Greenwood’s first experience of a tour on the other side of the world, and yet even here there were signs of the player who has gone on to become one of the key figures in Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s Manchester United revolution, and who lit up the first weekend of the season with a virtuoso performance against Leeds United.
After Greenwood set up the winning goal in Hong Kong, he chose not to join in the celebrations of his team-mates by the corner flag. Instead, his reaction barely registered as nonplussed: this, he was making clear, was simply what should be expected of a club such as Manchester United.
Nick Cox, United’s head of academy, wanted the tour to enrich the cultural lives of his young charges – to sample the famous Stanley Market or take part in a dragon-boat race, as much as experience football in a different environment. But it was quickly apparent that Greenwood had outgrown the under-16s and was moved to the next age group when United returned from the Far East.
The trajectory of his development since has been prodigious: he remained in school while with the under-18s, then leapt to the first team after only a few reserve matches, which came as little surprise to his academy colleagues.
Theo Richardson was United’s under-18s goalkeeper when Greenwood was moved up an age group. “When I left United, people asked who was the best player I trained with. For every person, I told them to wait until Mason comes through,” Richardson says. “I’ve never seen someone strike a ball as well with both feet as he does. His finishing is ridiculous, unlike anything I’ve seen. It’s just frightening. People were comparing him to Ravel Morrison, as he was meant to be the next big thing, but he didn’t really have the mental capacity to deal with it.
Mason was very humble and quite quiet as he was coming through.
“He was never one to be in and around the troublemakers. As one of the youngest, maybe he was a little more reserved compared to others his own age. Growing up around all the boys, that would have helped him.”
It was during his academy days that Greenwood picked up an injury that meant he had to use his left foot more frequently, to the point that he is now as deadly on that side as his favoured right. Perhaps with the confidence of already being part of Solskjaer’s first-team squad, his leftfooted free-kick at Newcastle for the under-23s is talked about as one of his finest academy goals. He had scored set-pieces with his other foot earlier in the season.
“From a very young age he could play off both feet anyway. He was taking penalties with one foot and free-kicks with the other,” Richardson says. “In the under-18s he was way too good for that level and people were waiting for his reserveteam debut, then I think he only played one reserve game and he was in the first team. He was well above everyone.”
Now in his third season as a first-team regular, Solskjaer has observed, approvingly, that Greenwood has “filled out” over the summer. “I think that is a man compared to a boy that was in the first team two years ago,” Solskjaer says.
Richardson believes his former team-mate will use his goal against Leeds as a platform to build on. “People say you have that summer where you go from literally being a kid, then fully becoming a man. This summer it has started to happen and I expect him to be fully amongst it,” he says. “He has no backlift with his shots. Because he was so powerful from such a young age, the older he was going to get, he was going to get even stronger.”
United are managing Greenwood’s exposure to the limelight carefully. He is still a teenager until October and while his contemporaries at the club, such as Di’shon Bernard, Ethan Laird and Tahith Chong, are on loan with English Football League clubs, Greenwood is United’s highest-scoring teenager in the Premier League.
He has quietly returned to the England reckoning after being sent home from duty, along with Phil Foden, at the start of last season for having guests at the team hotel in Iceland. Foden was back playing for England within two months, but it took a little longer for Greenwood to return to Gareth Southgate’s squad.
Jamaica would welcome him into their World Cup qualification plans, but his form last weekend, when he delivered the complete striker’s performance against Leeds in front of Southgate in the stands, will catapult him back into the England manager’s thoughts after he missed the Euros through injury. That would be the next stage of his ascent, which has shown little sign of slowing down.