Even among their myriad blunders, marginalising Rashford could be United’s worst this decade

FEEDING a couple of million hungry kids only buys you so much time when people decide you turned your back on a half-chance against Aston Villa. Football has a shorter memory than ever for good things, as Marcus Rashford discovered last week. Praise turns to indifference, and then resentment, and then hostility, and then abuse, before you have time to blink.

It is not that the work Rashford did during lockdown, pressuring a reluctant government to extend the provision of free meals and activities to low-income families during school holidays, should earn him special treatment on the pitch. Gareth Southgate was right to leave him out of the England squad he named on Thursday. Rashford’s form does not merit a place.

But to witness the opprobrium that has been levelled at him off the pitch in recent weeks and to see it crystallised in a jerky, grainy, ill-lit piece of video footage taken soon after Manchester United’s Champions League defeat by Atletico Madrid last Tuesday, was still an object lesson in how swiftly even the best young players can be thrown to the wolves.

Perhaps you have seen it. Rashford played the last 23 minutes of United’s dismal second-leg loss to Diego Simeone’s side and, an hour or so after the final whistle, emerged from the stadium to walk the short distance to his car. A crowd had gathered to see the players, ask for selfies, shout insults, all the usual stuff. Rashford was not spared the lash.

FOR a little while, Rashford ignored what was being shouted at him and then something was said that made him stop abruptly and turn towards his tormentor. It was obvious he was angry. It was obvious something had been said that upset him. He started to walk towards whoever made the comment before security guards persuaded him to turn away.

It was soon after that that the camera captured him gesturing at one of the fans. He raised his hand and appeared to raise a finger in his direction, to beckon him towards him. ‘Come over and say it to my face?’ Rashford said. And in that moment, even though what he did was close to nothing, the ‘fan’ who had baited him had won. He got the reaction he craved.

This is what happens to players on social media, too. They are baited and baited and sometimes they bite. And when they bite, when they perhaps respond in kind, there is outrage. And then the people who have abused them and insulted them demand an apology and bask in the limelight of their pathetic and empty achievement.

So, guess what, Rashford is not a saint. He was defrocked by a moron calling him names. He issued an apology on social media but, as Ian Wright and others have said subsequently, he didn’t need to. The fan who abused him should have apologised instead. He is the one who should have the spotlight trained on him. Not Rashford. We’ve got it all the wrong way round.

‘For weeks,’ Rashford wrote, ‘I’ve been heckled, threatened, questioned and last night my emotion got the better of me. I’m a human being. Reading and hearing that stuff about yourself every day, it wears you down. I had been heckled from the minute I stepped foot outside the ground, abuse not just aimed at my football.

‘People were looking for a reaction from me. Phones were at the ready. Of course I should have walked straight past and ignored it, that’s what we’re supposed to do, right? I’m not entitled. This isn’t ego. I’m upset. I’m disappointed. And in that moment it was silly but I was being human.’

What is so dispiriting is that Rashford should be subjected to this kind of treatment in the first place. He was a national hero not so long ago, held up as the best of us for the work he was doing for the underprivileged, hailed as the face of compassion. A run of bad form might, quite rightly, affect whether he gets picked for club and country but it says a lot about us that it should also open him up to abuse.

There has been a concurrent loss of memory about quite what a precious talent Rashford is, too. Yes, some of the criticism of his performance on the pitch is warranted.

He is out of form. He has not been playing like the man who burst into the United first team from the academy ranks. He has looked desperately short of confidence. His body language speaks of uncertainty and doubt.

But the haste with which he is being written off as a footballer, as well as a man, is startling. He is still only 24 years old and he has already scored 93 goals for United and made 297 appearances. He was the youngest player at Euro 2016, the youngest scorer in a Manchester derby, the third youngest United player to score 50 Premier League goals, all while battling shoulder, back and foot injuries. Only Norman Whiteside, George Best and Ryan Giggs reached 250 games for United at a younger age than him. Decent company, I’m sure you would agree, and there are plenty more records like that. Rashford is a jewel of a player who is going through a lean spell. It happens to the best of them but he has already done more than enough to prove his enduring class.

It is worth remembering, too, that his Old Trafford career has coincided with uninterrupted upheaval at the club. It is not as if he has been playing for a side sweeping all before them as United did for much of the previous two decades before his emergence. His entire career has been spent in the years of post-Ferguson decline.

He has played for Louis van Gaal, Jose Mourinho, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Michael Carrick and Ralf Rangnick. He has also been a victim of United’s obsession with trying to camouflage their shortcomings by signing veteran superstar strikers to buy off crowd discontent. His progress has been hindered by managers indulging the waning talents of forwards like Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Cristiano Ronaldo and Edinson Cavani.

It is little wonder, amid the abuse, the uncertainty, the lack of direction at Old Trafford and his loss of form, that there have been suggestions Rashford is considering a future away from the club and that Barcelona and Liverpool have both expressed interest. Gary Neville observed recently that it would be ‘a failure for United’s football department’ if Rashford leaves and he was right.

Rashford is exactly the kind of star forward that United should be nurturing and promoting, a brilliant player heading towards his prime, a local lad who has risen through the club’s ranks, an England star, a 21st-century role model. Instead of that, they’re marginalising him. Even in the context of the myriad mistakes they have made in the last decade, losing Rashford would be one of the biggest.