Lethal predator Rashford is talisman for a new English generation
On the bench or on the pitch Marcus Rashford is setting the agenda. His midweek hattrick for England’s Under-21s left another indelible imprint on a career showreel that has already acquired significant reach.
So much so that whichever way Jose Mourinho decides to jump with his selection for arguably one of the most anticipated Manchester derbies in history, Rashford’s status will have occupied his thinking as profoundly as any.
It is a case of when, not if, Mourinho pulls the trigger. Rashford is suddenly the reference point no-one can ignore. The pace, talent, trickery, finishing, confidence that enthralled an absorbed audience on Tuesday, which included England manager Sam Allardyce and his assistant Sammy Lee, appears to be of the absolute variety.
Allardyce thought it better to demote Rashford to the junior ranks since he would not be pushing Harry Kane, Jamie Vardy or Daniel Sturridge for inclusion in Trnava. Rashford responded with the kind of joie de vivre that the seniors so lacked. Kane, Vardy and Sturridge are all worthy of inclusion but their cases to start are no longer as compelling as Rashford’s.
Allardyce has three weeks to ruminate how to accommodate the boy wonder. Mourinho will also be feeling the weight of anticipation generated by the teenager from Wythenshawe.
It was interesting to observe in Slovakia how the demographic of the England supporter has aged. For a significant number of travelling fans this was a trip of the middleaged, grey beards with heads shaved by time not design, wandering around a foreign city in their retro England tops and trainers, recreating the craic of their 1990s, ’80s and even ’70s heyday.
They are a remarkable species for whom England represent something entirely different than they do for millennials. Rashford’s heroics had some teenagers in my orbit expressing the view that England should base the team around young lads, players unencumbered by past failures who seem to enjoy pulling on the shirt.
Rashford, Ruben Loftuscheek, Nathan Redmond, James Ward-prowse et al did not miss a step against a talented Norwegian team. In the early part of the match England
0 Marcus Rashford: Test case. were on the back foot, but they were always ready to have a go, to take a risk, and in Rashford they had the quality that the opposition lacked, the lethal predator.
Rashford is thus the talisman for a new generation of England fan, and a condition of their allegiance.
On his unveiling in July Mourinho touched the Manchester United zeitgeist with his “I want it all” declaration. He wasn’t talking only about trophies, but about delivering on a legacy that stretches back to Busby. He wanted not only to win, but to win big, playing an unanswerable brand of attacking football that United fans consider to be the defining motif of the club.
Rashford, every last inch of him, is United incarnate, a boy from the city reared at Old Trafford in the manner of the quintessential Busby Babe. No player currently on the books embodies the emboldened United tradition more than this kid, not Zlatan, not Wayne Rooney, not Eric Bailly, not Henrikh Mkhitaryan, not Anthony Martial, not Luke Shaw.
As authentic as they are, none offers Rashford’s con- nectivity to the historic thread running through the club, for none is a young, fearless flower of Manchester.
So Rashford becomes a test case for the commitment Mourinho made on day one, of how much he really believes in the articles of faith set out by Busby and followed by Sir Alex Ferguson.
Mourinho will point out the pragmatic requirement to negotiate his first big encounter without losing points or face. Fair enough. And it is, of course, early days. But as he acknowledged, he is not managing any old club, and Rashford is not any old player.