The Daily Telegraph - 06.08.2019

M

ay 9, Old Trafford,

the night of

Manchester

United’s end-of-

season awards.

After one of the

most disappointing campaigns in

recent memory, there was not an

awful lot to celebrate, but there

was one award that garnered a

huge cheer and was most definitely

something to shout about.

Mason Greenwood, fresh from

scoring 30 goals in 29 games for

United’s under-18, under-19 and

under-21 sides and just three days

away from becoming the club’s

youngest player to start a Premier

League match, had won the club’s

coveted Jimmy Murphy Award.

Ryan Giggs and Marcus Rashford

are among the previous recipients

of United’s academy player-of-the-

year prize and Greenwood was full

of pride as he posted a picture of

himself with the iconic silver

salver on Instagram.

What he was not expecting was

for one of the first replies to come

from Julia Roberts, the Hollywood

actress, who introduced this quiet,

unassuming 17-year-old striker to

her 6.5 million followers with

three clapping emojis. Roberts’s

two boys, Phinnaeus, 14, and

Henry, 12, are among Greenwood’s

growing fan base but, even then, a

message from the star of Pretty

Woman and Notting Hill required a

double take.

What has happened since has

brought Greenwood to an even

wider audience, though. A first

league start for United – in a 2-0

home loss to Cardiff City on the

final day of the season – was the

one ray of sunshine in a miserable

campaign for the team and he has

not looked back since.

United may yet bring in a

replacement for Romelu Lukaku

should he leave this summer but, if

they do not, it will be in large part

down to Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s

faith in Greenwood. The United

manager has not ruled out starting

him against Chelsea on Sunday.

Just as a teenaged Rashford

seized the moment when

opportunity first knocked for the

England striker 3½ years ago, so

Greenwood has made the most of

Lukaku’s absence with a string of

impressive performances in

pre-season. The highlight was his

goal against Inter Milan in

Singapore, when he cut inside Joao

Mario with his right foot, before

arrowing a sublime finish with his

left through a throng of players

into the far corner.

United believe it is a long time

since they have encountered such

an instinctive finisher and a player

so two-footed that you can wade

through footage of him pinging

home free-kicks with his left foot

one moment and his right the next,

ditto penalties and corners.

Solskjaer’s calls him “51 per cent

left-footed, 49 per cent right”.

They screen highlights

from United’s academy

matches in the first-team

dressing room at Carrington,

the club’s training base, so

Greenwood’s name was being

Modest Greenwood making all the r

talked about among senior players

long before he pitched up to train

with them.

Rashford and fellow academy

graduate Jesse Lingard would

wander across to watch him in

action, likewise Michael Carrick,

now one of the coaches tasked with

guiding Greenwood’s considerable

talent. His introduction to first-

team training is still talked about

now. In one of his early sessions,

Greenwood wowed staff by

running several of United’s senior

defenders ragged during a

one-on-one session when, to quote

one source, he was “scoring for

fun, right and left foot”. But do not

for a moment mistake Greenwood

for some cocky upstart. When

United’s squad went out for dinner

on a night off in Perth on the first

leg of their pre-season tour this

summer, Greenwood stayed in,

simply because he believes he has

a lot to do before he can be

considered a first-team player.

Rashford knows better than

most what Greenwood is going

through and Solskjaer and his staff

have been encouraged by the

responsibility Rashford, Lingard

and Scott McTominay are taking in

ensuring that the teenager, and

United’s other emerging academy

products, Tahith Chong, Angel

Gomes and James Garner, feel at

home. Sometimes the advice is

ensuring Greenwood and company

are fully aware of a dress code or a

team schedule and Rashford has

been keen to avoid overly

cluttering Greenwood’s mind.

“He’s quite a laid back person so I

think for him it’s no good putting

things in his head constantly and

repeatedly,” Rashford explained.

Greenwood bleeds United. A

boyhood fan, there is a picture of

him holding the European Cup

after United’s triumph over

Chelsea in Moscow in 2008 and he

grew up idolising Wayne Rooney.

There are certainly parallels to

the way United are trying to shield

Greenwood from the media and

other pressures, to Sir Alex

Ferguson’s treatment of Giggs 30

years ago. Solskjaer has already

talked publicly about that and it is

a message reinforced by his staff. It

was noticeable on tour how

Greenwood was quickly whisked

away from a room where media

interviews were being done.

Not 18 until October, Greenwood

is even largely off limits to MUTV,

United’s official television station,

for now.

In the fourth part

of our series

profiling the

Premier League’s

top young talents,

James Ducker

explains why

Solskjaer is

pinning high

hopes on the

teenage striker

Sport Football

TOMORROW

Matt Law on

Mason Mount’s

challenge in going

from promising

youngster to

first-team regular

at Chelsea

under

Frank

Lampard

It is a long time since United have

encountered such an instinctive finisher

since the

an instin

so two-f

through

home fre

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Precocious talent: Mason Greenwood

is tipped for stardom at Old Trafford

10 *** Tuesday 6 August 2019 The Daily Telegraph