Every action has an equal and opposite reaction and as the curtain fell on a historically bad season for Manchester United, players who have recently departed the club are left reflecting on glory and glamour.
Goalkeeper Dean Henderson won the FA Cup with Crystal Palace, Jadon Sancho lifted the Europa Conference League trophy with Chelsea and even Tyrell Malacia, on loan at PSV Eindhoven, became a title winner in the Netherlands.
But one man stands head and shoulders above every other recent United departee; Serie A medal in one hand, Serie A MVP award in the other, Scott McTominay looms large over Europe right now.
So much so that in a recent opinion piece The Athletic ranked the Scotland international as 8th favourite for the Ballon d’Or – placing him above the likes of Kylian Mbappe and Harry Kane.
They note his importance to an underdog title success story: “Despite not boasting the squad strength of Inter, Napoli edged them to the title, largely due to Antonio Conte getting the best out of McTominay.”
This prompts the inevitable question of how Conte was able to succeed in realising the player’s potential where Jose Mourinho, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Erik ten Hag all failed.
The Italian is certainly a world-class coach but is he such a horse whisperer that he can bend the ear of any workmanlike midfielder and conjure up a marauding one-man title charge?
It seems unlikely, so we have to conclude that the raw materials for the 2025 version of Scott McTominay have always been there.
That’s much easier to understand. After all, something called to the Special One when he cast his eye over the United reserves in 2017, raising eyebrows at the time by overlooking other youngsters deemed ahead of McTominay in terms of development.
His physicality and willingness to do anything for the cause were doubtless huge factors, and when Solskjaer took the reins at Old Trafford the infamous McFred pivot really took hold, pushing both of these traits to the fore at the expense of any others.
Alongside the industrious Brazilian, almost regardless of what he did McTominay was always one half of the butt of a joke, one half of the reason for United’s poor form.
It was a thankless role, no doubt mentally just as much as in terms of ability to impact matches, so when Ten Hag offered the opportunity for McTominay to push higher up the pitch it’s little wonder he bloomed.
Last season, under the Dutch tactician, the 28-year-old reached double figures for goals scored for the first time in his senior career, netting ten in all competitions – he is up there on his current pedestal with 13 in the bag.
But despite scoring some crucial and memorable goals there was always the sense that it was a one-off, that it was a last resort tactic, that it was the equivalent of pushing Harry Maguire to centre-forward for the last five minutes and shouldn’t be relied on.
Combined with United’s chronic lack of saleable assets and desperate need to raise cash, the plucky overachiever who had no fixed role despite spending years in the squad seemed an obvious candidate to depart in the never-ending churn to get rid of “deadwood”.
That McTominay was identified as such is a shame but not a crime – hindsight is 20/20, and given the circumstances and attitudes at play in the last close season something had to give, but it is still disappointing that it was a future title-decider who left rather than a waning five-time Champions League winner.
But then we come to the real crux of the matter. McTominay had been at United since the age of five and had never know anything else, had never even been on loan at another club.
For him, football at the top level was only ever fraught with false aspersions and disjointed displays, was always about compromise and making do with your position however ill-fitted it might be.
Above all, to play football in red was always to be judged, studied and pilloried, to be the punchline even after scoring winning goals – the levels of scrutiny and pressure at United are unmatched and toxic, and claimed a victim in McTominay.
The general Old Trafford malaise weighed him down, pushing the Scottish square peg into a round hole and, like a coiled spring, building up his potential energy.
How wonderful for Napoli that McTominay’s sweet release powered them to a Serie A title, but there is every chance he could have been a jet engine for anyone willing to take a punt.
Feature image Francesco Pecoraro via Getty Images
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Joe Ponting
Joe has spent more than half his life writing about football and all of it following United. As a child he told a doctor his name was ‘Paul Scholes’, but could never pick a pass like him no matter how much he tried.
