Manchester United like to boast that there has been an academy graduate in every one of their first-team squads since 1937. The record is so precious to them that Ruben Amorim crowbarred 18-year-old Jack Fletcher into the squad who faced Spurs last month when Kobbie Mainoo withdrew injured.
“We are not going to stop with academy players. It doesn’t matter about the result,” said Amorim that day. “We will show that our academy is the future.”
Mainoo returned – but not to the first XI, where he has yet to start a Premier League game this season, 18 months after he started in central midfield in a European Championship final for England against Spain.
In May last year against Manchester City, Mainoo became, at 19, the youngest FA Cup final scorer since West Ham United’s John Sissons in 1964. Against the Netherlands in the semi-finals of Euro 2024 he won 100% of his tackles and completed 100% of his long passes to secure his place in the final, which England lost 2-1.
Mainoo’s only start this season, though, has been in the Carabao Cup defeat away to Grimsby, when he played all 120 minutes and scored his penalty in the shootout. He has been brought on 10 times in the Premier League but played only 173 minutes, with five of his appearances lasting 13 minutes or less. The lost boy of English midfield play, Mainoo was scouted by United aged six but has become emblematic of wasted promise at the club. His exile has angered the legends from the Sir Alex Ferguson era, who condemn it from the Star Chamber of podcast empires.
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One talented product of United’s academy has won a Serie A player of the year award in Italy and helped Scotland reach the World Cup with a spectacular bicycle kick. Another stagnates on the bench.
Scott McTominay, 29, and Mainoo, 20, are miles apart in their trajectories but share an educational background. They both came through a system that produced Mark Hughes, David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes and the Neville brothers. By then Duncan Edwards, Bobby Charlton and George Best had laid the foundations of United’s faith in homegrown youth.
‘If Kobbie rang me and said Chelsea were interested, I’d say go, all day long’
Paul Scholes
McTominay was discarded by United and became Napoli’s best player. Mainoo can barely get a game. He was cheered on to the field by United fans for a 12-minute cameo away to Wolves on Monday night. The brevity of that appearance further stoked an issue that irritates Amorim and infuriates advocates of Mainoo’s talent – among them Nicky Butt and Scholes, who let rip on The Good, The Bad & The Football podcast.
“If I’m looking after Kobbie Mainoo,” said Butt, who has known him since he was seven, “I’m going, ‘Kobbie, I’m getting you out of that football club.’ It’s sad. For his football career he’s got to leave Manchester United. He’s lost 18 months of his development.”
Scholes added: “Do you know what? You’d have to advise him to go [to Chelsea], wouldn’t you? If he rang me and said, ‘Look, Chelsea are interested, what do you think?’ I’d say go, all day long.”
It’s unusual for hall-of-famers to urge a young player to leave their club like this. It reflects the loss of connection many of Ferguson’s great players feel to the golden era (and their own personal alienation).
“Fair enough, as a manager sometimes you just don’t fancy a player,” said Scholes. “But look at what he’s already done – scored the winner in an FA Cup final, played almost every game in the Euros. I bet he takes the piss out of Casemiro every day in training and is brilliant. I don’t know why the club are letting Amorim treat a homegrown talent like that.”
Ferguson used to think nobody in their right mind would leave United – unless he made them. The manager for 27 years, Ferguson kept a list of United academy graduates who had left but built professional careers across the top four leagues. “Ninety-three,” or some other high number, he would say proudly. It was a matter of honour to him that United’s youth system endowed teenagers with skills for life.
McTominay’s escape was the making of him. Now even the “Class of 99” who won the Treble 26 years ago are urging Mainoo to extricate himself – to Chelsea, where he would join an even longer queue for a first-team place. On his YouTube channel Rio Ferdinand agreed with Butt and Scholes. “If I think about it and put myself in Kobbie Mainoo’s shoes I’m out of there, I’ve got to,” said Ferdinand.
No story or even rumour has suggested problematic behaviour at Mainoo’s end. If there’s a tactical reason for his omission it will be Amorim’s preference for Casemiro and Bruno Fernandes in central midfield. Recently Amorim asked reporters rhetorically which attack-minded players they would bring in to face West Ham. One said Mainoo, and Amorim laughed – a clip of which Mainoo “liked” on Instagram. In mitigation United’s manager might have just laughed at the ubiquity of questions about a young fringe player.
“I understand what you are saying. You love Kobbie, he starts for England,” Amorim has said. “But that doesn’t mean that I need to put Kobbie [in] when I feel that I shouldn’t put Kobbie [in], so it’s my decision.”
On Monday night, TV replayed Mainoo’s audacious 97th-minute winner for Manchester United in a 4-3 win against Wolves at Molineux in February 2024. The camera panned to Ferguson, beaming in the stands at his favourite spectacle: a Manchester United “‘kid” making a declaration.
Photograph by Ash Donelon/Manchester United via Getty Images