49.
He repeated it often enough. ‘Forty-Nine!’, he asserted with the utmost conviction. In his first press conference as Manchester United manager, Jose Mourinho repeatedly defended his record with youth, claiming that he had given debuts to 49 players in his career.
‘Repeat a lie often enough, and it becomes the truth’ – Ironically, Jose used this phrase while defending his record, but the truth at Manchester United needs hearing out. Four feel-good victories and a world record transfer fee should not be enough to provide a smokescreen for the biggest club in the world abandoning its traditions.
Yet, Jose is the master of the art of diversion. Look at how he sneaked through the departures of scores of promising United youngsters on deadline day. Paddy McNair, Tyler Blackett, Will Keane, Nick Powell, Guillermo Varela, James Wilson, Andreas Pereira, Adnan Januzaj and Cameron Borthwick-Jackson have all left the club, either on loan or on permanent deals.
You can’t win anything with kids
At this point, Manchester United fans will have the natural instinct to defend Mourinho. ‘Look at Rashford!’ ‘We need 23 top class players mercenaries to win trophies!’ ‘These youngsters aren’t good enough!’
For the love of your own club, hear me out. Marcus Rashford is so good that he needs to be more that a substitute coming on for 10 minutes as a desperate throw of the dice. Zlatan Ibrahimovic will be gone in one or two years and Rashford will have never experienced leading the line for most of the season.
Sir Alex Ferguson won the Premier League with a young Tom Cleverly in midfield for most of the season. I’ll repeat it – Tom Cleverly. Right from the class of 92, Fergie has shown the right way to nurture youngsters, while winning. They’re not mutually exclusive – You can last an entire season with a promising youngster and win trophies.
Shunting them to the backburner increases your short-term gains, but you risk losing out on a player that could have been a club legend.
Mourinho has done this time and time again
For all his bluster about giving 49 players their debut, how many players has Mourinho nurtured? He was brave to give a teenaged Mario Balotelli and Davide Santon their debuts in big games for Inter Milan, but after that? He took no risk, letting them while away on the bench – look at these two players now.
Supreme talents need nurturing, they need consistency. You cannot improve if you’re in the first XI one moment and out the other. It may work in FIFA or PES or FM, but those 10 minutes at the end of games do not add up in real life.
Young players need faith, they need that faith backed up by action. Sir Alex Ferguson took a whole lot of stick for persisting with an error prone 21-year-old goalkeeper in Manchester United’s goal. David de Gea is now the Red Devil’s player of the season for three years running and could make a case for being the best goalkeeper in the world.
What would Mourinho have done in the same situation? Relegate him to a few cup appearances and buy an experienced goalkeeper to replace him in January. Admit it, you just *know* that’s exactly what he would have done.
Promises, Promises
I’ve been screaming from my soapbox about Mourinho’s faults for quite a while, but let's also look at the players he’s let go for a moment.
Adnan Januzaj has been afforded enough chances to prove his worth, and Mourinho was probably justified in letting him go. In a similar vein, letting Will Keane, Tyler Blackett, Nick Powell and Paddy McNair leave on permanent deals seems fair enough, as the quartet did not do enough to impress when they played for the first XI.
What does stick in the craw is the fact that players of the calibre of Timothy Fosu-Mensah, Cameron Borthwick-Jackson and Andreas Pereira were told to sort out their futures elsewhere. Fosu-Mensah was rated a better prospect than Marcus Rashford by the United backroom staff, which tells you all you need to know about his quality.
By some stroke of luck, he’s remained at United, but is unlikely to be afforded a chance to play under Mourinho. Similarly, Borthwick-Jackson slotted in seamlessly for United at left-back last season and could have comfortably been understudy to an injury-prone Luke Shaw, but Jose’s let him leave on loan as well.
If anyone’s in any doubt about the merit of playing youngsters, remember that letting Paul Pogba go to Juventus was a €105 million mistake. How much will United pay for ascribing to Mourinho’s ideals? Much, much more.
