Millionaire footballers are curious figures of discontent, still more rebel leaders. So what to make of Marcus Rashford’s popular front, a tiny but crack unit of outcast ballers joined in apparent enmity for Manchester United?
First Jadon Sancho, crying “Freedom!”, now Alejandro Garnacho has taken to social media in an Aston Villa shirt bearing Rashford’s moniker, a clear message of unity and solidarity, placing all three on the same side of the barricades at Old Trafford.
Of course United would have us believe the rebel trio are “wrong ‘uns” in some way, not made of the right stuff to be a Manchester United player. The United credo built by Sir Matt Busby and carried on through the Sir Alex Ferguson years has taken a pasting since the end of empire in 2013. Nevertheless protecting it is among the few connective tissues to the past worth the effort.
By exiling Rashford, Sancho and Garnacho, United have woven an incredibly adhesive narrative casting them as pariahs. Granted they all appear at various times to have substantiated the toxic propaganda with behaviours that might justify the naughty step.
Thus they appear stroppy, entitled individuals who put themselves before the team. There is no greater sin in this game than turning your back on the shirt. Sancho’s stand-off with former manager Erik ten Hag, Rashford’s “ready for a new challenge” interview, Garnacho’s dissent over not starting in the Europa League final and dismissing the season as “shit”, are incendiary elements seemingly in favour of the prosecution.
Though power has shifted hugely towards the players in the modern game, personal profiles projected via sundry social media accounts are insufficient to counter the messaging at a club packing a PR punch like United’s. When head coach Ruben Amorim speaks, there is always a ton of stored sympathy for the sentiments he expresses.
But what if there is a kernel of justification for the discontent the bad boy three feel. Amorim is sent out match after to match to be the public face of a toxic institution. Whilst he attempts to articulate the scale of dysfunction, the owners and executive branch that is ultimately responsible for outcomes are largely silent outside of carefully orchestrated, set-piece media briefings.
Yet behind the scenes they are busy stripping the soul of the club Rashford knew as a boy and corroding the vision absorbed by Sancho and Garnacho in their youths, when the myth of Manchester United meant something rather different to the reality of the post-Fergie Armageddon.
First the Glazers took leveraged ownership of the club and dumped the cost of their vast borrowing not on themselves but the institution. Then, almost two decades later, they pulled another stunt by effecting a partial cash out whilst heaping responsibility for the mess they created on Ineos. They must have seen Sir Jim Ratcliffe coming.
Ineos bought a once magnificent old house that turned out to be full of damp, rotting from the ground up and a leaky roof down. Stepping out of the analogy for a moment, Ineos have the option of building a new home rather than putting right the existing structure, but, returning to the analogy, repairing the atmosphere at a club stripped of so many staff and familiar ways of doing things, and righting the faults of the team, are far harder challenges.
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Conditions and mood have deteriorated so dramatically, some staff have legged it voluntarily, bemoaning the poisonous vibe about the place. What if Rashford and Co are also victims of this rapidly deteriorating environment? Though they may be protected from the economic consequences of radical change, wealth and fame offers little protection when affirmation is withdrawn.
The welfare of professional athletes is regulated via a complex ecosystem aimed at maximising performance. So much of this delicate world is governed by trust and not subject to public view. We are left to pick through the curated snippets revealed to us, trying to work out the order of things.
Manchester United want us to believe one version of the truth. The rebellion of Rashford, Sancho and Garnacho hints at an alternative view. Results are the ultimate arbiter, the true expression of reality at Old Trafford, leaving us to guess who might bear the greater responsibility for them.