From saint to sinner: Marcus Rashford’s fall from grace

For those with longer memories, there was something rather alarming about the city in which Marcus Rashford went off grid last week.

According to The Sun, for two nights in Belfast he embarked on an all-out hedonistic binge, a “12-hour tequila bender”, a session that finished with him so drunk he had to be helped into bed by the waitress he had invited back to his hotel room.

Of all the locations for a young Manchester United footballer with the world at his feet to step into the dark side, that it all took place in the home city of George Best could not have been more telling.

Best, it will be recalled, found the pressures of fame that came with starring for his team so debilitating they ultimately crushed him, his talent reduced, his purpose diminished.

Rashford is nowhere near the level of self-destruction that undermined his predecessor as one of United’s great talents. But the parallels have found a sudden and unexpected new turn. And they are increasingly uncomfortable.

Not least because his latest escapade has come at a time when Rashford’s match performances have been at their most frustratingly diminished. A player who at his peak is almost Best-like in his ability to light up the pitch has, for the past six months, been labouring. Nothing seems to work for him.

His attempts to beat an opponent invariably end in failure, his confidence has withered, his body language offers up a new lexicon of hunched shoulders and resigned expressions.

Then there is the lack of goals. Last season he scored 30 times in 56 appearances for club and country. He looked on top of the world as he pointed to his forehead in celebration of every goal as if to indicate he had worked out in his own mind how to overcome adversity.

But this season, adversity is back: he has netted just four times. Instead of kicking on and becoming the most explosive forward of his generation, instead of assuming leadership as a senior player for the club he has supported all his life, instead of ensuring that he finally realises the genius within him, he gives every indication of reversing into a permanent sulk.

And worse, just at the point when his growing army of critics are insisting that what he needs to do is knuckle down and work his way out of his malaise, he responds to the mounting pressure by getting completely bladdered, and then claiming he was too ill to attend training.

True, he has been off form before; his career has long followed a topsy-turvy curve of peaks and troughs. And he has missed training before after over-sleeping. But getting legless in full view of every camera phone in Belfast: that was something worryingly Best-like.

Not least in unconsciously channelling the way George would offer total contrition after erring, with Rashford accepting “complete responsibility for his actions”. Responsibility which landed him with a record fine levied by his club of two weeks wages, or nigh on £650,000.

This is the growing worry not just for Manchester United supporters, but those in charge of the club: in the manner he withers under the weight of responsibility, is this Bestie Mark II?

There is, of course, a big difference between Rashford and Best. Not just in the frequency and scale of Best’s escape into the bottle.

But in the fact that Rashford, unlike his great footballing forebear, is surrounded by those who should have known better than to allow him to behave like that. Best was ultimately alone. His only source of advice was his manager Matt Busby, whom he kept almost entirely ignorant of the downward trajectory of his affairs.

While Best had drinking buddies, Rashford has an entourage. Advisers, PR gurus, social-media operators: his every move is calculated and controlled. Or should be.

Which makes you wonder this: how on Earth did his people let him go so spectacularly awry? Who was there to suggest that maybe, heading for a double-all-nighter in a Belfast nightclub may not be the wisest thing to do at a time when your performance is under such intense scrutiny. As they say in public relations: the optics of a 12-hour tequila bender are never positive.

He has always had people. Signed by the Roc Nation management agency run by rapper and entrepreneur Jay-Z, Rashford rose to national-treasure status in his early 20s by campaigning for free school meals under the watchful eye of Kelly Hogarth, an executive at the company. At her peak, she backed the Government into about-turns with the ferocious precision of the social media output to which she put his name.

When Rashford split from Roc Nation in 2021, he persuaded Hogarth to stay with him. Though, intriguingly, she didn’t stay long. She was replaced without fanfare last summer by the PR agency Huxley, who were themselves replaced in short order by Caroline McAteer, the renowned footballing PR who helped David Beckham recover his image after the debacle of his sending off at the 1998 World Cup.

But then, as his change in senior advisers appears to suggest, he finds it hard to afford trust. He leaves important issues to those he has known all his life. His finances, for instance, are in the hands of DN May Sports Management, run by his brother Dane and his step-brother Dwaine Maynard. It was Dwaine who accompanied him when he was called to disciplinary talks with the United manager, Erik ten Hag, following his Ulster excess.

Concerns about their ability to influence Rashford have not been soothed by their failure to pass the FA’s new agency examinations. As one long-term United analyst put it to The Telegraph: “There is a whole village dependent on Marcus’s wages.”

Which are substantial: the contract he signed last summer will be worth more than £78million if he sees it through to its conclusion in 2028.

Yet, despite the scale of his corporate base, the player’s mental wellbeing appears to be less than carefully curated. PR people, financial advisers, agents; they are not much use when he needs a shoulder to cry on.

When he was a small boy, it was from his mother, Melanie Maynard, that he drew all his support. She was his role model, someone who worked endless hours to keep food on the table for her family. It was her work ethic that drove him through the Manchester United Academy, where he was renowned as the hardest grafter of his and many a generation.

It was her approach to life that made him seize his opportunity with such determination, as when he scored twice on his debut for the United first team. It was to her faith that he turned when he was so horribly traduced by online trolls after missing a penalty at the Euros final in 2021.

And it was her Christian values that informed his lockdown campaigning for children’s school meals. That was why those who criticised him when his form first began to dip for taking his eye off the ball in favour of good causes were so wrong: for Rashford, doing what was right was a vital part of who he is.

Tellingly, though, apart from his mother and two sisters, there is no other woman to turn to. His relationship with his schoolyard sweetheart, Lucia Loi, reached a social-media apex when their engagement was announced on Instagram in May 2022 with a series of staged pictures of them standing amid hearts and candles on a Dubai beach.

But they have since split up. And those who know Rashford quietly suggest that his fear now is not knowing whether potential girlfriends find his wallet his most attractive feature.

Thus it is that despite being surrounded by those whose income benefit from his success, like George Best his struggles with form and confidence remain largely his and his alone. True, we have seen it before with him. A back injury meant his form dipped horribly in the 2021-22 season. He bounced back.

But again this season, just at the time he is needed most by a team sinking into a gathering malaise, he has been unable to shake off the funk. Now comes his latest juvenile indiscretion.

From national treasure to blind drunk in Belfast: it is a career arc he needs rapidly to reset. Ultimately, how he addresses that decline will come to determine our view of him.