Why Kobbie Mainoo is a genuine contender to follow in Marcus Rashford's footsteps and earn a spot at the Euros

Should the arrival of Sir Jim Ratcliffe genuinely prompt the overhaul of Manchester United’s recruitment strategy it so clearly needs, then one of the final acts of the previous regime may, oddly, come to be viewed among its best.

Had United been shrewder and more front-footed in their search for a central midfielder last summer, had they managed to lure a Declan Rice or a Wataru Endo, then they are unlikely to have ended up leaning so heavily on an 18-year-old — and Gareth Southgate might not be weighing up a Euro 2024 wildcard.

Instead, a desperate loan plunge on the dawdling Sofyan Amrabat and the plummet in form of Casemiro, signed on a four-year deal when already 31, opened the door to Kobbie Mainoo. With those quick feet and a delicate shuffle, he has slid straight through.

There had been a pre-season buzz around Mainoo, after a smattering of first-team outings last year, but an ankle injury in pre-season derailed his chances of an immediate impact.

So it was that by the time he made his first Premier League start, at Everton in November, he was, by the standards of a young player emerging at United, back under the radar. Only five months on, the teenager looks the most exciting prospect at Old Trafford since Marcus Rashford, echoing the forward’s breakthrough of 2016 in going from — beyond United at least — relative unknown to a regular almost overnight. Indeed, Mainoo headed to St George’s Park this week having started 14 of his club’s last 15 games.

From only making his debut in February 2016, Rashford would go on to make Roy Hodgson’s doomed England squad for the same summer’s European Championship and now, having been drafted into Southgate’s senior set-up this week, the question is already of whether Mainoo might do the same.

United great Gary Neville recently made the blasphemous admission that Mainoo “looks like a Manchester City player”. Many more have pointed out he is exactly the kind England so rarely produce. Arguably, the two are one and the same.

One only need go back as far as Sunday’s epic FA Cup victory over Liverpool, in which Mainoo played 80 minutes, to see his composure in even the most chaotic of midfields stand out; the cleverness, balance and acceleration that allows not only tidy recycling of possession but positive transition into attack.

The England question already appears not one of quality, but readiness. Southgate, you sense, would love a tempo-setting controller to play alongside Rice, behind Jude Bellingham. It is why he persisted with Kalvin Phillips until the West Ham loanee started playing football again and made it untenable to do so any longer.

Mainoo may become that player — certainly he has all the tools — but he is not there yet, particularly in terms of positional discipline, on the evidence of a United side still fantastically porous through the centre of midfield. Granted, playing alongside someone of Rice’s athleticism might help fill a few holes.

That Mainoo might start at the Euros, then, is clearly a long-shot, and so it comes down to considering where he may fit in as a squad player. England have famously ceded control of midfield late on in several of their most painful tournament defeats, and Mainoo’s calmness would certainly offer a different solution in that regard to the more dynamic influence of, say, Conor Gallagher or the experience of Jordan Henderson. But is sending a teenager, as yet uncapped, into that kind of situation really Southgate’s style?

There would be value for Mainoo’s development in simply being part of the show. Bellingham went to Euro 2020, played three times as a late substitute, and by the next major tournament was, arguably, England’s best player.

The shift back down to 23-man squads, though, makes such bonus selections a little more awkward. There are 26 players in this squad, and that is without Luke Shaw, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Jack Grealish and Kieran Trippier, who will come back into contention when fit.

Southgate, though, has not called Mainoo up for the craic. Make an impression over this fortnight and Germany may yet await.