The call-up came in the morning, the goal in the evening. Marcus Rashford’s career is sufficiently stellar that he has had better days but not too many, and certainly not recently. His renaissance and rejuvenation were rubber-stamped by Gareth Southgate, naming him in England’s World Cup squad. A different sort of comeback featured a Rashford equaliser: twice behind against Aston Villa, Manchester United triumphed 4-2 by offering the kind of visceral entertainment that has characterised Rashford at his best.
His combination of pace and potency, his direct, high-speed running has meant that, from his debut, Rashford felt a player in United’s truest traditions, and not merely because he has helped extend the record of an academy graduate figuring in a first-team squad every match for 85 years. Perhaps it was uncoincidental that United’s worst season for more than three decades was the poorest of Rashford’s career.
If few are advocates for a winter World Cup, Rashford may be in that select band. Rewind to June and he had no goal in 15 games and no spot in the England squad. He had only scored twice under Ralf Rangnick. He felt unselectable. Regime change has brought a shift in fortunes. “When we start the season, he wasn’t [picked by England], so it is really important,” said Erik ten Hag. He ignored his own role in Rashford’s revival, merely noting that: “In this moment we have a lot of players who are nominated for the World Cup and that is good for Manchester United.”
Rashford knows major tournaments can turn sour. His last kick of a ball for England remains his cruellest: inches from a perfect penalty in the Euro 2020 final, instead the first of three misses that handed the trophy to Italy. He was the teenage phenomenon of a striker whose most recent international appearance came in a cameo as a semi-fit right-back. He has been stuck on 46 caps for 16 months.
And yet his recall had the feel of a formality. James Maddison made headline news; the Leicester man was surprised himself whereas the assumption was that Southgate would turn back to Rashford, the sense that his form has been sufficiently good that he was almost impossible to ignore. Yet if Maddison seemed the kind of maverick Southgate can distrust, Rashford has also looked a safer bet, a team player. Perhaps the way a return to form meant he automatically gravitated back to England is also a consequence of where he plays. “If you are performing at United then England is going to be always around the corner,” Rashford rationalised. Footballers at smaller clubs may bristle at that but representing United brings pressure and privilege.
Rashford has lived a footballing life in the limelight. His first goal as a 25-year-old was a reminder he is the youngest old player in the business: over 300 games and 100 goals into his United career, perhaps winning his 50th cap in Qatar but still capable of bringing a dynamism and a vibrancy. His sharpness was evident against Aston Villa, his goal the product of a willingness to burst into the box, but his finish was stroked.
It came a few minutes after he moved into the middle of the attack. Rashford’s versatility has brought an enduring debate about his best role. “I probably say I am more comfortable on the wing,” he said, citing his difficulty playing with his back to goal. Southgate has described him as a wide raider and most of Rashford’s international goals have come when he has flanked Harry Kane. The England captain seems to like pace alongside him.
But a reason why he seemed such an obvious choice for England is that he is two players in one; one of a number of wingers and, with Raheem Sterling out of form, perhaps the likeliest scorer of any, but also the third striker, offering an alternative to the specialists, in the overworked, exhausted Kane and the injury-prone Callum Wilson. He remains the third highest scorer in Southgate’s reign, with 11, even if eight of them came between September 2018 and November 2019, a 14-month period when England were prolific and Rashford rampant.
There were points when his rise appeared inexorable, times in the last year when his decline looked dramatic. Rashford is a year the junior of Dele Alli, another who surged to prominence in his teens, the other youngest member of England’s Euro 2016 squad but a lost talent whose international career has long seemed over.
Rewind a few months and some wondered if Rashford’s United days should be consigned to the past, too; if he needed a fresh start. A place at the World Cup is a staging post in Ten Hag’s rebuilding job. Rashford, who has admitted he was not in the right headspace last season. Now he finds himself heading to an altogether better place: the World Cup.
