How Kobbie Mainoo Became a Teenage National Treasure

Few players have coached and mastered the centre of midfield better than Roy Keane, so when he made a recent observation about Kobbie Mainoo's performances in a stellar season, it seemed all the more significant.

Mainoo hadn't started a Premier League game until eight months ago, but he has navigated his first season with as much grace and ease as he seems to glide across a football pitch. His Premier League debut, his Champions League debut, the winning goal in the FA Cup final.

An England debut, then a rather astonishing feat last Sunday, which perhaps went a little unnoticed, when he became the third youngest England player to start a knockout match at a major tournament behind Michael Owen and Wayne Rooney.

“You see what he does, I've played that position but he does things that probably took me 10 years to learn,” Keane said during his punditry duties for ITV for the round of 16 match.

“He's obviously had a good foundation at Manchester United and he's picking up good habits, but we've seen it in those big games – and when you play for Manchester United, every game is a big game for Manchester United, so he'll cope with all that.”

With Keane saying this, the comments of Jay Motty, co-host of the popular Stretford Paddock podcast – who saw Mainoo play in Manchester United's youth teams before anyone knew his name – seem less hyperbolic.

“Some pundits and rival fans have tried to look for chinks in Mainoo's armour, but I'll spare them the trouble: there aren't any,” Motty said. I.

“It's a finished product, even if it's far from finished, and the comparisons to Clarence Seedorf aren't as far off the mark as some might think.

“Mainoo has earned the right to start for United and England and those of us who have followed his trajectory from academy starlet to national treasure can feel a deep sense of pride and privilege.”

At Manchester United, the coaches have always made sure that young footballers retain their love of football and feel comfortable on the ball. Mainoo is the embodiment of this. He is so calm and relaxed, but paradoxically so hungry for the ball.

You could see it when he came on in the second half of the third game against Slovenia, the way England finally took the game by storm and managed to take control of the game. They didn't score, but that was more the fault of the forwards than the players deeper down who were tasked with moving the ball and maintaining possession.

Gareth Southgate has certainly recognised the huge shift in control of the first five halves of England's games shared between Trent Alexander-Arnold and Conor Gallagher, with the latter replacing the former in the opening two games.

Alexander-Arnold and Gallagher had 81 touches of the ball between them against Serbia and 75 against Denmark. Against Slovenia, Gallagher started but looked lost, touching the ball just 24 times in 45 minutes. Mainoo replaced him at half-time and touched the ball 41 times.

Southgate made a big choice in handing the ball to a 19-year-old to start against Slovakia. But his faith was rewarded: Mainoo touched the ball 77 times before being replaced with six minutes remaining, his heat and touch maps reflecting how much he wants the ball all over the pitch, unlike Alexander-Arnold and Gallagher who tended to drift to the right. Mainoo demands the ball in the narrow, congested area in the middle of the opposition half.

He's a footballer with the feet of a tap dancer and the composure of a sniper.

England have struggled to produce a midfielder in that mould and, watching Mainoo at Old Trafford, Southgate enthused about his potential, particularly with his preferred partners for Declan Rice in decline.

Kalvin Phillips' career was in freefall and Jordan Henderson was declining with age. Southgate loved the way Mainoo tackled, willingly received the ball in the tightest of spaces and, under instant pressure, made almost instinctive passes.

It is no wonder that the teenager is expected to sign a new contract, increasing his wages to around £80,000-a-week, after Euro 2024.

However, Southgate felt there was room for improvement in his performance against Slovakia, conceding the team “struggled to connect through their pressing” and England “weren't very good in transition in that first half”.

But he added that Mainoo is “a player who looks to play forward, who can receive under pressure” and that “the composure he shows for a player of his age is phenomenal”.

If an opponent were to drive nails into Mainoo's shins, he would probably lose his cool. It's something everyone notices about him.

He is a popular figure around England's training camp in Blankenhain, sometimes seen wandering around in a bucket hat – his headgear of choice since he asked a fan in the Wembley crowd if he could have their red – and celebrating Manchester United's FA Cup final victory over Manchester City.

Outside of matches and training sessions, he enjoyed playing Padel with Anthony Gordon, Cole Palmer and Adam Wharton, the other young players on the team.

Team-mate Ivan Toney, also making his first major tournament appearance for England, said Mainoo was “performing really well” and “didn't look out of place at all” in training and on the pitch.

Southgate noticed that in Mainoo too when he first called him up to his squad for the pre-tournament friendlies against Brazil and Belgium in March. He looked immediately at ease, as if he had always been destined to thrive in that environment – ​​which can be the defining attribute of top-class players. The England manager has been wary of doing too much too soon, but he has yet to be unsettled by a major event.

“I remember watching him in the academy team that won the FA Youth Cup and being impressed not only by his ability but also his maturity, made even more impressive by the fact he was at least a year younger than many of his team-mates,” says Motty.

Further signs of Mainoo's cool, air-conditioned temperament were seen during Manchester United's pre-season tour of the United States when he outplayed recently signed £100million player Rice in a friendly against Arsenal in New Jersey.

“I was in the stadium that day and all the talk among the Reds was about how well Mainoo played in the 45 minutes he was given against the big-money Arsenal player,” Motty says.

Still, when Mainoo was injured and missed the early months of the season, no one was worried that they had lost a key player. “Despite his performance against Arsenal, I didn't expect an 18-year-old to be able to trouble a midfield with the likes of Casemiro, Christian Eriksen and Bruno Fernandes,” Motty added.

“The arrival of Sofyan Amrabat seems to have made Mainoo's path to the first team even more difficult and for that I must apologise as I completely underestimated how ready the teenager was for the first team.

“It took less than five minutes of watching his first Premier League start, in the game against Everton, to realise that Mainoo was not just useful to this team, he was essential, so much so that his more experienced team-mates seemed keen to give him the ball as often as possible – and rightly so.”

It doesn't happen all the time, but sometimes a player just becomes part of the team, especially those who do things on the pitch that took Roy Keane a decade to master.