“He’s a championship player!”
Those words have been thrown around Marcus Rashford since his second season at Manchester United. They’ve always formed a shadowy presence around him, always lurking in the dark corners of the Internet, in the cesspool of social media, and strangely enough, in the criticisms of some very “respectable figures” in mainstream media. The words still follow him around even after all he has managed to achieve in his career.
Despite all that, He has always been the king of debuts. No, really. Only a handful of players in the history of the sport have thrived on making an impression on debuts as Rashford has. In his first game for Manchester United in the Europa League, he scored two goals, shattering George Best’s record to become the youngest player to score in a European match for the club. He scored a brace again in his first league game three days later against Arsenal, in his first Manchester Derby and in his first international match for England. He has an eye for the spectacular, a herald for the grand stage and the big events.
Rashford’s formative years at the club didn’t really begin until Ole Gunnar Solskjaer returned as manager. Yes, he played for Jose Mourinho and Louis Van Gaal, but he became the team’s backbone under the Norwegian international. Ole started out as interim after an incredible run that ultimately saw him get the job permanently, and a great deal of that run was owed to Rashford’s brilliance.
There is a confident expectation that comes with Rashford, even though he has emerged as one of the club’s most important players since Sir Alex Ferguson retired, and in some people’s eyes, he still hasn’t lived up to that expectation, making him the number one target for fans who have come to the conclusion that he has never been an effective performer for the club?
But is there any truth to that? Has he always been bad? Is he just inconsistent? Or does the answer lie somewhere in between? We’ll look at this through the lens of film director Christopher Nolan and actually try to understand the philosophy behind the animosity directed towards Rashford. I was looking through my old notes about Nolan, and I stumbled upon something that made me think about the perception around the Man United forward both as a player and as an individual. The illusions we create on both sides of the pitch and how effectively they hold against reality.
But Wait. What just happened? Where am I?
How do we answer questions like this? The prevailing consensus is that we use the tools that aid perception – memory and our sense of time. We depend on them to help us reorient ourselves in this current reality. So when we claim to have a firm grasp on objective reality, we understand what is going on, we know where we are. Or do we? Those tools that aid perception is really just down to our interpretation of events that unfold around us.
Even after watching the exact same thing, two people can come to very different conclusions about it. Our biases, mood, and the degree to which we pay attention to things all have a significant impact on our perception of reality. So we do not only rely on our senses. This is how we support players and why in the beautiful game, there will always be favourites.
Rashford was an instant favourite the day he made his debut. A wide-eyed young man, brimming with confidence and focus, coming onto the big stage for the first time, arming himself with the knowledge that he knows he can make a difference. He had been training all his life for this, after all, and this was an opportunity to make his first game one to remember. And he did.
The two goals he scored that day were essentially identical, but perhaps the second was the most memorable because it was so unlikely that an 18-year-old would score a brace in his debut. But there he was, lurking inside the 18-yard box, possibly waiting for a rebound. He had been watching the play all along, following the ball closely, never taking his eyes off it, like a predator stalking its prey. He knew that when it happened, when the ball somehow fell to him, he would be right there to pounce. It was as simple as that.
He was prepared for Guillermo Varela’s cross when it found its way to him. A similar roar to the first goal was heard as the ball hit the back of the net. The only thing that set this one apart was how loud and intense it was. The players celebrated wildly, bouncing up and down in front of their fans, ushering the newest addition to the hallowed halls of the club’s history. The Manchester-born lad had arrived, and his legend was only just beginning.
No one anticipated that he would go on to score 100 goals for the club and move into the top 20 all-time scorers at Old Trafford, even after he bagged two goals in his league debut three days later against Arsenal. The 25-year-old had played at the highest level for seven years for one of the most erratic teams in Europe, at a time when the club was undergoing a calamitous transition under different managers with very different tactical philosophies in a host of different positions across the frontline.
Since he has consistently been the player who has raised the bar for himself and elevated the expectations fans had of him, it’s easy to pin the majority of Manchester United’s issues on the forward.
“Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the colour of a car. And memories can be distorted.”
In Memento (2000), Leonard Shelby emphasised how unreliable memory can be. The things we remember over time can be distorted, and the way people seem to remember Rashford is only under the colourful cloud of inconsistency, but how true is this? What people usually fail to realise is that most of the time, Rashford was the backbone of the team and his inconsistency became a reflection or an extension of the team’s inconsistency, all under the auspices of the board’s incompetence and lack of initiative.
Some people are more correct than they realise when they claim that fans have memories comparable to those of a goldfish. It might be argued that most of us harbour a certain level of favouritism towards Rashford because of how fondly we remember his Europa League debut - but it could also be argued that people don’t remember it fondly enough.
There are very few current Manchester United players that fans should have a connection with more than Marcus Rashford. He has literally been there for all of it. If we look at all the memorable times the club has had post Sir Alex Ferguson, Rashford would almost certainly be the first name you remember. If there should be some form of blindside from the fans when it comes to a particular player, it should be Rashford. In some ways, he already feels like a club legend.
The theme around Memento is the opposition of objective reality and subjective perception – reality versus fantasy.
“Rashford has always been a bad player” is usually a consensus some fans make after a poor run of form from literally everyone else on the team. This is a view that comes from a skewed sense of perception that devolves into fantasy. The evidence strongly implies that Rashford has only experienced prolonged streaks of bad performances during the final half of the 2018–19 season, when he scored 13 goals, and the 2021–22 season, when he only managed to score 5 goals after missing the first half of the season due to surgery, in a volatile team. This is the reality, and it is often seen more clearly when you apply context.
So how can Rashford be good and bad at the same time? He can’t. That’s impossible. The Prestige (2006) taught us how two men could move through space at the same time. But it also uncovered just how distracted we become when we only want to look at one half of the picture.
“Now you’re looking for the secret. But you won’t find it because of course, you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to work it out. You want to be fooled.”
The half people seem to look out for are the times when Rashford is supposed to score 30 goals a season and never have a bad day, regardless of how everyone else on the team is doing. And yet, it’s so easy to forget he only turned 25 a few months ago. The other half people fail to see is at ages 22 and 23, he scored 43 goals across two seasons, all while playing with injuries, again in an unstable team. Like most young players, he thrives on confidence, and he does especially better in a team full of confidence, something United have struggled to maintain for a very long time. So does it seem fair to constantly hinge all the responsibilities a team is supposed to helm collectively on one player?
“I think Marcus has got his own motivation to become the best player he can be. He has got far more than I did in terms of his physical attributes, his pace, his strength, and striking the ball from outside the box.” - Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
But the Manchester-born forward has created some reverberations outside of the sacred grounds of the football pitch, even beyond the walls of Old Trafford, touching the streets and educational institutions of Manchester with his echo, his touch, his humanity. The “child feeder” he was called, but as far as slander names go, this one wasn’t that bad. It was certainly better than “trashford” or “Rashbeck.” But they all had the same effect, Like mist rising from a lake seemingly everywhere and nowhere at the same time. In this sense, your compassion becomes your undoing, and your light becomes your darkness.
The fact that his team had lost a Europa League final and the chance to win their first trophy in five years might have made losing the Euro 2020 Cup final the lowest point of his career. Especially seeing as the majority of people blamed him and teammate Jadon Sancho for the loss. I’m not sure which would hurt more; losing both finals or returning to a completely different team right after an extended leave due to injury.
The abuse from some people had not stopped, but it seemed to have taken a turn for the worse. He was used to facing abuse and criticism from a concerted agenda spearheaded by some media figures due to his charitable work. However, the slurs and jeers were no longer only directed at him specifically; they now included his family. Yet somehow, he managed to turn it around under Erik Ten Hag, never letting the abuse become what defines him as a player or as a man. Like a Phoenix rising from the ashes of defeat in a glorious shimmer of light that seemed to charm everyone with its glow.
He is the golden boy once again, but we’ve seen this movie before; we’ve seen it a thousand times. It’s one that will continue to play until he retires. All it takes is one bad game. That’s what it always comes down to, the one bad game people will cling onto. One bad game they will judge your entire career on. The worst part is that no matter how hard you work or how much you’ve accomplished, there’s never any guarantee of a perfect ending.
The Myth Of Perception - Marcus Rashford
So refreshing and different. The comparisons to Nolan’s films were terribly accurate. objectivity vs subjectivity is basically the constant battle in football fandom. Great read, Oliver.
Simply wonderful
I haven't seen any write-up explain Rashford this clearly or poetic.
I had to steal some quotes😅