It was a sight the England press pack became increasingly used to seeing after the team’s World Cup matches over the summer. Kobbie Mainoo was invariably the first to leave the dressing room, walk through the mixed zone – eyes dead ahead, features impassive – and board the bus. It was as if he could not get out of the stadiums quick enough and the further England progressed the more pronounced it started to feel.
There was a real gap between Mainoo and the next England player to depart the stadium in the knockout rounds. The Manchester United midfielder is inscrutable, even in the heat of battle. It is part of his enviably unflappable temperament.
It was no great leap to imagine what lay behind the mask – tremendous frustration as Thomas Tuchel kept on leaving him out. Mainoo did not play a single minute at the tournament. He was an unused substitute all the way to the semi-final exit against Argentina, and when everyone expected to see him in the third-place playoff against France he did not make the bench.
The Football Association said before the game he had picked up an unspecified injury. For Mainoo it was a lost summer and yet it was physically and mentally draining all the same, what with the training and travel; the demand to stay focused as he waited and waited. Like every player who was part of a squad that reached the final weekend of the World Cup, he reported late for pre-season training with his club.
Mainoo played the last half hour of United’s final friendly against Milan and that was it. On the opening weekend of the season, he was fit enough only to be a substitute at Hull, coming on with 23 minutes to go and United 2-0 down, en route to a damaging defeat. There has been a spotlight on Mainoo, with some fans wondering how he would react to the suffocation of his World Cup dream; his treatment by Tuchel, who preferred Elliot Anderson and Declan Rice in the deeper midfield positions and, also, at various times, Reece James, Jude Bellingham, Jordan Henderson, Morgan Rogers and Nico O’Reilly.
Nobody should have worried. Mainoo is made of stern stuff. United regeared their midfield to the tune of £155m during the transfer window, adding Youri Tielemans, Andrey Santos and Carlos Baleba.
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