Gary Lineker has described Kobbie Mainoo’s impact at Manchester United as ‘remarkable’ while tipping the Premier League wonderkid to earn a place in Gareth Southgate’s England squad for the European Championships.
From the very first minute he stepped onto the pitch in a Manchester United shirt – his league debut coming at the end of November away to Everton – Kobbie Mainoo has looked like a teenager playing an entirely different game to some of his far more experienced team-mates.
As Casemiro and Bruno Fernandes treat the ball like a bomb, chucking it up the field with reckless abandon, Mainoo cares for it, caresses it, threatening to bring a modicum of control to Erik ten Hag’s increasingly chaotic side.
Kobbie Mainoo shining at Manchester United
“It’s not easy. There is a lot of pressure. But I think United will have a top player for the next years. Easily,” Casemiro says of a midfielder 13 years his junior. “He is a top player. He’s exceptional. He’s a humble, hard-working player. He knows how to listen. He’s a great player.
“Since I play alongside him, I know Manchester United will have one of the best midfielders in the Premier League for the next years, easily.”
If 18-year-old Mainoo already looks like the lynchpin of the United midfield for potentially the next decade, then there is no reason why the Carrington graduate cannot nail down his place on the international scene too.
Gary Lineker, the Three Lions legend and Match of the Day host, was quizzed by listeners of the Rest is Football podcast on Reddit and mentioned Mainoo as one of three rising stars who could yet force their way into Southgate’s thinking ahead of Euro 2024.
‘Remarkable’
“Blimey, I’ve been put on the spot here,” Lineker says before putting Mainoo alongside Chelsea talisman Cole Palmer and the United-linked Everton colossus Jarrad Branthwaite.
“I think maybe Branthwaite from Everton. He’s got a chance. I know Cole Palmer has already been in the England squad and played, so it doesn’t quite count. But I think he’s got a real chance of making the squad.
“And I will go with Kobbie Mainoo as the other one, because he has impressed me so much. I mean, he’s so young. So, to do what he’s doing is quite remarkable at a club like Manchester United.
“So I think he might sneak in (to the England Euros squad).”
The Stockport-born Mainoo has not even made his debut for England’s under-21 side but – with his discipline, poise and composure – could be the perfect foil for the box-crashing Jude Bellingham on German soil this summer.
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