It seems Marcus Rashford will have time on his hands again this weekend, so perhaps his entourage might consider sitting him down in front of a brilliant new BBC Wales documentary about a player who actually viewed wearing the No 10 jersey at Manchester United as a privilege and something to cherish.
That would be Mark Hughes, an individual who, just like Rashford, seemed rather quiet and intense, after United had signed him as a 20-year-old in 1980. ‘A bit dour, a bit deep and not terribly enthusiastic’ was United manager’s Ron Atkinson first impression of player who was simply not – and never has been - an extrovert.
The young man’s friendships revealed far more about the kind of individual he was. Of a weekend he would, as the documentary relates, head home to Ruabon, in North Wales, to see Ian ‘Bodger’ Williams and other members of a group, all still in touch, whom he’d known from junior school.
Contrast Rashford, disappearing off to New York in a ridiculous Louis Vuitton coat to watch the Knicks play basketball, or to Belfast for a bender taking in Lavery's pub, the Dirty Onion bar and Thompson's Garage nightclub, wads of £20 notes - £10,000 in all - spilling out of a bag.
There was no ‘entourage’ for Hughes, who was not a wall flower, didn’t need hangers-on and, as he put it at the time, liked his own company. He was not averse to razzle-dazzle, driving home to Ruabon in a red Porsche. But he signed his United contract in his mum’s front room – the same one from which, sitting in her armchair, he conducted a TV interview about his move to Barcelona, in 1986.
He’d never wanted to go. A request for a pay rise took him into contract talks with United that got out of hand. He signed for Barcelona, he tells the documentary crew, ‘because I didn’t have the confidence to say, “I’m not going".’
The reluctance was written across his face as he sat in that big chair all those years ago. ‘Obviously I’m going to have some regrets at leaving United because I’ve been there so long,’ he told his interviewer.
Rashford, a far cooler and more sophisticated young man with a far higher opinion of himself, says he has ‘no regrets’ about leaving United. He had rather imagined that he, too, would be heading to Barcelona when United finally surrendered all hope of getting his attitude right, before Christmas.
As anyone could have predicted, Barca aren’t remotely interested in him, and neither is any other big club. Those who have come in for him so far are B-listers, way off the pace in their respect divisions: Milan, eighth in Serie A, Borussia Dortmund, eight points off the top of the Bundesliga, and Monaco, third in the French Ligue and 12 points behind PSG.
Goodness knows how Rashford - who says he feels ‘misunderstood’ and ‘disheartened’, despite years of coddling by United - would have dealt with what came Hughes’ way in Spain.
He had 90,000 disapproving Barcelona fans waving white handkerchiefs – the notorious panuelos blancos – at him, though he faced that down with equanimity. He went to Bayern Munich on loan, flourished again, and Alex Ferguson, newly arrived at Old Trafford, made it his mission to bring him home to United.
It is widely forgotten that Hughes was PFA Player of the Year in his first season back, in 1989. And that it was his pass, bent like a banana with the outside of his right boot, which set up the legendary Mark Robins FA Cup third round winner at Nottingham Forest in 1990 which relieved mounting pressure on Ferguson.
'That pass… I don’t think there’s many players that can do that,’ David Beckham tells the documentary-makers, smiling at the memory and describing the bend with his hand. Beckham’s major contribution to the new film reveals how much he and his United-mad family adored Hughes.
‘He had these thighs,’ Beckham says, recalling how Hughes would control a ball dropping ’50, 60 70ft out of the sky’ with them. ‘My mum loved his thighs!’
If Rashford could only be talked out of his current sense of victimhood and align himself to the notion of redemption in football, then the documentary, which takes that word as its title, might speak to him.
Because when United faced Barcelona and their handkerchief wavers in the 1991 European Cup Winners Cup final in Rotterdam, that’s what Hughes found.
Sent through on the goalkeeper in the final’s 74th minute, he seemed to have pushed the ball too wide in the process of clearing him. Beckham even accurately remembers commentator Brian Moore declaring that the angle was impossible and the chance had gone.
Hughes simply thrashed the ball through the eye of a needle that confronted him. ‘It was just a ping and it went like an arrow,’ Beckham recalls, smiling at that memory, too. Ferguson, watching the goal back in the documentary, simply shakes his head.
Hughes was 27, the same age Rashford is now, and stood imperious before United’s supporters with that No 10 on his back in the Stadion Feyenoord. ‘A sweet, sweet goal for a man regarded as a failure in Spain,’ declares Moore.
The only regret is that documentary, available on iPlayer, runs to a mere half hour. It’s the most compelling education imaginable for a failing United forward apparently incapable of saving himself.
Another painful milestone for family of Mark Townsend
Mark Townsend, the West Brom fan who died at Hillsborough last September, would have been 58 last Friday. It was another painful milestone for the family which grieves for him but who have had confirmation this week that a full inquest into his death will take place in Sheffield.
The coroner will, amongst other testimonies, consider the evidence of West Brom stewards at the stadium for the Sheffield Wednesday match that day and of the two West Brom fans - a paramedic and doctor, both off-duty – who tried in vain to save Mark.
If anyone has something to add, ‘the smallest thing can make a difference’ Mark’s brother Steve tells me. Do email me if you feel you can help a full and fair examination of events.
Brook was a legend and a gentleman
Football mourns Tony Book, who won the League Cup, as both player and manager, and the European Cup Winners’ Cup at Manchester City, for whom he became a cherished ambassador.
He was asked for his ID by new City staff when the club moved to Etihad and saw the funny side of that. A legend and a gentleman.
Moyes' return is such beautiful circularity
I said here last week that David Moyes was the man Everton needed and his stirring first press conference on Monday only fortified that sense.
He thought his last visit to Goodison would be as a guest of the club, who had invited him to visit before the club move to Bramley-Moore Dock this summer.
‘I thought it would be brilliant to get back to Goodison before the end and to bring my dad down,’ he said. ‘My family were so embedded in Everton. Leaving was terrible because we were really close after 11 years.’
What beautiful circularity. I hope it will be a happy homecoming.
A club profoundly in touch with their locality
A few days spent with Salford City last week told me that they are a classy club, profoundly in touch with their locality, with an outstanding new chief executive.
This season, the club are celebrating Emmeline Pankhurst and the Suffragette movement, which was deeply embedded within Salford, with a change strip and merchandise incorporating the Suffragette colours of purple, green and white.
How deeply unfortunate that Ryan Giggs seemed so determined to reintegrate himself into the public realm, by being front and centre of the club’s Cup tie on the bench at the Etihad on Saturday.
As if to say that the unpleasant little details of the domestic abuse charges laid against, on which a jury failed to agree, were a distant memory.