It is not easy to quell the enthusiasm surrounding Mason Greenwood, Manchester United's Yorkshire-born striker who inked his first professional contract a day after his 17th birthday at the start of the month. Greenwood was born 23 days after Laurent Blanc debuted for United and before the first Harry Potter film had been released. Kylie Minogue was number one with Can't Get You Out Of My Head but older United supporters feel young watching the England youth international.
For the Under-18s and U19s this season, Greenwood has started nine and scored 11. Last term, it was 17 in 17 starts for Kieran McKenna's U18s. He has not made his U23 bow under Ricky Sbragia yet and you suspect his stint at that level will be short-lived if Greenwood's green shoots continue to grow.
Greenwood often walks that path from the academy building at Carrington to the first-team dressing room in the main structure. He exits the glass double doors, crosses the road, follows the straight pathway beneath the neon Manchester United sign, past a tranquil fountain, over another road and towards the sign marked 'Aon Training Complex'. Youngsters can be forgiven for feeling they have arrived and Greenwood enjoyed first-team exposure against Club America in the University of Phoenix Stadium in July against Club America. He went from a Super Bowl stadium to Europe's own super bowl, the Munich Allianz Arena, in August.
A staffer's piece on the official United website last season called for Tahith Chong to ignore the hype and derided other media outlets' excitement over the Dutchman. United evidently share that excitement, given the coverage they have dedicated to Chong, worthy of his own tweet and gif upon confirmation he was on the bench against Juventus on Tuesday. Of course the club should trumpet academy graduates who are making that pathway past the fountain, which is why they have started to announce teenagers professional deals.
Chong warmed up once, twice and then thrice in front of the Scoreboard End in midweek but Mourinho resisted a change against future Harvard University lecturers Giorgio Chiellini and Leonardo Bonucci. "The only attacking option I had on the bench was an 18-year-old lad who I had never played in the first-team before," Mourinho explained. "And I didn't think, given the dynamic of the game, that it would have been appropriate to have put him on.
"You can't expect a young kid, making his debut in a game like that, to give you something or perhaps score a goal, so that's why we didn't make any changes and stuck with the players we had on the pitch."
Mourinho said United had 'not really attacking solutions on the bench to try, no Fellaini to change the direction of the game', which has become a hackneyed, albeit occasionally successful, tactic. Chiellini and Bonucci would have doubtless bossed Fellaini too and Mourinho is still without the Belgian for Sunday's visit of Everton.
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In a team whose number nine gives the impression he is neither right nor left-footed, Mourinho could do worse than call upon Greenwood this weekend. Chong's chance of retaining his bench role is auspicious, with Alexis Sanchez out and Jesse Lingard not certain to return, either. Although Romelu Lukaku is suffering an eight-game drought, he is still United's joint-highest scorer on four with Anthony Martial and Paul Pogba and Mourinho has all but confirmed his starting role against his former club.
Louis van Gaal discovered the benefits of fast-tracking a teenage striker to the matchday squad through luck, rather than judgement. James Wilson and Ashley Fletcher's loans, Will Keane and Wayne Rooney's injuries and Anthony Martial's pulled hamstring in the warm-up aligned the stars as Marcus Rashford started and scored against Midtjylland.
The callow Rashford was such an unknown quantity that Arsenal were powerless to prevent him from plundering two more on his league bow three days later. An Everton scout is unlikely to have stayed up beyond 3am to watch Greenwood's 14 minutes against a Mexican side in a July pre-season friendly.
Michael Keane and Kurt Zouma are no Jagielka and Lescott, never mind Chiellini and Bonucci. They are quality Premier League centre halves but do not possess an aura that would blind a cocksure kid like Greenwood, who was not shy in silencing hecklers in Bern after he equalised against Young Boys in the UEFA Youth League last month. Rather than retain the wantaway Matteo Darmian or recall the unwanted Marcos Rojo or cumbersome captain Antonio Valencia, Mourinho should provide himself with an attacking option.
He might have a wizard.
Possible United squad vs Everton:
De Gea, Romero, Young, Lindelof, Bailly, Smalling, Shaw, Matic, Herrera, Pereira, Pogba, Fred, Mata, Rashford, Martial, Chong, Lukaku, Greenwood
