If you’ve looked at recent photos from Manchester United’s training sessions and their practice match behind closed doors at Old Trafford over the weekend, you might have noticed something different about Mason Greenwood.
It’s not just that the eighteen year old now has a very short post-block haircut, which makes it a little more impressive. It would seem that he is also devoting hours to weight and fitness – because he looks bigger and stronger than ever.
Greenwood would have been extremely frustrated, like many others, when the football season ended in mid-March due to the coronavirus pandemic. He was at an interesting and exciting point in his development, having scored eight goals in three months between December and March, on the verge of a regular place in Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s team.
Yet the teenager could now move to a whole new level at Old Trafford, spurred on by additional competition for places in United’s attacks and aided by extra quality in the midfield ranks behind him.
The interruption of the action may have helped him catch up, in terms of physicality, and continue where he left off.
Greenwood has already proven himself capable of creating goals out of nothing. Sometimes he saved United this season. His long-distance left-handed goals became his trademark, with what he scored at home against Everton in December, a fine example of his technique. But Solskjaer also calls him the club’s most natural finisher – which is an acknowledgment in itself – with Greenwood a master of those “fox in the box” goals.
“Scoring goals is natural for him and for what he scored against Leighton Baines [and Everton], I did it against Baines in 2006. I marked some of them that way, and now Mason does too, “said Solskjaer in December.
“If the defender closes his legs, he will bend it into the top corner instead. At the last minute he changes his mind from” Lo crumple “, to cut his legs.”
If Greenwood had already thrived in an exhausted team, what could he have produced in a team suddenly full of options?
He played precious soccer with Paul Pogba, and therefore United fans can rightly be excited about the potential of that partnership. Pogba and Bruno Fernandes will be the main creators of United when the Premier League comes back into force, starting a week Friday at Tottenham.
There is no doubt that Solskjaer will work to make sure that Greenwood manages to get past Pogba’s balls, having already talked about the collaboration between Fernandes and Anthony Martial.
“Tony and Bruno joined together, so it’s a partnership that we hope will thrive,” said Solskjaer.
Getting United to go forward means refining those relationships between midfield and attack, by selecting the locks in the opposition’s defenses. It was a weakness for United at the start of the campaign. Sometimes Greenwood seemed the only one capable of producing something out of nothing, which in itself speaks in terms of capacity.
But it won’t be easy for him. The extension of Odion Ighalo’s loan agreement from Shanghai Shenghua means that there is another advantage between Greenwood and a regular place in the first team, not to mention Marcus Rashford’s return from injury.
The hope is that Greenwood will grow in the middle of the competition, use his extra strength and hopefully a meter of pace and complete everything with that natural skill that has never been in doubt since United discovered the attacker. in school age.
UK fans like to sing that “Mason Greenwood is dynamite”, yet they have only seen a small part of his abilities. The new football season of the Premier League could witness the birth of a new United superstar. It would be a level jump for the young man, who made his first start in United only a year ago against Cardiff and looked good, albeit a little raw.
Now he is ready to kick off.
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