It took scarcely over an hour for Marcus Rashford to turn one of the best defenses in Europe’s top five leagues into cowering wrecks. Frankly, you could argue that that was not too shabby a performance from Barcelona given how swiftly he has wreaked havoc on other opponents in this run, the hottest streak of any player on the planet right now.
Rashford now has 13 goals since the World Cup ended, more than any other player in Europe’s five leagues, and in a contest replete with attacking talent, there was no question that he shone the brightest in the 2-2 draw between Manchester United and Barca. Had you not known otherwise you would never have imagined that a player of Rashford’s talent (nor Raphinha’s for that matter) could be toiling away in the early days of the Europa League knockout rounds.
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Rashford deserves a bigger stage and he seems to know it. Earlier in this golden run, much of the credit for the 25-year-old’s form went to Erik ten Hag for the personnel reshuffle he had undertaken that got his forward into the right positions. Out went Cristiano Ronaldo, the static node that all attacks had to flow through, whilst the introduction of players such as Christian Eriksen and Lisandro Martinez brought some progression and precision to United’s build-up play. Rashford was getting quick balls against defenses that didn’t have time to settle, he had options around him and a position that suited him. It was the perfect spot to rediscover his groove.
Thursday, however, one suspects that Rashford could have been instructed to sweep up behind the back four and he would still have been the contest’s most devastating force. Manchester United’s King Midas is turning contests through sheer force of will as much as he is exploiting tactical mismatches.
After all, Xavi had made the adjustments required to give his team the best chance possible to slow Rashford. Ronald Araujo was switched out to the right flank from his usual role in the center of defense on the presumption that ten Hag’s star forward would be put in his best position on the United left. Instead, Rashford drifted infield, functioning more as the runner in a strike pairing with target man Wout Weghorst, whose selfless center-forward play provides such a stable platform for United’s other attackers to excel.
Rashford’s heat map at the Nou Camp
From his central berth, Rashford could test the space between both full-backs and their central defenders, probing around the half spaces and interplaying with Jadon Sancho and Fred. Threats still came down the left, most notably a fizzing cross-shot in the first half that forced Marc-Andre ter Stegen into a smart parry.
Marcos Alonso’s opener against the run of play might have taken the air out of United, instead, it was like injecting nitrous oxide into Rashford’s engine. Receiving the ball from Fred just outside the box, his first touch seemed to the untrained eye to be rather too heavy. Nothing of the sort. Alonso was left in his wake but the angle was surely too tight for Ter Stegen to be beaten. Instead, the ball thundered beyond the German at his near post. It is easy to indulge in those familiar cliches that a goalkeeper should never be beaten there but Rashford walloped the ball so swiftly, even the world’s best did not have time to react.
This was bully ball served up by United. Rashford demanded possession and for a time he delivered in every stance. Jules Kounde, who would be lucky to avoid a red card and conceding a penalty for grappling with United’s No. 10, could only turn the ball into his own net when Rashford picked up a short corner, beat his man and drove the ball low into the box.
Rashford was doubtless the star man but plenty others heightened their reputation against a Barcelona side who, aside from a late flurry of pressure, looked some way off the Premier League’s third-best side.
“We dictated the game,” noted Ten Hag.
He was not wrong. Casemiro and Raphael Varane oozed authority, while Fred brought dynamism to the contest after a slow start.
Had United held on to the 2-1 lead their star forward earned for them this would have been another famous night in the Nou Camp, not one to rank alongside the madness of 1999 but comparable with Rashford’s other great European night, eliminating Paris Saint-Germain from the Champions League four years ago. That is the stage he belongs on and United are on the path to not just get back to the continent’s biggest competition but thrive when they get there.
