Amad Diallo. That boy is special. But we’ve known that for some time now, haven’t we? Southampton certainly know it, and so do those who watch him from the Stretford End every other weekend. Back when Amad scored the winner in December’s Manchester derby, we got United season ticket holder Tommy Stewart to tell us all about why he means so much to those matchgoing fans. Today feels like the perfect time to revisit his piece. Enjoy. It’s Amad’s World, now.
We have been looking for Amad for a long time. It’s not just us, high in the Stretford End, who have been looking for him. Thirsty pundits, number crunchers, Twitter dwellers, we’ve all been looking. Looking for that ‘quintessential Manchester United winger’. One to emulate the players we’ve been spoilt with in the past: Giggs, Ronaldo, Kanchelskis, Nani. Names that sprint past you and the defender as you read them. And now, maybe we’ve found him. Amad Diallo. Our new winger. Our chill guy. We’ve been waiting for you.
There’s been quite a sad thirst amongst pundits and fans for “a classic Manchester United winger” for many years now. I’d go as far to say an entitlement, especially amongst fans and former players. We were over-indulged to the extent that serial winners and workers, Luis Nani and Antonio Valencia, were considered by some to be not up to par, an opinion that was always daft but seems completely comical now. And then the empire fell almost as soon as Ferguson left in 2013, and Adnan Januzaj was the great hope who’d drag us up from the doldrums. I’m not even sure how that one ended.
Football is relative, and Manchester United’s “embarrassing” past decade would be considered glorious for a lot of clubs: two second place finishes in the Premier League, two FA Cups, a couple of League Cups and José Mourinho’s very José Mourinho Europa League victory. But recovering and reassembling the remains of what “the purple-nosed manager who turned Manchester United into a fearsome battleship” (Andrea Pirlo’s words, not mine) left behind, has proved impossible.
Other than Bruno Fernandes, very few of our players over the past 11 years have represented the fans on the pitch in the way most of us would: simply running and running and running for the club. No, it’s more than that, actually. Like us, in the shadows of the rusty steel canopy of the Stretford End, he gives a fuck. He also assisted Amad against AC Milan as the then 18-year-old with a heavy £40 million price tag on his shoulders, scored his first goal for the club: a weird and brilliant backwards header that only great players could conjure. Bruno “gets it” as me and Charlie, the chatty, old bloke in front of me who’s been coming to United since the early-60s often say. And it seems that Amad does too.
The two aforementioned players scored the goals in United’s smash and grab 2-1 win at the Etihad back in December, and were interviewed together post-match. It’s obvious that Amad’s captain, Bruno, adores him, but like us fans in the Stretford End who have passively watched our team and stadium simultaneously rot in the past decade, he’s seen this film many times before. He’s watched a series of young players with promise threaten to be mercurial before ultimately buckling under the weight of the Manchester United circus.
“He’s been doing well, he’s been doing great things,” Bruno said about Amad afterwards. “There’s still a lot to come from him because we really believe in his qualities. He’s always alive, this is why he gets his penalty, this is why he gets his goal. He’s always been brilliant but I don’t want to say too much. [We need] to keep him going again because we need him at this level. When he’s like this, he’s unstoppable.”
Other than seeing Amad smiling from ear to ear as he hears his captain saying this next to him, the best bit about this interview is how Fernandes excuses his mate’s limited English, does most of the talking himself, and then embraces him like a son right at the end.
When it comes to the elusive Manchester United winger, Antony, Garnacho, Di Maria, Pellistri and more have all had glimmers; those performances that have gaslit us into believing they can fill the Beckham and Best-sized boots on the Old Trafford flanks. As well as their quality, they’ve even shown that “fan on the pitch” personality we all expect until something unquantifiable happens and then that’s it. They’re either dropped or gone. “He’s special” might have left my mouth after Pellistri beat a Real Betis fullback on the outside last season. Last week he wasn’t even on the bench as I watched his new team Panathinaikos play TNS at Shrewsbury Town’s ground in the Europa Conference League.
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