Baffle me: Casemiro scored the first goal in the League Cup final his team won, but his most extravagant celebrations didn’t come after his header or final whistle.
Shortly before half-time, Casemiro successfully cleared the ball under heavy pressure for a goal kick. In fact, it was a minor incident. But Casemiro burst into the crowd of Manchester United fans like a lion who had just taken pole. They immediately returned, a mass of clenched fists, joyful cries and clenched teeth in festive grimaces.
Do football fans ever get tired of watching players celebrate a tackle? God, I hope not.
This is the great paradox of Casemiro. He is a player who seems to exist in two states: a calm, well-controlled midfielder, always on time and therefore rarely in a hurry; and the ferocious Agitator, ready to dive into the dark arts and take a few players on his journey. All or nothing.
He is a midfielder who, as we have already proven, loves to have the ball as much as he loves to score.
Since Casemiro joined Manchester United they have lost three league matches and failed to start two. It’s unfair to condemn him with weak praise to conclude that Manchester United’s midfield has only been sucked into the present, but it’s also true.
For too long, United’s midfield has been where the opposition has been king. It’s full of reactors, not professional actors. The unlucky actors spent most of their time putting out fires, and the rest were desperate to get rid of them as quickly as possible if they lit another one.
Control in midfield, at any pace above the slowest and least dangerous, was something that happened to other well-managed teams with less debt.
Now, when it comes to Casemiro, control is the law, because he is everything; His fingerprints are all over every teammate. An hour after the Sunday final, I realized that I forgot about the existence of Christian Eriksen. All of a sudden it’s just Casemiro plus one.
When Eric Cantona left Manchester United, it wasn’t his skill or even his impact on the pitch that Alex Ferguson advertised the most. On the contrary, it was Canton’s way of changing the culture of the club. During his eight-month suspension, Ferguson persuaded Cantona to stay by assigning him to oversee the development of a number of talented academy graduates.
“Nothing he did in competition meant more than how he opened my eyes to the need for training,” Fergie said. “Practice makes a player.”
It became the mantra of a new era for Manchester United. If there was one quality that was common to the most successful classes of ’92, it was not exceptional innate talent, but the ability to get the most out of talent through practice. Eric taught them this.
The signing of Casemiro now has the tinge of Cantona, although we must be careful not to fall into extreme exaggerations. If Cantona has changed Manchester United’s culture in terms of the importance of training, Casemiro hopes to set a similar example in terms of hunger and a winning mentality.
It works so well because Casemiro loves what he has found: a manager who is connected to him. He openly admits that he was shocked by Erik ten Hag’s winning streak.
We can’t pretend that all this happened because of a great design. The superb Manchester United midfielder could, should have and should have been Frenkie de Jong if United thought to see if de Jong was as ready for a move as they are.
There are also reasons for regret. On Sunday night, on one of the many trains north, fans sang and cheered, but also lamented what could have happened if their club had spent the last three summers trying to fix this problem in central midfield.
But these are small things, and these fans – and this club – now prefer to look forward rather than backward. A few months ago, I/we/maybe you were a bit skeptical about all this.
Casemiro was a 30-year-old £60m player who was parachuted into the most obvious long-term recovery job in high-end European football. In this regard, Erik ten Hag jumped through hoops at triple speed to make United successful in the short term. This makes Casemiro’s arrival perfectly logical.
It’s not that I – or anyone else – wasn’t convinced of Casemiro’s genius – quite the opposite. Why was he here? He won 18 trophies with Real Madrid, including five European victories in nine years. Didn’t he see the Manchester United game? Had he never heard of Avram Glazer?
We are all for a little community service, helping those in need as a charity, but hasn’t there been something sunnier and less like the Europa League? Surely someone didn’t try to stay connected to the Wi-Fi in the press box on Thursday night.
The answer seems to be hunger. Hunger is the driving force behind the duel: “I grab the ball like a plate of food.” Hunger drives the blows of fists and the roar of a lion. Hunger raised him, and hunger brought him here.
Cristiano Ronaldo decided to move to Saudi Arabia to increase his performance. Casemiro decided to leave the European and World Champions because he saw a chance to make Manchester United…well, Manchester United again. Choose your own hero; I chose mine.