Scott McTominay’s Napoli triumph highlights Man Utd’s biggest mistake after heroic season

Scott McTominay has become an icon in Naples after he helped Antonio Conte’s Napoli to the Scudetto in his first season, earning the league’s MVP award after scoring 12 goals from midfield

As if the week needed a final exclamation mark to reaffirm the mediocrity of Manchester United, it came in Naples on Friday night. Against Cagliari, a cross came over from the right flank and Scott McTominay hooked an acrobatic volley into the net for his 12th goal in a Napoli shirt.

Romele Lukaku doubled the home side’s lead and the win meant Napoli were crowned Serie A champions. Lukaku is a former United player but it is McTominay’s story that provides another damning chapter to the grim chronicle of United’s remarkable slide into ineptitude.

And McTominay’s brilliance in Serie A highlights the one failing that eclipses all others – and there are many of those – at Old Trafford. Quite simply, whoever has been in charge of buying and selling players has left the club in a mess.

In the modern era, has one club ever registered a list of mistakes as long as Manchester United’s? Think of the whopping errors in the buying market. Think of the fees in excess of £70million apiece for Antony, Jadon Sancho and Rasmus Hojlund.

But the biggest error came when they decided to sell a player who had been nurtured by the club since he was five years old. What on earth possessed United to sell McTominay? Maybe the £25million they received from Napoli helped compliance with the Profit and Sustainability Rules.

He was not a prolific scorer for United but by the time he left, he was a good finisher and is probably now a better finisher than anyone currently on the Old Trafford books.

“How you can sell Scott is beyond me,” Ole Gunnar Solskjaer said recently. The midfield axis of McTominay and Fred – McFred – was often derided but United could have done with it on Wednesday night in Bilbao.

For a moment, though, let’s salute McTominay’s achievements in Italy without using them as a stick with which to beat United. He is the highest-scoring midfielder in Serie A and has been named as the league’s Most Valuable Player.

Amongst Serie A midfielders, only Christian Pulisic has had more touches in the opposition box. Amongst all Serie A players, only Yerry Mina, the Cagliari centre-back, has won more duels than McTominay. Only Nico Paz, of Como, has had more attempts on goal from midfield than McTominay. He has become an idol in Naples.

After a lifetime at Old Trafford, McTominay clearly fancied a change of scenery. But that was because he was under-appreciated – box to box midfielders of McTominay’s reliability do not come along very often.

When he was sold in August of last year, the suggestion was that Erik ten Hag was not very happy. No wonder. There has been a whole procession of events that have symbolised Manchester United’s fall from football’s elite table.

The 18 Premier League defeats, the sacking of staff, the leaking roof, the hire and dismissal of a sporting director. But none highlight the ineptitude as starkly as the wonderful success in Italy of one of their own.

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