“You should see my YouTube search history,” says Scott McTominay but, no, this is not a conversation about dirty secrets. “Just football!” Scott continues. He devours clips of fellow players, sometimes opponents but more often than not simply other midfielders from whom he might learn. “You need pictures,” he says, “to take onto the field.”
Well, not just football. Fast cars too. He’s been YouTubing the Tesla Roadster which does 0-60 in 1.9 seconds. He “thrives on adrenaline” and loves a fairground rollercoaster, “the scarier the better. Even in football matches I’m one of those guys where adrenaline takes over. Paris (away to PSG) I was, like, ‘brilliant!’”
Meeting McTominay leaves no doubt why he’s so loved inside United. The Kid (as Jose Mourinho dubbed him) is all about the game and bursts with zest. He almost out-positives Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. But, like Ole, McTominay’s optimism is not forced but flows from upbringing and personal experience - of how seeing brightsides can power you through a sometimes-difficult football journey.
McTominay hails from Lancaster. Frank, his dad, moved from Scotland to find work as a joiner, met a Morecambe girl, Scott’s mum, and built a good life. Scott remembers them clocking up 250,000 miles in an old 54 Mercedes, ferrying him to junior training and games. Dad loves running, competing in amateur races. “58.20,” says Scott, “he never shuts up about his 10 mile time.”
Grandad, Frank senior, lives in Helensburgh on Scotland’s west coast and is the family’s life and soul. The one who instigates the dancing and singing at Hogmanay, “the funniest bloke you ever met.” His mantra is when you’re at work it’s serious, when you’re with family be thankful and enjoy what you’ve got.
Family “standards” brought him here, reckons Scott. “Dad got up at the crack of dawn and got back in the dark and he’d say ‘you want more than that, son. If you’ve got something, your talent, you have to go for it, do everything right.”
The difficulties were physical. At 17 McTominay was still a slender 5’8, getting steamrollered by bigger lads. He barely played for United’s youth team and remembers 60 minutes v Bolton, away. “Dad said ‘you did well there son. I said ‘dad, come on - these boys are so much stronger, I just couldn’t get near them.” The patience of McGuinness and others saved him. “Any other club, I’d have been gone.”
Then, the growth spurt. He gained eight inches and ten kilos in close to a year. Suddenly “I was so tall and gangly, my groins were killing me, I couldn’t train. I’d be in the phsyio room thinking ‘I don’t want this. What’s going on? This isn’t me.’”
He got through by finding positives. He hasn’t told the Serb, but the clips he deveourd then were of Nemanja Matic - same position, same build. McGuinness had made him view being small as an opportunity to learn to protect the ball and study Andres Iniesta. Now, capacity to shift the ball surprisingly for his size, is a trait - see McTominay’s first United goal, at Wolves.
“It’s good I was quite naive at the time,” he reflects. “If I knew what I know now - how difficult it is - I’d have suffered.” Instead he plugged away, unshakably believing he’d make it but there was another problem: “he was brave - Byran Robson brave,” McGuinness recalls.
In training, McTominay slid for a challenge with youth keeper Joel Pereira and “I had a hole in my knee the size of a cricket ball. Tom, the physio, took me to hospital. A month later I was out on the grass with the physios, stretched and every stitch went pop. Came out just like that. And I just looked at it - wasn’t bothered. Mad, like.”
Bravery brought his big break, however. He’d go toe-to-toe and smash reserve manager Nicky Butt in training. Butt loved that and badgered Jose Mourinho. You’ve got to try this kid, said Butt, he’s some fighter.
They got off on the wrong footing. “Jose was amazing for me,” says McTominay. “Though when I first came in Jose gave me a serious, serious bollocking. I was arguing with one of the first team lads in training and he said ‘hey, kid, when you come into the first team, the other players - they have to like you.’
“You’re not a superstar, he said and I drove back to digs thinking ‘have I just ruined it for myself? I couldn’t believe it. I thought I hope he knows I don’t think I’m a star, I’m the polar opposite.’ He probably just wanted to see what I was made of, what sort of lad he had on his hands.”
Mourinho soon loved him too, starting him in big games - Liverpool, Chelsea, Benfica, Sevilla - and even inventing a new award, ‘Manager’s Player of the Year,’ to bestow on him. Yet the perception he was ‘Jose’s favourite’ is something McTominay wants to challenge. “People say that and it’s a myth,” he says. “You can’t talk managers into liking you. You have to earn your respect with coaches and that’s now something I’m having to do with Ole.
“You’re liked by what you do on the pitch and how you are off the pitch and I feel Mourinho saw something in me at a time some people did and some people didn’t, and I’m grateful.”
They’re in touch. “He texts me and we have a good relationship. I was sad when he left but football moves on. He is an amazing manager but we have another amazing manager in Ole.”
When Solskjaer arrived “I remember Butty saying ‘what a chance for you now, lad. what an opportunity to show an absolute club legend what you’ve got. You’ve got to fancy yourself to show him you can play and be a regular for Manchester United.’”
That’s how he approaches it. Solskjaer’s first message to the squad was “the ones who put the most in, get the most out” and that’s music to McTominay’s ears.
He had to wait: on an initial roll of victories, Solskjaer didn’t start him in the league for two months. Then came an injury crisis and McTominay took his chance v Liverpool, following with outstanding performances v PSG and Barcelona. “You have to be patient,” he says. “Those (first) 12 games (of Solksjaer) were great because we were winning, even if you’re a little gutted because you’re not playing.
“I feel some boys nowadays are ‘I should play instantly and if not I’m leaving.’ That’s all very well, but if Manchester United is in your blood, like it is mine, you’re not ready to give up an opportunity like this easily. You fight.
“Like my dad always says, grab the opportunity because if you don’t someone else will. There are loads of kids in the reserves now who are so hungry for it - Jimmy Garner, Mason Greenwood, Angel Gomes, Tahith Chong, and if we in the first team aren’t doing it then the boss and Michael Carrick and Kieran McKenna will say we’re not having it. We have boys who are ready and want it more than you.”
He feels this is his time. Time to become an important Premier League player. With Solskjaer using Fred at No6, he has been able to show the attacking gifts suppressed when he spent his first block of United appearances in a defensive role. In United’s Under-16s, McTominay shared No10 duties with Marcus Rashford and in the Nou Camp it was notable that he and not Paul Pogba was the midfielder, with great timing and running power off the ball, penetrating Barcelona’s box.
“Sometimes when you’re 22, people still think of you as a kid. They think you’ve come through the academy, have a lot to learn. But I want to be treated as a regular in United’s first team. I don’t want to be treated like a young player who’s playing a bit part. cut him some slack. I want to be judged harder than that. I want the responsibility,” McTominay says.
“I feel (United) are in a stage of transition that could turn into something real special where, if we have got the players and everyone really working and getting the best out of each other...we are so close to something special. Honestly I mean that. The main thing is going and challenging Liverpool and Man City.
“We have a Manchester United man through and through in charge, who has the United mindset, the expansive football, the winning trophies. I want to be smack in the middle of it, of what he is building. You want to be in the engine room, doing as much as you can.
“For me, now it’s saying right, I’m here for the long run. I want to prove that if we buy a midfielder or get someone else, I can compete. You want to show you can compete with whatever midfielder in the world wants to come here, that you can be as good as anybody, you can be as athletic, as energetic. That you can defend, you can score goals, you can create goals, you’re the whole package.
“Where I want to get to, is being that player in the team where you’re a leader, you’re the one telling people. You’re driving the standards.”
McTominay’s favourite photo is when he was 14, with mum and dad, meeting Sir Alex Ferguson after signing his scholarship. After that, knowing Frank was Scottish, Fergie would sidle over to the youth pitch and smile “is he behaving himself?’
I am, I am, Scott always wanted to shout out but actions speak louder than words and devotion to his career is expressed, emphatic and loud, every long stride he takes on the pitch.
www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/sport/im-grateful-to-jose-for-seeing-something-in-me-xbqkgtzpt
