I was in Old Trafford on Tuesday night, for the first time in a long time. My Dad remembers upon hearing about the Munich Air Disaster as a 10-year-old that he started supporting Manchester United and his four sons later followed suit. He went to Old Trafford to see Best, Law and Bobby Charlton in the early 70s, but suffice to say what I saw on Tuesday night wasn’t quite as magical.
Whatever excitement to be had was pretty much all compressed into the last minute, when a FC Copenhagen penalty was saved by United ‘keeper Andre Onana to preserve the shaky one-goal lead they had been given by Harry Maguire’s header in the 72nd minute.
In a game of few highlights, it was clear who the two match-winners were, and they were duly interviewed on TV on the pitch afterwards, in front of the Stretford End. As I was looking down at them, taking the acclaim of their supporters, it became clear to me once again that for all that it is a handsomely-rewarded job, being a professional footballer is not exactly a walk in the park.
For Onana, the penalty save is the first good thing that’s happened in his Old Trafford career. He made his debut against Lens in a friendly, and promptly got lobbed from the halfway line. He was signed to supercharge United’s ability to play out from the back, since previous incumbent David De Gea’s ability with his feet was more like something from the Mickey McQuillan school of getting it launched.
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But every game it appears has had at least one hairy moment with his feet, and he’s let in a few howlers with his hands too. It’s been a harrowing start.
But he doesn’t have far to look for someone worse off, because for the last two years or more Harry Maguire has endured a genuinely unprecedented level of scorn and ridicule. He has been out of favour at his club and a laughing stock at international level.
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Watching England play Scotland in Hampden Park last month, when Maguire came on at half-time and had every touch of his mocked and jeered, before then scoring an own goal, was genuinely shocking. England won the game 3-1, but I’d never really seen an international player reduced to a laughing stock in that fashion.
A injury crisis at centre-back has led to Maguire starting the last four club games, and he’s been good. But rather than taking the acclaim on Tuesday night, could you really have blamed him if he’d turned to the Stretford End and told him where they can stick their applause?
Maguire has said all the right things about how the boos and the scorn, and the laughter (laughter - you can only imagine how that must feel) have motivated him, how he can handle it, but it’s hard to see how that’s true. Outside noise will always have an impact, whether you’re with Manchester United, or a GAA player closer to home.
When Shane Walsh picked up the ball 45 yards out from goal for Kilmacud Crokes in the Dublin county final on Sunday, and set off on a run before rifling a terrifyingly good shot into the top corner of the Ballyboden St Enda’s net for the deciding goal, you could almost sense a weight lifting from him.
Because for much of this year, he hasn’t really looked like he’s enjoyed himself all that much. He spoke afterwards with his customary frankness about how his transfer to Crokes from his home club of Kilkerrin/Clonberne in Galway had affected him, and it wasn’t hard to see where he was coming from.
We spoke to him with Second Captains last December, and when he said he felt hurt when Kilkerrin/Clonberne hadn’t congratulated him publicly on his All Star, it was clear that here was a man whose feelings on the move, and the reaction to it, were still pretty raw.
[ Shane Walsh says commotion over Kilmacud Crokes move affected his form for GalwayOpens in new window ]
After Crokes won the All-Ireland club final in January, he went abroad for a month or more - and his absence from any possible replay was widely speculated upon in the days that followed the 16th-man controversy. He came back, and Padraic Joyce lost no time in throwing him straight back into the Galway team.
But he never came close to the heights of the 2022 season, and he looked a little beaten down by it all. When Galway played Tyrone in the All-Ireland group stages, it was noticeable that he was the last man into the pre-match huddle, and stayed out altogether of a small meeting between the Galway forwards at half-time.
He didn’t look disinterested, but he looked distracted. His missed last-second free against Armagh, which if it had gone over would have given Galway a direct route to the quarter-finals, and a chance for Damien Comer and Sean Kelly to recover from injury. It was the key moment in Galway’s season.
People will say that this was a problem very much of his own making. That may well be true. But the fact that it had an impact on Walsh isn’t a surprise. No matter how much sportspeople say otherwise, criticism from outside takes its toll. In different ways Shane Walsh, Andre Onana and Harry Maguire all saw light at the end of the tunnel this week.
