HERBERT: In Rashford’s story, actual villains are attempting to fleece him

My daughter is in her mid-20s, so forgive the intemperate response to the story of Marcus Rashford’s minders ordering a younger lady to give up her cellphone earlier than spending a night within the participant’s firm in Belfast.

The lady was apparently ‘allowed to inform her mum’ the place she was going. Who are these individuals? How dare they?

This element and others spill out in lurid new revelations about Rashford’s evening on the lash final week. There are his an identical cell phones, on the desk in entrance of him. His wad of £20 notes spilling out of a bag – £10,000 in all. And although many will take prurient delight within the obscenity – as a result of up to date soccer is a pantomime stage, a actuality TV freak present to sate these for whom 90 minutes’ sport is now not stimulation sufficient – there may be an unspeakable disappointment on this Burlesque morality story of a younger man drowning in money.

Sadness within the image it creates of a boy masquerading as a 26-year-old, with limitless spending prospects, surrounded by limpets and hangers-on. Rashford orders bruschetta however is unwilling to the touch it as a result of he does not like ‘tomatoes with seeds in’. He sits down with a diamond-encrusted watch on every wrist, unable to see how totally ridiculous he appears.

Sadness within the obvious lack of any particular person to knock some sense into him, inform him what he does not need to hear and march him out of Lavery’s pub, the Dirty Onion bar, or Thompsons Garage nightclub in Belfast.

This shouldn’t be precisely a person drowning in ego. The minders have been those clearly ruling the roost on that evening. Ordering transport, forbidding autographs, reserving resort rooms, organising transport, taking a big slab of the Rashford readies, thanks very a lot.

Some may have little sympathy for a person who, on £325,000 per week, is amongst United’s prime three earners and for whom this descent into chaos has now been ongoing for months. The missed crew conferences, the on line casino visits, the booze – they’re all part of soccer’s most open secret.

Some of these items stretches again to Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s time as supervisor. He’s actually not flavour of the month together with his team-mates, who assume the world of younger Kobbie Mainoo, one other participant from the native streets, and ask what the hell Rashford is enjoying at.

But Rashford appears on such a mission to self-destruct that you simply wonder if he even likes the game he has given his life to for the reason that age of seven. Whether he has truly grown to hate the relentless, all-seeing, all-consuming nature of a world which can devour you complete when issues begin to flip in opposition to you.

Some voices round Old Trafford really feel that he’s misplaced, spaced out, not even tuned into actuality. Coming from nowhere to have a fortune thrown at you sounds elegant. It’s not a panacea.

Just a few years in the past, Rashford was taking good recommendation, speaking with the skin world by way of professionals like Kelly Hogarth, who was at the moment with the company Roc Nation. Hogarth’s type of affect on the gamers she works with, uncompromising with them when required, will surely profit Rashford now.

He is a case-study in disaster communications today and it is arduous to see the place any good sense is coming from. How he may have used the presence of Sir Alex Ferguson delivering a really graphic sense of the appropriate.

Though this story of self-destruction is as outdated because the hills amongst prodigiously gifted stars – George Best, Stan Bowles and Alan Hudson all travelled such a street – the demon dealing with immediately’s gamers is the dreaded entourage.

That godforsaken group of so-called buddies, monetary advisers, helpers, even household, who feast on the excessive life when their meal ticket rises to soccer prominence.

If ever there was a membership that ought to take classes from historical past right here then it’s United, whose stadium, Old Trafford, contains a bronze statue of Best outdoors its entrance. Former United captain Bryan Robson is working behind the scenes with one other ex-player, Simon Andrews, to advise academy stars on keep away from pitfalls and people chancers bestowing provides of watches, vehicles and funding alternatives which appear too good to be true.

Manchester City have preached the same message to their gamers. ‘Pimps’ was the expression that they had, in-house, for the figures on the periphery who have been filled with guarantees of low-cost devices, sports activities vehicles and a superb evening out for younger gamers however who have been usually out to fleece them. Mario Balotelli was the pay-day for the ‘pimps’. A fear at one stage for City’s participant liaison workers was the sheer variety of iPhones Balotelli was shopping for for the hangers-on.

Many won’t subscribe to the view that Rashford, a grown man bestowed with unimaginable adulation and appreciation these previous few years, deserves something aside from contempt. My colleague Chris Sutton, who described Rashford this week in these pages and on our It’s All Kicking Off podcast as ‘disgraceful’, has a shrewd view on soccer.

My personal perspective is colored by that of my grandson, an eight-year-old with Rashford’s picture in pleasure of place on his bed room wall, who runs round our place most weekends sporting a United shirt with Rashford’s identify on the again. He, like so many people, imagined an thrilling, expressive younger England crew on the European Championship would have a thriving, effervescent, beaming Rashford at its helm.

Five months out, it’s extremely arduous to see how that might probably be. It’s arduous to not grieve.

Edwards is one other enormous loss for Reds 

The seek for a successor to Liverpool supervisor Jurgen Klopp can be fraught with uncertainty, however the first indications that the membership’s former sporting director Michael Edwards won’t be re-signed is of actual and instant concern.

My Mail Sport colleague Simon Jones, who reported on Monday that Edwards had been requested by Fenway Sports Group to return to the membership and oversee a restructure, revealed on Tuesday that the 44-year-old has truly turned down Liverpool’s house owners.

The significance of continuity – steadying the ship – is apparent, with Virgil van Dijk’s clear uncertainty about his Anfield future. Trent Alexander-Arnold’s contract will quickly demand consideration. Edwards’ return to a place greater up the membership’s soccer construction – with a sporting director, probably Bournemouth’s Richard Hughes, reporting to him – would keep a thread to the Klopp period.

It was Edwards who established hyperlinks with Bolton Wanderers which have seen younger loanees, together with promising proper again Conor Bradley, develop there. I hope Liverpool can persuade Edwards again.

Stokes’ good captaincy 

I’ve had my say on these pages concerning the air of abandon in England’s cricket throughout final summer time’s Ashes – absolute insanity, at occasions – however Ben Stokes’ administration of Tom Hartley in England’s win for the ages in Hyderabad on Sunday was one thing treasured.

Stokes believed in Hartley and persevered with him within the face of an preliminary mauling of seemingly traumatic proportions and the consequence was one thing historic. A day he – and we – will bear in mind down the years.

Stokes has a uncommon perception in his gamers’ means to seek out their greatest. What a present.

A treasured reminder 

Amid the noise and interminable controversies circulating round soccer, a reminder on Saturday of the easy, incalculable pleasure the sport can convey. It was my grandson’s first aggressive recreation, enjoying for the native membership he is not lengthy joined. I casually strolled up late – ‘hold all of it low-key,’ I used to be suggested – and there he was, on the far aspect of the pitch, in a yellow No 8 jersey two sizes too huge for him. 

He scored the seventh objective in a 7-3 win, two minutes or so from time, summoning what power he had left to place the ball excessive into the web. He wore a smile the dimensions of that shirt as he walked in direction of me.