Tommy Martin: Casemiro the symbol of a belated outbreak of common sense at Old Trafford

There's a broader feeling that Manchester United has finally copped itself on

Thu, 27 Oct, 2022 - 07:10

When Casemiro pitched up at Manchester United this summer it was possible to think that the great Old Trafford career bin was about to claim another victim.

From Angel Di Maria to Paul Pogba, Bastian Schweinsteiger to Donny Van De Beek, Alexis Sanchez to Romelu Lukaku, many are the unfortunate souls who have flung themselves into the Mancunian dumpster fire over the last decade.

You feared that even a man of Casemiro’s famed ability to sniff danger might end up subsumed, like so many others, in the Carrington quicksand. Some of the portents weren’t great. Sure, here was a blue chip, proven, elite performer. But how many of them have had their reputations mulched at United in the post-Ferguson era?

Then there was the power dynamics of the move. Real Madrid seemed acquiescent to losing their long-time midfield lynchpin. A little too acquiescent. Did the Spanish rotters twirl their moustaches in glee when United came calling after the humiliating 4-0 defeat to Brentford? Yes, my desperate English friend, he is for sale – but at a price [dastardly cackle]!!

What did Real know that the rest of us didn’t? Was the Brazilian master of the timely toe-tackle on the wane? Did the numbers suggest that his powers of disruption had become just a shade less disruptive? Was he only fit to be fed to the infamous Manchester mincing machine?

Then there was the player’s own level of motivation. To borrow from the great Mrs Merton, what first attracted you to doubling your salary at Manchester United? Had he wearied of winning the Champions League over and over again? Did he long for the gentler challenges of Europa League nights in Tiraspol, like a burned-out financial trader jacking it in and doing the festival circuit with his falafel truck?

The sense of Casemiro as an expensive La Liga panic buy was strengthened by how different he seemed to United’s intended expensive La Liga panic buy. Frenkie De Jong was clearly the rock on which Erik ten Hag would build his church but could not be persuaded to swap the Sagrada Familia for the Rovers Return. De Jong is slinky, elusive and a starter of things, Casemiro chubby-cheeked, muscular and traditionally happy to let others get on with the fancy stuff. Where De Jong is the melody line, Casemiro is the bass note.

And the opening weeks of his United career suggested he may well end up, like many an ill-considered purchase, gathering dust in the shed beside the folded-up gazebo and the swingball set. It was seven admittedly Royal funeral-interrupted weeks before he started a Premier League game. Fitness could not have been an issue, given he had delivered a man of the match performance for Real Madrid in the UEFA Super Cup victory over Eintracht Frankfurt in mid-August.

There were odds and sods of minutes off the bench and in Europa League games but little to cue the soaring Handel strings of sure-fire Champions League quality. Five minutes into his first Premier League start, away to Everton on October 9th, and the cackles from Madrid seemed justified. Bopping midfield passes with Antony, Casemiro was robbed by Everton’s Andre Onana, the ball eventually falling to Alex Iwobi to score the game’s opening goal. In TV studios and podcast chambers, sermons were readied about how the Premier League was a cold house for louche Latin types.

But then Casemiro started doing Casemiro things. Reading attacks, nicking balls, sliding in with a dissenting toe when trouble brewed. Serving up meaty tackles and timely interceptions. But more than that – getting United going. The ball was won and then delivered with a midwife’s care. Warming to the task, he loped forward to head a Marcus Rashford cross just wide. Just before half-time he stole the ball off Iwobi and with his next touch played it perfectly into the path of Cristiano Ronaldo to score the winning goal.

Watching Casemiro in United’s midfield since then has been to see the sudden application of craft and expertise in the place of muddle and mishap. It is like when a skilled tradesman comes to fix a household appliance that you have spent days banging away at unsuccessfully. He lays out his spanners and ratchets and quietly solves the problem, where you had been angrily prodding the thing’s insides with a barbecue tongs.

He is a footballer’s footballer, the type that shapes a game and gives it flesh. He can play too, which has surprised some who thought he was a hod carrier for Luka Modric. When you go to see a concert pianist you don’t notice the bassoon player, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t a bloody good bassoon player. When he rose high in the 94th minute to head the equaliser at Stamford Bridge last Sunday, it seemed perfectly in character. Oh that? Yeah, we used to do that at Real Madrid all the time.

More than that, his presence is symbolic of a broader feeling that Manchester United has finally copped itself on. The belated outbreak of common sense at Old Trafford after years of doolally magical thinking is mainly down to Ten Hag, who has brought no-nonsense to a place where nonsense ran free.

His handling of Ronaldo has been so straightforward and logical that it has shown up the lunatic commentary around the club for the shrieking gibberish it so often is. The squadron of ex-United players discussing whether the manager had “disrespected” Ronaldo is another of those great wafts of hot air that blow up around United from time to time, like the long-running, Jesuitical contortions over Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s obvious unsuitability as manager.

Now, as well as a gruff Dutchman dropping truth bombs from the manager’s office, Casemiro is there in midfield, tightening the nuts and bolts of an aspiring elite-level team, a splash of water in the face of a club long stuck in a nostalgic fever dream, maybe no longer a place where reputations go to die.