Marcus Rashford and the strange nature of sporting redemption

At some point in the last 35 years it was decided that football was serious business. Too much time, money, and other resources were poured into the game, and so the sport reinvented itself as an adult thing, rather than keeping the childlike essence of team sports that was easy for a kid to understand.

The game was secretly the most accessible form of anthropological study we have, but modern reinvention as A Serious Thing means we risk creating simple narratives about complicated situations relating to people in the game.

Which brings us to Marcus Rashford.

Rashford endured a terrible time in 2021-22; he lacked the confidence, skill and smile that intrigued many. His transformation under Erik ten Hag has been clear: no Premier League player has scored more goals in the 2022/23 season after the World Cup and he is adding new tools to his already considerable repertoire.

Seven years after his Manchester United debut, Rashford seems to be putting together a body of work that many had hoped for him.

His last goal came in the League Cup final and was scored at Wembley Stadium. It was his first game on site since the Euro 2020 final, where he missed a significant penalty for England.

Why did Rashford become good again? There are many reasons for the rebound, but the United forward has often been discussed in a simple redemption arc. This player who wasn’t good is now good again and has paid back some debts to those who believed in him and proved himself wrong to those who gave up on him. The teenage prodigy has matured into a talented young man. Disaster has given way to triumph.

But the reality is more complicated.

The COVID-19 pandemic has distorted and accelerated trends and how we deal with them. Instead of accepting the absurdity of continuing major football competitions in a time of great upheaval, football tried its best to carry on as normal. The fact that football continued when so many other forms of entertainment were paused meant it took on extra meaning in fans’ lives.

For nearly 18 months, football was more than serious business: it was one of the few collective joys we had on our screens. In between it all was Rashford, whose standing in the public consciousness grew because of his charitable efforts, helping to address other real and serious issues affecting the lives of many in Britain. He did this while playing for one of the most famous football clubs in the world.

The fact that he would then be in bad shape as a footballer for several months when he became more famous than ever caused conversation and concern.

Football now exists in a state of hyper-reality that contains real people but requires its characters to act like script actors. Rashford, spoken in glowing terms from a corner when he failed to play brilliant football, caused discord and accusations that he was a phony.

There was little room for the disorder of life and for someone to go through a state of change and become themselves again. Thankfully, Rashford is playing better now. But did such conversations and mockery about his name even have to be used?

There are times when I – as a football journalist – write about Marcus Rashford and his thoughts as he plays the game. There are times when I write with Marcus Rashford on his thoughts in children’s books.

“I realized that trying to process all the pain, both physically and mentally, wasn’t the best way for me to take care of myself or those around me,” he wrote in early 2021. “I wanted to go back 100 percent when I’ve played football, but at some point I had to have time to be 100 percent Marcus. Just normal Marcus who eats a little too much sugar and likes to wear a tracksuit at home.”

A goal in a League Cup final for Manchester United carries a different weight than a missed penalty for England in a European Championship final.

It should go without saying that nothing can be used to justify racial abuse – more importantly, a missed penalty for England should never bring about the spate of heinous racial abuse that Rashford has suffered in July 2021 and in the many months since has suffered. Neither should any of his badly formed spots do that.

It would be reductive to say Rashford deserved some redemption on his return to Wembley on Sunday. Football may consider itself a serious business, but Arrigo Sacchi’s quote that football is “the most important of the least important things in life” remains true.

It’s good that Rashford is good. It was also a pity that he had phases when he wasn’t doing so well. The sporting dichotomy of winning and losing makes one forget that progress is not linear. A soccer player cannot make mistakes in a game and still lose. A bad season can occur for reasons beyond a player’s control.

Human development occurs not in a simple overall process but in a process of mutative discovery. It’s often the bad days that provide lessons for a better tomorrow.

(Image above: Photos: Getty Images / Design: Eamonn Dalton)