The Mason Greenwood story: Why Manchester United’s two-footed prodigy was always destined for greatness

Those who watched Greenwood’s rapid development reveal how he was scoring goals even in his very first competitive game aged six, but he had to toughen up and learn some hard lessons along the way

Born in Bradford, trained at Carrington, kicked about in Moss Side. This is Mason Greenwood we’re talking about, the 18-year-old labelled “special” by Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.

Two-footed and a natural finisher, Greenwood has bulked up and taken his goal tally for the season up to 16 with a string of brilliant performances since football re-started.

“He’s probably had the biggest impact in the first team [as an academy graduate] since Giggs,” says Tony Park, the author of ‘Sons of United’ who has watched hundreds of players come and go in the United academy since the 1980s.

“I’m really chuffed for him. He’s just a nice kid. He doesn’t say a lot but he’s always very polite.”

Greenwood’s natural ability has rarely been in doubt. His team, Idle Juniors FC, won 10-1 in his first competitive game, aged six. Greenwood scored all 10 goals. Within a few months, he’d been spotted and signed by Manchester United.

Only a decade later, at the age of 16, Greenwood was making his United debut on a pre-season tour of the USA. It’s a long way from shooting, with both feet of course, at the bins outside United’s development centre in Halifax, West Yorkshire.

Greenwood has formed a potent partnership with Marcus Rashford (EPA)

It would be easy to cite natural talent but Greenwood’s development is in no small part thanks to the clear-headed work of hundreds of staff at Manchester United’s academy, and a family who are humble and down to earth.

“They are the nicest people you ever want to talk to,” Park explains. “They’re not into all the hype. His Dad [Andrew, 51] was very low key [at matches]. ‘He’s got to work’, he’d say.”

David Pritt follows United’s youth teams home and away and explains that “his Dad lets him know that his game wasn’t perfect”. He took his son to Moss Side, an inner-city area of Manchester formerly known for its high crime rate.

“He wanted him to get kicked about. It toughened him a bit and made him realise he had to do certain things to get a shot away.”

Greenwood now pulls the trigger just a fraction of a second before the goalkeeper is ready. It’s a priceless attribute.

“Every single one of the goals was a worldy,” Park says, recalling Greenwood’s second start for the under-18s, a league match against Wolves in October 2017 where he scored a hat-trick. “And it just clicked. Everybody looked and just thought ‘wow’. The type of goals he scored, the power he hit them with and the vision. All of a sudden it’s like it came together on that day.”

Greenwood’s name had been whispered around the corridors of Carrington and on the sloping sides of The Cliff (the breeding ground of the Busby Babes and Class of ‘92 and now an occasional host to under-18 matches) for many years.

David Pritt says a friend of his “mentioned this lad called Mason – he didn’t know his last name – as one of the best footballers he’d seen. He was only 13 or something like that at the time.”

Alan Brennan, an Irish Red who closely follows the youth teams, recalls seeing clips of a 13-year-old Greenwood in action.

“I’d never seen anything like it. There were a lot of clips of Greenwood taking these free-kicks off of his right and his left. He was hitting them in from 30 or 40 yards.”

Coaches for both United and England have always been excited by that particular aspect of Greenwood’s game. It was at under-13 level where Greenwood began to take penalties with his right foot, his weaker of the two. He’d missed a penalty against Manchester City.

“I said I’m not gonna take it with my left again,” Greenwood told MUTV. He’s never gone back. Although elite clubs make every effort to stop fans watching players before their 16th birthday, it’s still possible to get occasional glimpses.

“Straight away you could tell what a player he was,” Pritt says. He saw Greenwood when he was 15. “You could just see the way he floated across the pitch, right foot, left foot passing, the way he held it up.”

Park saw him at a similar stage in his development.

“The technical ability was always there. He would skin people. Even in the early days of watching him, people would say, ‘he’s very two-footed isn’t he?’”

In the first half of 2018, Greenwood played in youth tournaments in Germany and Dallas, Texas. In both cases he was one of the youngest players there. He missed the under-17 Euros due to school commitments but then made his mark for United in Uitgeest, the Netherlands.

Greenwood has starred in the Europa League (Getty) (Manchester United via Getty Images)

He was given number 14 for the ICG (International Cor Groenewegen) tournament. As the youngest member of the squad, it seemed likely that he’d make a couple of appearances off the bench. But, as Tony Park explains, that was not the case.

“He started in the first game. Scored. He started in the second game. Scored. He started in the third game. Scored. He started in the final against Real Madrid and scored the winner. He was named Player of the Tournament. And that’s when everybody was saying ‘wow this kid can do it’. He’s not even played under-23 reserve team football yet. And that’s when Mourinho took him on the tour to America.”

He headed straight back into the under-18s after a successful trip to the States. At every juncture, the United coaches were desperate to avoid rushing Greenwood yet they could not prevent the hype generated by a thrilling start to the 2018/19 campaign.

“When we saw him at the beginning of August, you’re thinking ‘shit he’s starting to fill out’. He’s got his swagger and a lot of those little rough edges, he’d lost them,” Park says. “His finishing was a lot better, he was more clinical, he was shooting on sight.”

He scored 22 goals in 19 games before Christmas, a run which included two hat-tricks and a further nine assists.

It was in the FA Youth Cup where Greenwood made major headlines. Chelsea had won five consecutive FA Youth Cups, equalling the record of the Busby Babes from the 1950s.

“They had a very strong team,” Brennan says. “But Greenwood single-handedly won that game for United. It was ridiculous. The goals he scored were brilliant.”

Pritt agrees. “That’s one of the best performances I’ve seen. Never mind youth level or first team or anything. It was just brilliant.”

A mere 13-and-a-half hours after Greenwood had scored his third in that game, springing to intercept a loose ball and finishing coolly into the far corner, Jose Mourinho was sacked as United manager.

The Portuguese had been very interested in Greenwood’s development. So much so that Greenwood was asked to join the travelling matchday squad on a number of occasions.

Greenwood is quiet, but very confident. Told that he would neither start nor be named on the bench, the then 17-year-old opted to turn down the opportunity afforded to him by Mourinho. Greenwood thought his time was better spent playing, and rampantly scoring, for United’s youth teams.

With Mourinho gone, a path opened up to the first team. A month to the day after he’d become United boss, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer namedropped Mason.

“He’s knocking on the door,” he said.

In March, Greenwood made his debut in the Uefa Champions League quarter-final against Paris Saint-Germain. With little time left, Solskjaer looked to his bench desperate for someone to make a difference. The player he turned to was still just 17 – and had made only three appearances for the under-23s.

Greenwood skipped reserve football. And why not? He’s good enough.

“Some players need the reserve football in order to step up,” Park explains. “Giggs didn’t, Norman Whiteside didn’t, whereas Beckham and Scholes played loads of reserve football. They had to graft their way into the team. They weren’t naturals in the way that Giggs was, Whiteside was and Greenwood is.”

Natural talent is one thing. But Greenwood has a good team around him and is a good listener, a characteristic that pleases Solskjaer to no end. The Norwegian wants him to shoot through defenders legs and work on his heading. Gareth Southgate wants to hand him his England debut. Both know they must manage the public’s expectations. But if Greenwood keeps scoring goals, that will prove an impossible task.