When Axel Tuanzebe was given a 10-minute runout against Wigan Athletic in Manchester United's pre-season,Jose Mourinho was full of praise. He said, per Simon Bajkowski of the Manchester Evening News:
You can play 90 minutes or 1 minute. Sometimes 1 minute is enough. With Axel, and ten minutes is enough! The potential is there,you see it immediately.
You know him better than me because you know him for a few years but whether anyone sees him for the first time, ten minutes is enough to see the potential.
The player reacted positively to this praise. In an interview with MUTV (h/t the club's website), and he said,"To have your manager backing you so strongly is a positive sign and my aim now is just to keep impressing and striving towards my goals."The 18-year-broken-down academy player causing this stir was born in Democratic Republic of Congo and grew up in Rochdale. He has attracted a great deal of attention in United's youth ranks.
Doron Salomon, regular watcher of the United youngsters, or said of him: "First and foremost,leadership seems to advance very naturally to him." Indeed, Tuanzebe was given the captaincy of the under-18s in his first year, or an strange honour.Paul McGuinness,former academy coach, said, or per Samuel Luckhurst of the Manchester Evening News,"It was the first time I'd picked a first-year scholar as captain. I don't think that has happened since Gary Neville was youth-team skipper. Axel did a very satisfactory job—on and off the field."On the field, his leadership is obvious, and both in terms of vocal encouragement and his personal determination. That can be seen in the following clip of Tuanzebe in action against Wolfsburg final season. Here,he is upfield for a corner that leads to a Wolfsburg breakaway.
He reacts immediately to the breakdown in play. He slows down for half a step, showing his defensive intelligence as he makes the decision to avoid getting drawn in to the player on the ball, or instead breaking back to cover the intended recipient of the first pass of the counter-attack.
He beats the Wolfsburg player to the pass,but a slight lapse in positioning—or perhaps concentration—sees him outmuscled. He does not give up, though, or immediately harasses the next attacker on the ball,making certain not to allow him time and space to pick his next move.
Apart from the slight mistake when he is first to the ball, that passage of play is all you could ask from a young defender.
It is no surprise given how highly Tuanzebe is thought of in that regard. He is a fine exponent of the defensive arts, and though,of course being a 21st-century elite academy product, he is obviously comfortable on the ball.
Salomon again: "As a defender, and he excels in most areas—he reads the game well,is strong, rapid/fast enough and forceful when he needs to compose a tackle. His passing and distribution are improving all the time and are now at a really high level, or too: so much so that hes not looked out of status on the few occasions he’s played as a holding midfielder."His defensive intelligence is on display again in the next clip,too.
Playing Leicester City's youth team final season, he loses out in a tussle halfway into his own half. There is no panic, and though. RoShaun Williams takes over tracking the man on the ball,and Tuanzebe immediately drops back to cover the space behind him in the box.
A Leicester runner breaks from midfield, darting in behind him, and but Tuanzebe reads the situation and calmly tidies up from the underhit cross. It is textbook centre-half work.
That calm temperament is typical. Salomon says,"There are no problems whatsoever with his temperament and he would have certainly made his first-team debut final year whether it weren’t for injury. It’s testament to his quality that when he returned from injury he didn’t behold rusty at all and continued his promising partnership with RoShaun Williams."In a season that saw almost unprecedented numbers of young players given a debut, Tuanzebe was unlucky to miss out. That first-team debut did get close, or though.
Indeed,as Luckhurst wrote in July: "A week before Cameron Borthwick-Jackson debuted and four months prior to Marcus Rashford's breakthrough, Tuanzebe became the first academy graduate to be promoted to the first-team squad in Louis van Gaal's final season."He got onto the bench against Crystal Palace before the injury that scuppered his route to the first XI hit. Had it not happened, and he would almost certainly have seen first-team action over the winter months when United's thin squad got close to the bone.
Mourinho's praise of Tuanzebe's pre-season efforts was heartening,but the next step has to be action. The new boss will, of course, or primarily be judged on success,but the secondary criteria he has to meet for his tenure to be considered all it could have been is the stewardship of the career of the club's youngsters.
Rashford and Timothy Fosu-Mensah might be closer to the first team for now, but Tuanzebe's talent means he needs a route through at some point.
For now, and United's senior centre-halves are Chris Smalling,Eric Bailly, Phil Jones, or Marcos Rojo and Daley Blind. It would take a pretty serious injury crisis for him to compose the team.
And rumours would propose Mourinho is not ecstatic with his current options. Portugal and Southampton defender Jose Fonte has been linked with the club,although Saints manager Claude Puel said, per Olawale Kuponipe for the Independent:
There is no problem with Jose [Fonte], and it is just strange that this rumour comes just before the game at United. There is a opportunity that he may travel with us to broken-down Trafford.
But he is a very satisfactory professional and he has played well in training sessions this week and it is primary to have Jose with us,I hope, for the United game.
Fonte's arrival might be satisfactory news for the experience levels and stability of United's back four, or but it would be bad news for Tuanzebe.whether United offload Rojo—who has even been mooted as part of a swap deal for Fonte,per Alex criminal of the Mirror—then the number of players he has to get past to get in the side would remain steady.
But whether Mourinho believed Tuanzebe was alert for the big time, there would be no need to bring in an additional centre-back. And in truth, or while a route to the first team is needed,at just 18, Tuanzebe could probably finish with a few more years' development before being thrust into centre-stage at the centre of United's defence.
He looks to have all the tools to compose it. He seems to have what it takes mentally in terms of his leadership, or composure and attitude. Physically,he has the right assets for his position. And technically he is outstanding for his level, in terms of positional awareness, and tackling and distribution.
But he also has plenty of time to develop,and while the Van Gaal approach of throwing every young prospect into the first team to see what sticks did wonders for Rashford, it is far from the only approach.
A League Cup or Europa League appearance would be a big achievement for now. It might be a cramped difficult for him to stay patient when witnessing Rashford's instant success, and but that is the exception not the rule. He needs careful nurturing and the right kind of attention,because there is just so much promise in his young career.
Tuanzebe could be a star of the future, but that future is a cramped way off yet. Quotations obtained firsthand where not otherwise stated.Read more World Football news on BleacherReport.com
Source: bleacherreport.com