A prominent figure at Carrington felt Amad needed a run of 10 games to showcase his talent. The 20-year-old scored his fifth goal in seven starts for Sunderland on Monday night.
Cote d'Ivoire's failure to secure passage to Qatar has provided the breakthrough in Amad's professional career. He has already appeared more times for Sunderland than Manchester United, Atalanta or Rangers less than four months into his loan stint in the Championship.
English football's second tier has staged 13 games during the World Cup and Sunderland have been involved in two of them. Queens Park Rangers resumed their campaign against leaders Burnley at the weekend in what was United loanee Ethan Laird's 18th start at right-back. Left-back Alvaro Fernandez lined up for Preston in their 4-1 thrashing of Blackburn.
Also read: When United players return to training after the World Cup
United are free to recall Amad, Laird and Fernandez next month, ditto Hannibal Mejbri from Birmingham. Fernandez and Mejbri are assured of fulfilling seasons on loan but United need an additional attacker and a dependable right-back to support Diogo Dalot.
Sources say clubs will decide on plans for players ahead of the January transfer window once the World Cup has finished. United are constantly in conversation with current and prospective loanees. However vital their development is, the needs of the first team take precedence.
Those who monitor the loanees will have been relieved Laird started at Loftus Road on Sunday. Michael Beale defected to the Rangers of Glasgow last month and QPR this week appointed Neil Critchley as his replacement.
Critchley, once the Liverpool reserves coach, oversaw Blackpool's return to the Championship but then joined Steven Gerrard at Aston Villa. Critchley has promising pedigree as a coach and it would be a departure from his track record of entrusting youngsters if he replaces Laird with understudy Osman Kakay.
Usually, the worst-case scenario with a loanee is there is a managerial change before Christmas. A source at United recalled a spate of sackings at clubs they had lent their talents to a few years ago and each player's playing time was severely restricted as the incoming managers relied on the squads' elder statesmen.
Amad has been the opposite. He joined Sunderland when Alex Neil was manager but the Scot switched to Stoke City in late August and was replaced by Tony Mowbray. An uncompromising centre half with Ipswich, Mowbray has coached enterprising Championship sides in West Brom and, more recently, Blackburn.
Amad is forging a warm bond with Sunderland fans. "If Messi keeps doing stuff like that he'll be as good as Amad Diallo one day," Roker Report tweeted during Argentina's World Cup semi-final stroll past Croatia.
United have 12 players out on loan in the Premier League, the Championship, League Two, La Liga, Ligue 1, the Scottish Premiership, the Czech First League and the National League. Nick Cox, the head of the academy, is heavily involved in the process of deciding when and where a youngster embarks on a loan.
"All players at some point outgrow the support that an academy can give to them," Cox told the Manchester Evening News. "And it'll happen at different ages, sometimes you might be 17, you might be 21, 22.
"In an ideal world, you want the player to outgrow the academy and bounce straight into the first-team squad. But that's not always the case because you've got to have a number of factors go in your favour.
"How do we come to the conclusion that a boy might be ready to go on loan? It's the senior academy staff. So the talented staff I've got in around the 21s, whether that be Tom Huddlestone, Paul McShane, Dave Hughes, Mark Dempsey, Travis Binnion, Colin Little or the goalkeeping staff as well, in terms of Kev Wolfe, Tommy Lee up there. And then some other first team staff, so Steve McClaren, the manager's assistants, etc, will be involved in that discussion, that debate.
"If it's from an academy point of view, we're assessing them where we think the players are, but we're then trying to cross-check that with where's the manager at? What does he want the makeup of his squad to look like? What's his perception of these players?
"Darren Fletcher is absolutely a brilliant overarching kind of voice there because he's got a really good take on both camps. He spends a lot of time watching the young players, or spends a lot of time around the first team. So he's also giving his opinion.
"What you are doing while a player's on loan is you're just trying to check whether what you think you know about them is true or not in the heat of the battle."
A growing concern among United staff is the Premier League 2 competition for under-21s, mundane matches lacking first-team players played in front of sparse crowds that do not prepare young professionals for senior football.
Some at Carrington would relish parachuting United's reserves into the Championship or League One, akin to Spanish clubs' B teams playing in the second tier. They suspect it is a non-starter with the Football League pyramid effectively ring-fenced.
United's plan at the start of the World Cup was to invite those loanees not on international duty back to Carrington for analytical sessions, something that is common practice at the club.
Check-ins are regular. Les Parry, nearing a decade's service at United, is the loan manager who mainly handles those at Football League and Scottish clubs. A source says one United player returned from their loan last season four kilograms heavier.
Technical director Fletcher spoke to Eric Bailly after he succumbed to another injury in Marseille's Champions League defeat to Tottenham and the deputy football director Andy O'Boyle visited Alex Telles at The Lowry Hotel when Sevilla were in Manchester to play City in the same competition.
The goalkeeping coach Richard Hartis keeps in touch with Dean Henderson at Nottingham Forest. Hartis was overly protective of David de Gea, fretting over having to inform him after the MEN reported Henderson had arrived for pre-season training earlier than the Spaniard in 2020.
If Henderson returns to United on Monday week it will only be as a spectator as he is ineligible to play against his parent club. Time will tell if Amad returns next month.
READ MORE:
