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“Everyone can have a bad day at the office,” said Erik ten Hag. And if the Manchester United manager could be speaking from experience, after the traumas of the last year, few are as bad or as public as Casemiro’s last day of meaningful work. When the office is Old Trafford, when a new co-worker hired to potentially take his post is sitting and watching, when his line manager acts with sufficient brutality to make it clear he is unhappy, it was worse than most.
At least Casemiro was able to clock off after 45 minutes. The downside was that he was substituted after two glaring errors led to Liverpool goals, that he was replaced by a rookie, in the league debutant Toby Collyer, that the directors’ box contained Manuel Ugarte, the £50m newcomer who could prove his replacement. For a quintuple Champions League winner, it felt a particular exercise in ignominy.
“Of course I speak with him about the situation,” said Ten Hag. “Everyone can have a bad at the office.” If Casemiro had few such poor ones across eight years at Real Madrid or 75 appearances for Brazil, Ten Hag feels the 32-year-old’s storied past will help him cope. “He is experienced,” he explained. “I guess it’s not the first time he’s had to deal with a bad game. He has to overcome it this well. But it’s normal in life you have highs and lows. He knows how to deal with it. Nobody’s career goes only up, no team pattern only goes up. Then you have to deal with it.”
The alternative perspective is that Casemiro’s career has veered sharply downwards in the last two years. It explains the arrival of Ugarte, a defensive midfielder nine years his junior. Two years ago, Casemiro joined, promising to “fix” United and debuted against Southampton. Now, in a coincidence, Ugarte’s bow could also come away at St Mary’s. It meant Ten Hag has had to have two awkward conversations with Casemiro recently: to explain why United were committing a sizeable portion of their summer budget to buying a rival for him.
“I normally do talk to him and in this case I did as well,” he said. “But players in our club know you are playing at this level there is always competition, they also know you can only be successful if you have a squad that has cover. You can’t have a squad where you only have one player who can cover this; you need at least two for each position, sometimes it is three for two. That is OK when you have very robust players. All the players will understand, then it’s about what is the best fit for the team. They have to prove it, the key word.”
Yet Casemiro was bought, for £63m, to be a cornerstone. Now he faces a fight for his position. Ten Hag’s interest in Ugarte dates back years. “He’s been on my radar a long time, he played for Sporting Lisbon against Ajax,” he explained. Three of Ugarte’s new teammates played for Ten Hag’s team that day, with Lisandro Martinez and Noussair Mazraoui in defence and Antony among the scorers in their 4-2 win in 2021. He continued to track Ugarte. “It was not only that match, also the seasons after when he played there and for Uruguay and Paris [Saint-Germain],” he added. “I had him in my mind and my eye, the scouting department had him in their mind and we followed him and we judged he will be a really good fit for our team.”
Ugarte’s standout attribute is his capacity to win the ball. He made the second most tackles of any midfielder in Europe’s top five leagues last season and the most in Ligue Un. As Casemiro visibly aged, meanwhile, United seemed a team of two halves, lacking a midfield to link them. It rendered Ten Hag’s rationale for signing Ugarte instructive. “He’s coming in as a late transfer but he’s playing a very important position, connecting the defending with attacking and attacking with defending,” he said. “Communication is very important to guide the team. He has the profile where we think he can fit in that role. We have to teach him some details about how it works in our team.”
The temptation is to say that it didn’t work in the United side last season: they were too open in midfield and it was a reason why opponents routinely amassed 20 shots. The fit Ten Hag talked about could entail cutting out more counter-attacks or covering more ground in front of the back four. The way the Dutchman described it, United were looking for a type of midfielder: perhaps the type Casemiro was or isn’t now.
For now, Ten Hag has not anointed either the first choice. “I am looking far ahead,” said the United manager. “A player who benefits most will play more minutes. That is normal.” And Casemiro, taken off for Collyer, faces competition for minutes from a £50m midfielder. The danger is that a bad day at the office leads to him losing his workspace.
