The problem for Harry Maguire – and it has coloured his situation for some time – is that many supporters want the England team to be picked on club form. It is not how Gareth Southgate works, at least not entirely. The England manager places an emphasis on how his players have performed for him, on what he sees directly. The critics call it excessive loyalty. Southgate views it as basic logic.
Maguire’s travails at Manchester United have been well documented. For him, 2022-23 was the lost season at club level when he started only eight Premier League games and slipped to the bottom of the central defensive pecking order, which was where he began the current campaign. In March 2022, he had heard his substitution in United’s Champions League exit against Atlético Madrid cheered by a section of the Old Trafford support, which surely influenced the Wembley crowd in his next England match – the friendly against Ivory Coast. Some of those present booed him.
Southgate has always stood by Maguire, awarding him all 62 of his England caps, the first in the World Cup qualifier away to Lithuania in October 2017. Back then, Maguire had just moved from Hull to Leicester. Only Harry Kane, with 72, has won more caps under Southgate. It is no surprise to hear Maguire would like Southgate to continue in the role, all the more so if England fare well at Euro 2024. “If Gareth’s the man to make us be successful then we want him to stay as long as possible,” he says.
Maguire cannot help but wonder whether there is something else at play in the never-ending discourse over his place in the England starting XI, which he is set to reprise in Saturday night’s Wembley friendly against Brazil. It is about where he plays his club football and, possibly, United’s capacity to polarise opinion.
“I do think that different clubs have different scrutiny on players and that has a big aspect on fans when they see him [Southgate] picking a squad,” Maguire says. “I could have played for Leicester and had a bad game and then six good ones, a couple of bad ones and everyone would think that I’m in amazing form. If I did that for Manchester United, it doesn’t happen like that. Every goal we concede is analysed and scrutiny comes.
“There’s cameras everywhere and you only have to look at the previous Man United players who have played for the country. The club gets so much scrutiny and people speaking about it that I think every player who’s played for Man United and played for the country has come to a time when they’ve played for the country and people haven’t been happy.”
It is put to Maguire that David Beckham is perhaps the clearest example. “Beckham had a lot,” he says. “Even Wayne [Rooney] had a lot of things said and he was one of the greatest players ever to play for his country. But listen, it’s part and parcel of football and playing for such a historic club. I wouldn’t change it for the world.”
Maguire’s theme is mastering the big moments. There is never a time when that is not essential at United and it applies equally to England, Maguire seeing it as the final piece of the jigsaw before the European Championship in Germany this summer.
England were a penalty shootout away from beating Italy in the final of the last Euros while they have also reached a World Cup semi-final and quarter-final under Southgate. The talent and experience is there. Now, according to Maguire, it is all about the finer details.
“I feel that as a group, we’re ready to win,” he says. “If you asked every single player in the squad they’d say the expectation is to win the tournament. However, we do understand that it’s tournament football and if we are going to win the Euros, you are probably going to have to win a penalty shootout, so you’ve got to be prepared on that aspect. You are going to have to score from set plays, defend set plays.
“Tournament football is built on big moments. Against France at the last World Cup, that quarter-final could have gone either way but it went to them. We have the players to produce the big moments. We have to be mentally prepared so that in this tournament, we make these moments ours.”
Increasingly – and almost under the radar – Maguire has done so at United. It was difficult to imagine a more testing start to the season for him, with the nadir coming on 12 September when he scored an own goal in England’s win over Scotland and was barracked mercilessly by the Hampden Park crowd.
Fast forward to last Sunday and United’s FA Cup win over Liverpool. Maguire was just back from injury but when Erik ten Hag introduced him as a substitute, he ended up relying on him as one of only two recognised defenders on the pitch. An epic tie could have gone either way; it went United’s.
The turning point for Maguire came as injuries bit and Ten Hag gave him his first start of the league season against Brentford on 7 October. Maguire set up the winner for Scott McTominay in stoppage time and he would play in every minute of every game thereafter until forced out of the Champions League tie against Bayern Munich on 12 December with a groin injury.
Ten Hag preferred him frequently to Raphaël Varane during the sequence – a scenario that would have been unthinkable in the early part of the season. After Maguire recovered fitness after a seven-week layoff, it was not long before he regained his status as a first-choice selection.
It would be interrupted again by a more minor injury leading up to the Liverpool Cup tie but when Maguire talks now about his challenges, it is of having “overcome” them. In other words, in the past tense. He is not so naive as to consider it a permanent state of affairs. For now, though, as Maguire always believed it would, the background noise has died down.
