Casemiro is a very good footballer. He has won five Champions League titles and has been, with Luka Modrić and Toni Kroos, part of one of the greatest midfields football has ever known. He may turn out to be a very effective signing for Manchester United; certainly the club has needed a high-class holding midfielder for years. And yet such is the level of chaos into which the club has slipped that his forthcoming transfer seems only to emphasize the club’s lack of planning.
With United, it feels, every decision cuts across the previous one the club made. Why was Erik ten Hag appointed as manager? Presumably it was because of the success he had had at Ajax, where he played a high-pressing game based on the Total Football model. The sense was that, at last, United had acknowledged the need to modernize. And yet with the signing of Casemiro, United now has more than a quarter of the Real Madrid lineups that won consecutive Champions League titles in 2017 and ’18, and that side categorically did not play hard-pressing, Ajax-style football.
Perhaps signing Casemiro does make sense to shore up an era of the team that has desperately needed bolstering. But what is ten Hag supposed to do? He is already hampered in his attempts to impose his philosophy by a goalkeeper who cannot pass—David de Gea completed the fewest passes of any top-flight goalkeeper last season—and by a center forward in Cristiano Ronaldo who not merely refuses to press but tries to deflect training away from pressing drills. If ten Hag compromises, then why is he there? What is he building? But if he does not, the result is a shambles such as what happened at Brentford last Saturday.
