Maguire faces career-defining week on England duty

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By Sportgister Ng

Harry Maguire is at the beginning of the biggest week of his career.

The Manchester United captain has two games for England, against Italy and Germany in the UEFA Nations League, over the next seven days that will shape his season and show whether he can emerge from a nightmare 12 months for club and country.

At 29, the world’s most expensive defender — Maguire eclipsed Liverpool’s Virgil van Dijk when completing an £80 million move from Leicester City to United in 2019 — has reached a crossroads in his career. There has been precious little good news at United in recent months, with injury and a loss of form costing Maguire his first-team place, but despite his fall from grace at Old Trafford, England manager Gareth Southgate has kept faith with one of his most reliable performers.

Let’s not forget that just over a year ago, Maguire earned a place in UEFA’s Team of Euro 2020 after an outstanding tournament in which England reached the final and came within a penalty shootout of winning their first major competition since the 1966 World Cup.

The former Sheffield United and Hull City centre-back was also a key figure in the run to the semifinals of the 2018 World Cup, and although he was booed by a small section of the England supporters during the Wembley friendly against Ivory Coast in March — Southgate condemned the fans’ reaction as an “absolute joke” — Maguire’s international career has been a largely positive one.

But with the World Cup in Qatar now just two months away, Maguire is relying on Southgate’s track record of sticking with players who have served him well to keep him in the England team. If Southgate’s selection was based on form, Maguire would know that his days as an England regular are numbered.

The alarming state of his United career was perfectly illustrated by his emergence from the substitutes’ bench in the 90th minute of last Thursday’s Europa League win against FC Sheriff in Moldova.

Having been partly blamed for the defensive chaos which led to defeats against Brighton and Brentford in the opening two games of this season, Maguire now can’t even persuade manager Erik ten Hag to trust him in a Europa League game against the champions of Moldova.

There is no question that Maguire’s future for club and country is now shrouded in uncertainty, and losing his England place will only make it tougher for him to get back to where he needs to be, but he is in the middle of a remarkable downward spiral.Until the 79th minute of United’s Premier League win at Aston Villa in May 2021, little had gone wrong for Maguire.

He had made his 72nd consecutive Premier League start for United in that game and had played every minute of the previous 71 fixtures since his arrival from Leicester.

During the previous season, Maguire was an ever present for United and England, amassing 5,490 unbroken minutes over 61 games that made him the busiest player in world football during that 2019-20 season. In doing so, he became the first United player since Gary Pallister in 1994-95 to play every single Premier League minute in a season.

An ankle ligament injury suffered at Aston Villa forced him to miss the remainder of United’s season in May 2021. He missed the Europa League final defeat against Villarreal in Gdansk, but returned to play at Euro 2020 after sitting out the first two games against Croatia and Scotland.Yet although he emerged with his reputation enhanced after Euro 2020, the positivity quickly evaporated back at United.

Maguire suffered injuries, was sent off at Chelsea, played in the humiliating defeats against Liverpool, Manchester City and Watford and saw defensive partners change regularly due to teammates suffering injury or loss of form.

Maguire became a lightning rod for fans’ frustrations, with the captain struggling to justify the armband or his position in the team, and the situation has deteriorated to the point where he is now regarded by many as a central factor in United’s defensive problems, which have only halted since Ten Hag dropped Maguire after the 4-0 rout at Brentford.

Has Ten Hag identified the problem and dealt with it by dropping Maguire, favouring a defensive partnership of Raphael Varane and Lisandro Martinez, or is Maguire simply a victim of circumstance?”Harry needs pace around him, but he hasn’t had that,” a source close to Maguire told ESPN. “If you put [Man City’s] Ruben Dias in the United defence and Harry in the City back-four, Dias would struggle and Harry would thrive. Harry hasn’t had a good

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