Anthony Martial Is Manchester United’s Hope

Anthony Martial has two games — Sunday’s final league game of the season at home to Bournemouth and the FA Cup final against Crystal Palace — to break one of Manchester United’s lesser known records.

Martial’s brace at West Ham took his club tally to 17 goals in a debut season at Old Trafford where he’s played 47 games, which is more than was initially expected. (He has also played seven times for Monaco at the start of the season and eight times for France, making 62 matches since August.)

On a feverish night at Upton Park, which saw United’s bus pelted with bottles and a squeamish Jesse Lingard publish footage on Snapchat that did not impress his coaches or club officials, the Frenchman showed more maturity.

While the team only took a total of three shots — compared to West Ham’s 20 — two of them were Martial’s goals. He has had better games and looked isolated on the left, but took his goals brilliantly and looked a bigger threat when cutting inside.

Martial now stands level with Brian Kidd and Wayne Rooney, two teen strikers who also scored 17 in their first full seasons in red. Kidd played in a side that won the 1968 European Cup, while Rooney was part of a team that finished third in the 2004-05 Premier League and lost the FA Cup final to Arsenal.

That lack of trophies, combined with the unpopular Glazer family’s takeover of the club, meant that 2005 was considered a bad year for United, yet the shoots of recovery were also becoming evident as young forwards Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo began to blossom. Within two years United were English champions and, within three, ruled Europe and the world.

Even despite a new batch of emerging youngsters, there’s little optimism that the current team can follow a similar path, although there was also little hopefulness in 2005. Football can change quickly, as anyone in Leicester will attest.

Martial has the talent to be as good as Rooney or Ronaldo and United’s often-maligned scouting network deserves credit for signing him quickly and efficiently last August at a time when most United fans hadn’t heard of the player and were pining for better-known names.

The club were strongly criticised for backing off the signing of Pedro from Barcelona, yet they did so because they wanted Martial. It was one of the few correct calls made by United last summer in the transfer market.

At the time, though, despite Martial already rising to prominence in France, his expensive acquisition was laughed at in England. “What a waste of money” read the headline on the back page of The Mirror. The terrace song of the last month from United fans has poked fun at that and other media scepticism:

“Tony Martial, he came from France,
The English press said he had no chance.
£50 million down the drain,
Tony Martial scores again.”

It’s clunky and Martial sounds more like “Marshall” in a Mancunian accent but it should also be said that few supporters were convinced when he first signed. It did look like United had paid well over the odds for a little-known forward, but then fans aren’t paid to scout emerging talents like United’s professionals.

Monaco didn’t want to sell their best young player any more than Southampton were ready to let Luke Shaw leave a year earlier, so United had to make Martial the most expensive teenager in world football, just as they’d done with Rooney and Shaw. (Kidd, a born-and-raised Mancunian, cost nothing.)

Martial’s fee was reported as £57.6 million, but it is heavily structured. United initially paid £36 million and the rest is broken into three potential instalments of £7.2 million, relating to him scoring 25 goals in his first four years in Manchester, playing 25 times for France and winning the Ballon d’Or before 2019.

Far from being burdened by the fee, at first Martial suggested United had a bargain when he won the Premier League’s player of the month award for September after scoring a goal on his debut goal against Liverpool and two at Southampton a week later.

Overall he has been United’s best player in a mediocre season, although he too has been ineffective and inconsistent at times, such as the two-month period between October and December when he failed to score. Such inconsistencies are common in young players.

As the Manchester winter went on, Martial, who had spent the previous three years living in the warmer climes of Monaco, cut a very quiet figure at Carrington. The club were worried that he was homesick and he also went through an upheaval in his personal life. Having experienced a great deal in the last year, it’s his talent on the pitch that is now making headlines.

“He has a very, very, very good talent,” says his former Monaco teammate Eric Abidal. “But more important is the humility and he has that. He’s focuses on his goals; he wants to be the best striker in the world and he worked for that. He has a mix of [Thierry] Henry and Rooney. He has agility, power; he can go one against one. When he arrives in front of the goalkeeper, he’s calm and makes the right decision.

“I played with Martial for one year in Monaco so I know what he’s like,” Abidal continued. “He was in Lyon too; they were crazy to sell him. To be the best player in the world, he needs to spend five or six years in Manchester like Ronaldo did. Manchester is good with young players. Or even stay in Manchester and be a legend of Manchester.”

Martial, who was named on Thursday to France’s Euro 2016 squad, is a reluctant hero. He does almost no media and was not keen to take the No. 9 shirt at United until his manager insisted. While he is learning English, he mainly mixes with fellow French speakers Morgan Schneiderlin and Marouane Fellaini.

He’s had twice the season of his friends. Fans remain unconvinced by Fellaini, whose FA Cup semifinal goal was set up by Martial, and Schneiderlin but shirts bearing their compatriot’s name sell better than any other in the club shop.

Martial is especially popular with younger fans, who love his ability to go past players, to score and to show moments of magic seen more regularly in recent times on their video games consoles rather than by other United players.

Last week, David De Gea won the club’s player of the year award for the third successive season but Martial has been the best outfield performer and the man whose epic 93rd minute goal got United to a cup final. He’s the most significant harbinger of hope in these concerning times for the club.