Man Utd forward Marcus Rashford scored again as his team beat Nottingham Forest in the League Cup on Wednesday night.
There used to be wry smiles whenever Marcus Rashford was likened to Kylian Mbappe. There might not be many of those at this moment in time.
It is a common theme in modern football that players are compared with their rivals, with an almost constant battle for supremacy, as social media acts as the battleground for debates that have no objective answer and don’t need one.
What makes it even more frivolous with regard to Rashford and Mbappe is that they see themselves as friends rather than foes and are both admirers of each other.
You’d have to go a long way to find any better players than Mbappe and Rashford right now, and you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who does their roles at least as well.
Rashford made it 10 goals in 10 games since the World Cup with his superb solo effort in Manchester United’s win over Nottingham Forest on Wednesday night. No player in Europe’s top-five leagues has scored more goals than the English forward since the return of domestic football, an incredible feat, even if he has played more matches than most in that timeframe.
For context, Mbappe has six goals in four games since his World Cup return, though five of them came in the same match.
What will always give the Paris Saint-Germain forward an advantage in any comparisons is that he has plenty of trophies to show for his talent. He has already won four league titles, five domestic cups and the World Cup. Rashford has won two domestic cups and the Europa League.
United will be confident of adding another trophy to their haul this season, and are favourites to do so in the League Cup, though a lack of silverware does not take away from any individual achievements of Rashford either.
“From the first moment, I recognised huge potential,” Erik ten Hag said of his star forward last month. “And now to get out the potential, I believe when Marcus’s positioning is on the back of the defending line, there is almost no better player in the world.
“There is Mbappe in this moment, a type like him. But when he’s getting in that position, he’s great, and you see he’s really improved also out of possession.”
When he is at the top of his game, there really are few players who offer the same direct threat as Rashford does, something that was brilliantly displayed with his solo strike in midweek.
It was a goal that simply wouldn’t have been scored last season when he was experiencing a barren run, with the 25-year-old’s style of play so closely linked to his own self-belief.
It is this confidence that has seen him play the best football of his career, it is that confidence that Mbappe himself believes sets Rashford apart from most other strikers.
“He’s one of the most dangerous forward players in England,” Mbappe said of the United forward ahead of a Champions League group-stage meeting between United and PSG in 2020. “Paul Pogba has spoken about how special he is, and he doesn’t talk about players in such a way often. When you take a penalty in that situation (against PSG in 2019), how much practice you have put on the training ground doesn’t matter. It’s about confidence, and he’s a player who plays with so much confidence.”
The key then for United is to keep Rashford’s self-belief this high and to ensure that he does not get burdened by the increasing expectation that is building by the week.
He will need the help of his teammates to ease the pressure on him to be the match-winner every week, and he will need the help of Ten Hag to manage his minutes carefully and ensure he doesn’t suffer from burnout.
In a year when United will look to sign an elite forward, they have been reminded once again that they already have one at their disposal.
