COUNTY KILDARE, Ireland — As Harry Maguire made the short walk from the hotel at Carton House to the pitches used by Manchester United during their training camp in County Kildare this week, there were only shouts of encouragement from the fans waiting patiently behind steel barriers for pictures and autographs.
There were congratulations, too, on Tuesday morning after United announced Maguire’s new contract around 30 minutes before the players emerged for their first session in Ireland.
The overwhelming opinion among supporters is that CEO Omar Berrada and director of football Jason Wilcox have made a good decision in securing the 33-year-old defender’s services for at least another year. There’s a possibility the deal could be extended again until June 2028.
Whether it’s one more year or two, the new contract caps a remarkable turnaround for a player who knows all too well how hard it can be for a high-profile footballer when things aren’t going smoothly.
– O’Hanlon: Bruno is United’s MVP, but they shouldn’t extend his contract
– Premier League without set-piece goals: What would the table look like?
– Manchester United must decide: Is Carrick the man, or someone else?
On his last trip to Ireland with United in August 2023, Maguire was booed by sections of the crowd at Aviva Stadium in Dublin during a pre-season fixture against Athletic Club.
It came less than a month after he was stripped of the captaincy by Erik ten Hag in favour of Bruno Fernandes, and about five weeks before what Maguire remembers as the lowest moment of the most difficult spell of his career.
Having come on as a half-time substitute for England against Scotland at Hampden Park in September 2023, his every touch was mockingly cheered by the home fans. It didn’t help that Maguire scored an own goal, but afterwards the reaction to his performance became too much for his family.
“Seeing him go through what he’s going through is not OK,” his mother, Zoe, wrote in an emotional post on Instagram. “As a mum, seeing the level of negative and abusive comments which my son is receiving is disgraceful and totally unacceptable in any walk of life, never mind someone who works his socks off for club and country.”
Two-and-a-half years on, and Maguire is back in favour at United, playing well and popular again and he can finally allow himself to see the funny side.
“My mum put something out,” he says with a smile. “I didn’t want her to but she just said, ‘I’m doing it! I’m not listening to you!’
“I think it got to a point where it got really that low, the mocking and the abuse, if you want to call it abuse.
“When I started getting jeered on the ball [against Scotland] I think that’s probably the lowest point.”
While Hampden Park sticks out as Maguire’s worst moment, he can trace the campaign of criticism back to a dip in form at the beginning of the 2021-22 season. In the space of a few months, he watched United lose the UEFA Europa League final to Villarreal on penalties, suffered more penalty heartache with England in the final of UEFA European Championship against Italy, and the saw the manager who signed him in 2019, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, sacked after a miserable run of results.
Maguire was sent off in Solskjaer’s final game in charge — a 4-1 defeat at Watford in November 2021 — and was then part of a team which won just three of their last 14 games under the Norwegian’s replacement, Ralf Rangnick.
“I was coming off the back of two big final defeats,” recalls Maguire. “I probably just didn’t handle that as well as I should have. That summer hurt, I must say. To lose the Euros at Wembley.
“I can remember we went back to the England camp in the first one back and we looked at the players and I think Gareth [Southgate] spoke at the time about how out of form all the players were. I think there were so many lads who struggled in that period after the Euros.
“When you’re Manchester United captain and when you’re a central defender, you can’t get away with that. You can’t get away with struggling.
“There were lots of different things in that season. Losing Ole was a big, big loss. I felt a lot of responsibility for that as performances leading up to Ole losing his job weren’t good enough.
“The back end of the season was a mess really. It really was a mess. I was the captain and I took a lot of brunt for it, but it was a mess. We were all over the place, the back six months of that season.”
But it wasn’t all down to Maguire and, even now, he’s still not sure why he was singled out.
“Sometimes it did cross my mind at the time, just thinking: ‘Why?'” he says.
“I can understand a couple of bad performances and a few mistakes here and there. My form dipped a little bit — yeah, of course — everyone does that in their career.
“In the moment I just thought this is what happens. This is the normality of being Manchester United captain and I’d been an £80 million defender and all those things added up.
“Social media was getting bigger and bigger and bigger. I just thought it was normal at the time. I thought this is what happens — this is because the club isn’t performing well. But when you look back it probably did go a little bit too far.”
For Maguire, the change in perception about him as a player happened rapidly.
“There was a three or four year period where I felt like I was one of the best center-backs in the world,” he says. “I was definitely in the conversation. That’s how strongly I felt about my game in that period.
“I played in the World Cup [in 2018], then played again in the Euros [in 2021]. I was in the team of the tournament.
“The first two years at Manchester United I’d taken them from sixth or seventh in the table to third and second. In the second year we were second.
“At the time I can remember thinking I just don’t know how this has really happened, I don’t know how it’s changed so quickly.”
It reached the point when, in the summer of 2023, Maguire almost left Old Trafford. Looking back, he believes some of the abuse — both online and in person — might have “broken” other players.
“I think there’ll be a lot who want to maybe just close the book and just go elsewhere and restart their career,” he says. “Yeah, I think it’s probably broken them a little bit earlier. A lot of things don’t really get to me.
“When things are going tough, everyone jumps on you. But when things are going well, you also get a lot of praise.
“That’s part and parcel of playing for this club. As a player, I always speak about how it’s really important to try and maintain a level of balance, even with the noise around you, because you can become the worst player in the world one week and you’re getting sold and getting replaced and everyone’s signing and there’s targets coming in in your position.
“And then the next week, you’re one of the best players in your position and everyone’s giving you praise. I think as a player, we have to maintain a level of emotional balance.”
Ten Hag wanted Maguire to leave in 2023, but an agreement with West Ham United never materialised.
Fast forward a couple of years and the club are thankful he snubbed interest from Italy and Saudi Arabia to extend his stay. He’s been a key part of the revival under Michael Carrick which has put United on course to qualify for the UEFA Champions League.
“They let me know that they wanted to offer something a couple of months ago probably, so after Christmas it was,” he says. “My agent dealt with most of it, but I think there was a lot of interest. My focus was getting this club back into a competitive situation.”
With his future secure, Maguire can begin to look forward.
His form since January earned a recall to the England squad for the first time in nearly two years to give him hope of appearing at a third FIFA World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico this summer.
“I’m desperate to go,” Maguire says. “I think it would be my last World Cup for my country, so I’m desperate to go, whatever role the manager would want me for.
“Whether that’s starting or whether it’s deciding games late on. I still believe, even at my age, I’m arguably one of the best defenders in the world in both boxes. I don’t think that’s to question really.
“That can be really effective later on in games, whether you’re holding on to a lead or trying to chase a game. I still think there’s an important part that I can play in, that I can help.”
If reaching the World Cup is one ambition, ending his United career with a Premier League title is another.
“We’re in a strong position this year to put ourselves in a nice position next year to go and compete in the big competitions,” he says. “I’m really pleased to play for this club. It’s a huge honour and to be here for the next season will be my eighth year. To be here for eight years is a testament to myself really.
“I wouldn’t change where I’ve been and what I’ve been through. It’s definitely made me stronger. It’s part of the journey.”
Leave a Reply