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Your support makes all the difference.When Morgan Schneiderlin was given the keys to the big time with a move to Old Trafford, he said he hoped playing for Manchester United “would not be the only thing people remember on my CV.”
When the midfielder’s time in football is done, the fact that he played for Manchester United at all might seem like a footnote rather than the climax to a career.
Sitting at Everton’s training ground after his £24m transfer was finalised, he was asked when it dawned that his time at Manchester United had turned irretrievably sour. “There was not one point,” he said. “It is when you realise you are not in the team. It is when you are on the bench and you don’t come on. It is when you come on for one minute. It is when you have two or three games in the stands. There is not one point; it is an accumulation of things.”
You can trace the petering out of Schneiderlin’s Manchester United career. His last game was against Arsenal on November 19 – he was brought on for five minutes. The previous game was at Swansea (one minute). He started the defeat by Fenerbahce in the Europa League but was substituted at the interval. To find a league game Schneiderlin started and finished you would have to go back to April and a 2-0 defeat of Crystal Palace at Old Trafford.
This was a player on whom Louis van Gaal had spent £25m, who had played for France at every level and who appeared destined for greatness when growing up in Zellwiller, a village in Alsace whose football club had been founded by his grandfather. RC Strasbourg identified him as a serious talent when Schneiderlin was five.
He had helped take Southampton from the third tier of English football to the Premier League. Manchester United were so keen for him to join their summer tour of America in 2015 that he underwent his medical at four in the morning.
“When I first signed for Manchester United I had big ambitions,” he said. “I had gone there after many good years at Southampton and I felt ready to accomplish some great things. It didn’t happen for some reason. I don’t think I arrived at the best time. There was a lot of criticism around the team and last year I lost, if I can say that, a little of the joy of playing football.
“It is nice to say that you played for Manchester United but, if you don’t play every weekend, it is not enough. I wanted to play every game and find a club with ambition and I think I have found that with Everton.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” said Schneiderlin trying to describe how it feels when the joy seeps out of your game. “When you play football, you need to play with freedom and I didn’t in my first year in Manchester. Even when I had good games – and I had spells when I had good games – I didn’t have the run of games that would have given me the opportunity to establish myself. It was hard for all the players to perform. We were not very good on a consistent basis.”
There was no bust-up with Jose Mourinho, just a realisation that this was something that was not working. Mourinho had inherited four highly-paid central midfielders and then paid a world-record fee for another, Paul Pogba. Something had to give.
Schneiderlin might have had a chance had he returned earlier from the European Championship but he was part of the France squad that made the final. “When I came it was after 14 days holiday, Jose Mourinho had seen some players for two months and saw me for two weeks. But I have no problem with that. I had a good relationship with him. We said the things that we wanted to say face to face.”
He thought he would move in January and hired a personal trainer to add the extra fitness that would normally come from playing matches. Everton was an obvious attraction; it was close to home and managed by Ronald Koeman, who had coached him at Southampton.
“He is calm, which I like,” said Schneiderlin. “When you lose one or two games he doesn’t get crazy, change things around or scream at everyone and when you win two games you doesn’t say you are the best in the world. He treads a very good line.”
There is one major difference between Manchester United and Everton. One can afford to pay £25m for a footballer and barely play him. The other cannot. “If I let myself think about how much I cost, if I say to myself: ‘Is £15m a good price?’ or ‘Is £20m a good price?’, then I am never going to play football.
“I am going to go crazy. “Is my game good enough for £25m?’ No, I don’t think like that. I just want to do some good games and you can judge. You choose.”
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