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Move Manchester United from Leicester City was an easy decision. In fact, no later than 2016, even after Leicester won the Premier League, there was not much controversy when N'Golo Kante left for Chelsea.
Virtue, beyond the obvious, was in the promise of permanence. Leicester had achieved something wonderful, but the return to reality had to be quick and discouraging. Chelsea offered Kante a permanent home at the top of the table, promising to put him permanently in the top six. And while Leicester was suffering from this terrible divorce from Claudio Ranieri, Kante had immediately become a part of another title challenge. What that meant was depressing, but he was always right.
Superficially, the decision now Harry Maguire Is similar. Once the Leicester appraisal is pairedhe will be free to move to United. He will have his hand knocked on the door and will receive a fantastic salary increase by going into the top six. For all intents and purposes, this is an event that should pbad without thinking.
And yet, there is constant suspicion that this could be a mistake. Previously, the jump to the table was accompanied by reservations about time and playing opportunities – the problem Delph Fabian, Steve Sidwell, Scott Parker – but it's not at stake here. If he joined Maguire, he would enter directly into the starting lineup of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and easily become his best center-center.
So why this hesitation? Three reasons: because of what Maguire could achieve in Leicester, the atmosphere and the trajectory of the club and what United, by their nebulous state, offers in comparison.
Not so long ago, it seemed that leaving for Leicester and England would exclude each other. Fortunately, we went from the time snobbery had chosen the national team and, fortunately, it is no longer true that a player must wear a badge of the Champions League on his jersey to have an international future.
Nevertheless, Maguire's progress is always admirable. He has his place alongside Gareth Southgate and has managed to win it during a period of relative change at King Power. The era Claude Puel, where Leicester could look like four different camps in the space of a single match. Now that the situation has improved, with the arrival of Brendan Rodgers and the blossoming of a developing battalion of players, the result is an incubator environment that promises to further nourish Maguire's abilities.
It may be an underrated commodity in football. There are enough examples of the opposite, but the players are still too slow to recognize what is good for them – not in a material way, of course, but certainly in the sense of what benefits them in as footballers. In Maguire's case, this is the chance to anchor a young and developing team, and to start in two of the country's top backcourt and behind one of the most intriguing circles in the division.
And it's for Leicester. Where he would also work for a head coach who requires a possession football, who wishes the ball to advance with art and whose play patterns should, through the show, endow Maguire with a bit of more finesse. He is a more complete defender than he often deserves: tall and physical, but with a skill on the ball that belies his somewhat crazy reputation. Maguire is not a slippery running back, it's an effort, but when he gets on the field that way, he's disturbing and effective. And very modernin fact, because every big club now demands that at least one of their central defenders regularly enters the midfield.
So the counter-argument is the And what would happen if? scenario. Rodgers is not George Graham and his defensive battles in Liverpool have been strong enough to allow him to survive. But if he is not likely to make Maguire a better defender, he is able to endow him with more style, to make him more dynamic and refined than he is now. From a growth perspective, it's easy to think of moving under Rodgers to the point of becoming not only better for England, but also a viable option for more clubs.
The concern is therefore about the appearance of this decision in a year. United's immediate appeal is self-evident. They are a richer club than Leicester, promising higher wages and better teammate caliber. They also finished higher in the league by far last season and their wealth challenges theoretical improvement at a breakneck pace.
But this logic has been used to support fans every summer since the departure of Sir Alex Ferguson and it also depends on a misleading reading of their situation. United has become the club in which it has always been badumed that life can not get worse, and yet, whether by position, style or atmosphere, a new number always finds a way to appear.
In fact, Maguire would join a club with very little definition. Solskjaer is the head coach. For the moment. Paul Pogba is their star attraction. At the moment. Even within the defense, the type of unit in which it should be integrated can only be very uncertain. The same goes for the midfielder, who never seems to emerge from his perpetual flow state.
When a player enters a team in which circuits are not properly connected, his task is much more difficult. Who's playing his ball outside? What other central defender would be invited to compensate and compliment? These are big, troubling questions and a reason to stop and think. Becoming the eleventh man of a well-established team requires a major adjustment. To be dropped in a team where half of the places are vacant is a totally different perspective.
As ambitious as this technical challenge may be, the big concern may be how Maguire could handle the club's luggage. When a player is hired for such a high amount – potentially a world record for a defender – he becomes responsible for solving the problems he inherits. He is the solution, the miracle solution, and if he is not at the forefront of rapid and dramatic improvement, he is still in the limelight. Victor Lindelof can testify, Eric Bailly too – and their fees were meager in comparison.
He characterizes the challenge, but he also describes the danger. If United's season was to follow the trend of last season, for example, and include the kind of defeats that parodied Phil Jones and Chris Smalling beyond the recovery, what uncertainty could it create about Maguire's place? At Euro 2020. There are variables in every season – and at all clubs – but the failure of Manchester United is always happening in the limelight and therefore often has the most damaging effect. After all, while it's partly an illusion created by the emotional infatuation of social media, poor performance at Old Trafford can quickly turn a player into a punch.
So, is it a wise decision to take now? Most players of the current generation regard United as a representation of the top of the game and as an opportunity never to be missed. In this state, however, the club is really a threat to the very form that made the player a viable option for them in the first place. This is proven by the damage they have done to the reputation of almost all of them in recent years: Matic, Pogba, Shaw, Lindelof, Bailly, Lukaku, Martial – they have all been devalued. But for someone like Maguire, whose career grew in relative calm, screaming discontent – the noise – badociated with Manchester United seems particularly threatening.
Seb Stafford-Bloor is on Twitter.
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