Casemiro has publicly urged Manchester United to retain faith in Kobbie Mainoo, stressing the teenager\u2019s potential to be a long-term midfielder for the club. The academy graduate was largely overlooked by former United manager Ruben Amorim, not starting a single Premier League game in the first half of 2025\u201326. After a minor Christmas injury, Mainoo has been a fixture since Michael Carrick took charge in mid-January, playing all but 14 minutes of the 900 available in the league and starting alongside Casemiro on each occasion.<\/p>\n
\u201cKobbie is the present and the future,\u201d Casemiro told ManUtd.com in a fan Q&A. \u201cI think that he is one of the best eights and can be for that for the next 12 years. He is a player I really like\u2014he always wants the ball.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is true that football can\u2019t change your mentality, but Kobbie demonstrated that he hasn\u2019t changed his focus once. He has to continue focusing like he is now and continue playing the important role he is now. But what a player he is, he is a great player. He has demonstrated this, in the Euros final with England, he has demonstrated it in finals, he scored in the [2024] FA Cup final.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is the present and the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mainoo forced his way into England\u2019s midfield after establishing himself in United\u2019s first team at 18. He had only three caps when Euro 2024 began but won a place in the starting lineup after the group stage as England reached the final. His international involvement then stalled; he played only once more for his country in September 2024 before a club resurgence prompted a recall last month. Mainoo appeared off the bench in England\u2019s draw with Uruguay, started the defeat to Japan and will be targeting a place in Thomas Tuchel\u2019s XI for the Group L opener against Croatia in Arlington on June 17.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Casemiro calls for faith in Kobbie Mainoo after his return to the United midfield this season. again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10556,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1083,1348,969],"tags":[1446,1304,939],"class_list":["post-10557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-man-utd","category-manchester-united-news","category-premier-league","tag-academy","tag-benching","tag-casemiro"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}