Marcus Rashford was listed in Manchester United\u2019s matchday squad for the first time since 2024 and was shown in the No. 9 shirt, but the number should not be read as a final decision. United made clear that the assignment was only temporary for preseason.<\/p>\n
Michael Carrick selected his former teammate on the bench for the friendly in Poland, and BBC Sport\u2019s Simon Stone reported that Rashford had been given No. 9 for the club\u2019s final preseason fixture. Even so, the message from United was plain. As the club wrote on social media before kickoff: \u201cSquad numbers worn in preseason are provisional and yet to be finalized,\u201d<\/p>\n
Rashford\u2019s most familiar shirt at United was No. 10, which he wore for seven straight seasons before his last appearance for the club. For a player who grew up admiring Wayne Rooney, the club\u2019s record scorer who wore No. 10 for most of his Old Trafford career, that number carried obvious significance.<\/p>\n
The No. 9, though, is hardly unfamiliar to him. The first England shirt Rashford ever received as a child, given by his uncle, was a red Rooney No. 9 top. He also wore a red No. 9 when he scored his first international goal for the Three Lions, with his own name on the back. More recently, he was handed the number during his half-season loan at Aston Villa in the second half of the 2024-25 campaign.<\/p>\n
The shirt has been available since Christian Eriksen left in 2025, the same year Rasmus H\u00f8jlund gave up No. 9. Rashford had been expected to wear No. 14 this season after Matheus Cunha took his old number while he was still at the club last summer, but that did not happen after his move to Barcelona.<\/p>\n
There is also the possibility that the No. 9 could still be taken by United\u2019s first-choice centre forward Benjamin \u0160e\u0161ko, who signed last summer and wore No. 30 only because his preferred digit was already occupied.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rashford wore United’s No. 9 in preseason, but the club says the shirt number is not final.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18501,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[179,2019],"tags":[178,180,1980],"class_list":["post-18502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-united","category-manchester-united-news","tag-friendly","tag-player-news","tag-pre-season"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18502","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=18502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18502\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}