There was something to see Marcus Rashford in an Aston Villa shirt on Monday that felt bad. He almost felt as if he were another person. A different person.
Manchester United's red has always been part of Rashford's identity. He has married that. And now, there was in Claret and Blue.
I know it's just a loan, but it doesn't seem like there's a way back to United for him and I'm sorry, but that also felt sad.
That is not a comment about Villa, by the way. Villa is a great club that is increasing again. It's not about them.
It's just that this is not the way in which Rashford's career was supposed to go. Not if you are a romantic football anyway.
His departure from Old Trafford at the age of only 27 years may have become inevitable and United fans may have lost patience with him, but he still feels like another admission of failure in a decade of failures.
Marcus Rashford has joined Aston Villa on loan until the end of the season
Villa can make the treatment permanent in the summer for £ 40 million
Another connection has been lost. The club has moved another step further from where it wants to be.
How did he get to this? Rashford was supposed to be united for life. It was supposed to be a setback. It was a club symbol and its venerated youth system.
It was a symbol of hope and pride in the midst of all antipathy towards enamels and the duel for the loss of supremacy that united once in English football.
For a long time, Rashford embodied the hope of United fans so they could return to the top of the English game.
He is also a local boy, a child who arrived through the ranks, a product of the academy like many of the greats.
And now that he is gone, he feels even more like a sign that something has been poorly administered in Old Trafford. Rashford was a link to the club's core.
It was a link to the class of 92 and the great ones that were preceded. Now that it is gone, it seems that this link is weakening.
Kobbie Mainoo is another link, but there was talk that he would also be sold in this January window. Alejandro Garnacho and Toby Collyer are also academy products, but not the way Rashford.
The head of United, Ruben Amorim, left Rashford from a series of game squads in the middle of a poor way
It was Rashford who made Amorim's era to go to a steering wheel in two minutes to the city of Ipswich
The academy was once in the heart of the club. It feels as if the club under the Glazers had allowed this link to weaken.
In the Emirates on Sunday night, Arsenal's resounding victory over Manchester City was driven by the contribution of Myles Lewis-Skell.
He was crowned by a wonderful goal by Ethan Nwaneri. On the wings, hoping to return next month, there is Bukayo Saka.
Together, those three players represent the poisoning of youth in Arsenal. Three players who have grown up in the club and should be in the heart of Arsenal in the coming years.
It is the same in Liverpool where Trent Alexander-Arnold, Conor Bradley and Curtis Jones are only three of the youth products that fire the first team.
I do not blame Ruben Amorim for what has happened. Rashford's shape has been poor for some time and Amorim seems to believe that the player's attitude is a broader symptoms in the club.
For a long time there have been suggestions that Rashford has lost its approach. Some say he is worried. Training was lost after one night at Belfast under Erik Ten Hag.
I am not sure that excuses how the new United Manager has talked about Rashford. I like Amorim and, in general, I like his style and I think he will do things well in Old Trafford.
Someone who has given the club so much deserves more respect than Amorim has given
Rashford has been at Manchester United since he was eight years old and scored 138 goals for the club
But whatever you think about Rashford, someone who has given the club so much for about a decade deserves a little more respect than the public contempt that Amorim has directed towards him.
It is also worth remembering what Rashford achieved in 2020 when he was a 22 -year -old man. He did something special. He used his platform and his fame as a united player to do something important for people who needed his help.
A campaign for free school foods began for children in families fighting at the end of the month and convinced the government of the day to provide coupons during summer holidays. The scheme was extended later. He helped about two million children.
There is a lot of cynicism in our world, but there was not too much about what Rashford did in those months after the first blockade. Not at first, anyway.
He did something selfless, which is rare in an industry where players often have to be selfish to have the opportunity to succeed. That counts for something. He still counts for something.
By then, he was already a hero in United. The managers came and were in the era after Sir Alex Ferguson, but Rashford rode with the changes and continued to score. When he was 25 years old, Rashford had scored 76 goals in the League for United.
At that time, I was still in the target to be one of the best scorers in the history of United. Maybe one day there would be a statue of him outside of Old Trafford, just as there is one from Bobby Charlton, Denis Law and George Best.
Rashford was the flag bearer of the new generation of United, the crown jewel in the club. And although United was struggling to recreate ancient glories, Rashford was the soul of the club, young and gifted and Heartlands.
Kobbie Mainoo is now one of the remaining products of own harvest in Old Trafford
It was difficult for me to see him leave. Maybe if Barcelona or Real Madrid entered him, which seemed likely in the first years of his career, then he could be tempted.
But there was also a possibility that he was a club of a club, and that the records fall before him.
Instead, Rashford has fallen. It is difficult to see its departure from United in any other way, even if Villa is a better team and a much more functional club than the Monolithic Meshford has left it behind.
At a time when United was surpassed by City, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal, Rashford remained a symbol of hope for United fans for a long time.
But United Galloping dysfunction seems to swallow everyone at the end and now he has also claimed it.
The establishment comes for all of us, Zlatan
Do you remember the scene towards the end of Quadrophenia when Jimmy discovers that the hero who believed he was an anti-establishment rebel functions as a button in the Grand Hotel in Brighton?
I thought about it when I walked through the underground station in King's Cross on Sunday afternoon and I saw Zlatan Ibrahimovic's face on a billboard that promotes a financial services company.
I guess lions also like prawns sandwiches.
Why this can finally be the year for Rory
Rory Mcilroy won the first 2025 PGA Tour event with a two-shooting victory at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am the weekend.
Rory Mcilroy won the first 2025 PGA Tour event in Pebble Beach on the weekend
I may have heard this voice before, but something tells me that this could be a great year for the Irish of the north.
Last year was his season of lost opportunities, but he was always going to be too good to be defined by that.
The open is in Portrush this summer, a course that knows and loves, and even if the cut was lost the last time it was played there, it will surely be a contender this time.
And if you have its first season, this could be the season that finally wins in August and completes your career in Grand Slam.