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With Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's help, Marcus Rashford is debunking the 'natural' finisher myth
When asked whether Marcus Rashford needed to do more to become an elite-level finisher, Jose Mourinho was dismissive. "It’s not about work," he responded. "It’s about natural qualities."
The sort of "natural qualities", presumably, associated with strikers like Robbie Fowler, Ruud van Nistelrooy, or dare we say it Mourinho's successor at United Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
As it happens, Solskjaer refutes the idea of a "natural" finisher. "I wasn’t born with it," he said last month. "I studied finishing, I studied goals, I studied movement."
Mourinho might dismiss Solskjaer's claim here as false modesty, but surely even he could not deny the evidence in front of him being provided by Rashford over the last few weeks.
Sunday's goal against Tottenham was the third consecutive Premier League game Rashford has scored in - a career first - and had all the hallmarks of a natural-born finisher. The touch to steady himself, the split-second glance at the goalkeeper, and then the arrowed finish into the side netting.
It was the sort of finish we might associate with another striker on the Wembley pitch - Rashford's England team-mate Harry Kane. Kane's unerring low strikes into the corner have become as familiar as Mourinho moans, but it was not always thus. Kane was prone to missing chances during his loan spells away from Tottenham, before becoming obsessed with practising again and again at training until he had found the corners with sufficient regularity.
It would seem he is of a like mind to Solskjaer, who says: "If you haven’t scored enough during the session then finish the day off by doing lots of finishing – and finishing is different to shooting."
The recent evidence of his lethal finishes against Tottenham, Newcastle and Bournemouth suggest Rashford is heeding Solskjaer's advice.
Mourinho, though, is not alone in espousing the line that finishing is innate. The idea of a "natural" finisher is as ingrained a footballing concept as a "cultured" left foot or a "hardman" central midfielder. It was entering into this debate that landed Glenn Hoddle in trouble when he was England manager by suggesting Michael Owen was "not a natural goalscorer".
Perhaps our clinging to the idea of a "natural" finisher stems partly from a desire to glamourise football's purest and most visceral pleasure. We know deep down that the "knack" of goalscoring is partly the result of thousands of hours spent repeating tedious finishing drills, but to acknowledge that would be like banging on about the singing lessons a rock star had as a kid.
There is also a degree to which the idea of finishing not being teachable has some merits. One of the players Solskjaer coached in how to finish during his spell as a coach at United was Danny Welbeck, who to this day looks about as natural in front of goal as Theresa May does on a dancefloor. Other England strikers like Emile Heskey have found it similarly tricky to graduate from finishing school.
Back to Rashford, and he will need to finish like he did on Sunday more consistently to suggest he has made the step up. But in Solskjaer he could scarcely have a more committed or respected tutor. "If you work at it in training sessions then you will just do it naturally during the game," Solskjaer says.
It seems with finishing then that the harder you work, the more natural you get.