Scott McTominay interview: Being misprofiled at Man United, Serie A’s quality and really loving tomatoes

Scott McTominay leans back in his chair, his eyes wide, his voice suddenly flushed with feeling. Interviewing an active footballer is, more often than not, a bit of a challenge. That makes sense, really, given that the circumstances are not particularly conducive to good conversation. 

The whole thing, from the player’s point of view, must be deeply weird. The setting is oddly formal, borderline unnatural. Usually, they are taken into a windowless room, presented to a complete stranger, and told to talk about themselves for 15 to 45 minutes. To aid them in this process, they are asked a series of searching and/or leading questions, most of which they (correctly) do not want to answer.

That is very much not an issue with McTominay. If he finds the situation strange, he hides it exceptionally well. The 28-year-old is all energy and zest and infectious enthusiasm as he talks about Napoli, about Italy, about the slightly unexpected turn his life took last summer. But that is nothing compared to the subject that almost sends him spinning into a reverie.  

“Oh my goodness,” he says, puffing out his cheeks. “The tomatoes.”

It is not, to be clear, just the tomatoes. McTominay is also effusive on the subject of fish, zucchini, and risotto. He takes such pleasure in the mere act of thinking about Italian food that, when the subject comes up, he adopts both Italian mannerisms and vocabulary. “Bellissimo,” he says, grinning.

But also, in another way, it is kind of the tomatoes. The tomatoes they grow in Campania have, it would seem, been something of a revelation to McTominay. He talks about them not just as something of a gourmand — “Scotty loves his food,” as his team-mate for club and country, Billy Gilmour, puts it — but with the fervour of the convert, too.

“I never ate them at home,” he says. “They’re just red water. Here, they actually taste like tomatoes. Now I eat them as a snack. I eat all the vegetables, all of the fruits. It is all so fresh. It’s incredible.”

He and Gilmour live not far from each other, outside the city, and share the services of a private chef, Mario. McTominay talks about Mario with almost as much affection as he talks about tomatoes. “He’s so good,” he says. “He goes and gets the vegetables and the fish and everything from the market every morning. All fresh. He’s amazing.”

McTominay is not the first person, of course, to have found that life in Naples is a little more vivid, a little more vital, than it is elsewhere. The city has been the sort of place where people go to feel restored, after all, for at least two thousand years. 

If there was ever any bitterness in the immediate aftermath of his departure from Manchester United last summer, any sense of resentment or regret, then it has gone and left no trace. McTominay does not shy away from talking about his time at Old Trafford, but nor does he give the impression that leaving has left a scar. 

Instead, he looks back on his formative years there with a striking equanimity and an unfettered honesty. He doubtless knows that many might feel he was not appreciated quite as he might have been at Old Trafford: certainly by one or two of the managers he encountered and possibly by a few fans, too.

But he is sanguine about all of it. There is something about the modern Manchester United, this club anxiously waiting for a brighter, better tomorrow, that infantilises its homegrown players. Jesse Lingard and Marcus Rashford were still being talked about as up-and-coming prospects even as they crossed into their late twenties.

Something similar happened to McTominay. When he left, it felt as though United were selling — possibly to help comply with the Premier League’s financial regulations — one of the jewels of the club’s academy. He was 27 at the time.

Celebrating a win against Brentford in October 2023 (Alex Livesey/Getty Images)

Nine months on, that seems absurd. McTominay, now, carries with him the air of a seasoned professional, an experienced international, someone who has seen enough and done enough to know that careers tend not to run in a straight line, that there are twists and turns and detours, that it is vanishingly rare for anyone to have what he calls “a perfect pathway”.

When he suggests, then, that he was “misprofiled” in his early days at United, he does not do so with any anger.

“When I got into the first team, I was quite misprofiled in where I was playing,” he said. “It wasn’t the fault of any coaches. My strengths have always been getting into the box, scoring goals, being a problem in there. But I was being used as a No 6, or as a centre-back, and that has never really been my game. 

“But when you’re playing for Manchester United and you’re 20, you can’t knock on the manager’s door and say that you expect to be playing at No 8 ahead of Paul Pogba. It’s not realistic. You have to know your place, and do what you’re asked to do. In the last few seasons, I began to get into the box a bit more, to score more goals, and then last year was my best one.” 

Nor does he hold a grudge that he seemed to have to prove himself rather more often than others simply to command a place in the team. More than once, he was the victim of United’s endless ouroboros of a rebuild; summer would come, quickly followed by a glittering new signing whose role was, in effect, to demote McTominay once more.

First it was Pogba, then Christian Eriksen, then Casemiro. “They would always sign someone who wouldn’t necessarily be what people expected them to be,” he says. The pattern became familiar after a while: McTominay would slowly, surely, win his place back; by December, he would be an integral part of the team once more.

Eriksen and Casemiro, pictured in 2023, were big names signed to play in midfield (Alex Livesey/Getty Images)

“My mentality was that I was always there, ready to go, ready to take my opportunity,” he says. “I always wanted to prove my worth, to show I could play every game. It’s not the sort of thing that affects me. You can only be in control of what you do.”

It felt, for a while, as though he was suffering from something that afflicts a considerable number of homegrown players: they are destined to be cast as permanent works in progress. Their early growing pains are part of a club’s folk memory, so they always seem imperfect compared to a colleague, or rival, brought in, wholly formed, from outside. 

“I’d not thought of it like that, but that’s potentially true,” McTominay says. Even that mere hint, that he might have been judged more harshly than was warranted, does not ruffle him. “It’s Manchester United. You have to be ready. Fans won’t tolerate anyone who isn’t ready. You could play 10 or 40 or 50 games and be moved on, just because you’re not ready at that moment, so you have to go and learn and improve. I was fortunate to play 250 games, to win the Carabao Cup and the FA Cup, but I wanted to win more. You always want to win.” 

Andre Onana and McTominay enjoy United’s FA Cup quarter-final win against Liverpool in 2024 (Stu Forster/Getty Images)

It is a reasonable guess that at least part of how he can be so clear-eyed about it all — in addition to the tomatoes; the tomatoes are genuinely important — is that there is no doubt whatsoever how much he is wanted and valued in Naples. 

As soon as he was told Napoli were interested in his services, there was an “instant attraction”, he says. He had always tried to keep “an open mind” to different opportunities. “Things were difficult in Manchester,” he says. “I didn’t know what was happening exactly. And you instantly know Napoli, the passion of the fans, the quality of the league.”

If McTominay was tempted by Napoli, it was more than reciprocated. Antonio Conte had no misunderstandings about what he was signing: he saw McTominay as the box-crashing, trouble-causing engine of his midfield. 

More importantly, he saw him as a senior player, as a leader. Napoli’s dressing room is run by the Italian triumvirate of Giovanni Di Lorenzo, Matteo Politano and Leonardo Spinazzola — their team-mates are not allowed to leave the dinner table until the three have given their permission — but McTominay’s signing was seen as a genuine coup. For the first time in his career, he is being judged for what he is, not for what he used to be. 

He has thrived with the responsibility. He had earned the nickname ‘Braveheart’ within just a few weeks. Particularly early in the season, he carried much of Napoli’s goal threat. He has scored at San Siro, at the Olimpico, against Juventus. There are now, often, saltires in the crowd at the Diego Armando Maradona stadium. 

McTominay scored in the opening minute of a Serie A game against Como in October (Francesco Pecoraro/Getty Images)

He has thrown himself into life in Italy with relish. He is ardent in his defence of Serie A, dismissing what he regards as misplaced criticism — he uses that word again, “misconception” — of the standard of the league. “People have to be careful when people say Italy or Spain aren’t on a par with the Premier League,” he says. “Physically and tactically, I’ve had some of my hardest games here.” 

He has Italian lessons a couple of times a week, and is assiduous at practising on various apps. His progress can be gauged in two ways: one, Politano says his Italian is “very good”, and two, occasionally, he says things in English in the same way an Italian would say them. (“In the summer, it is a disaster,” when talking about how busy Naples gets in July and August, for example, which is absolutely correct but not quite how you would normally phrase it.)

“I’d always wanted to learn a language,” he says. “It’s a great thing to be able to do. And it’s important that people see us embracing the culture, too. The city is amazing. It’s completely different. We have to show we care about the city, and about the culture, as well as playing well.” 

He has done that well enough to have been granted Naples’ ultimate honour: a mural of his image, etched onto a wall in the city. When McTominay left the Premier League, it was presented — as it always is — as some great adventure into the unknown. It was, to some extent; moving to another country, for whatever reason, requires courage. 

Nine months on, though, it feels like that is not quite what is happening. McTominay does not seem like he is passing through; he gives the impression that he is at home here. Just as importantly, he seems to be at home in himself, too, a player finally able to savour the sweetness of his moment.

(Photo: Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Francesco Pecoraro / Getty Images, iStock)