Scott McTominay is the only player in the illustrious history of Manchester United to receive the Manager’s Player of the Year Award. This is because José Mourinho invented the award just to have something to give McTominay at the end of the 2017–18 season, after the dutiful Scotsman had established himself in the first team. Academy players are a fetish of the United fanbase, with every low-res clip of some devil-may-care teenager fueling lurid fantasies of the next George Best or Ryan Giggs. But when the Special One started playing McTominay, some thought he was just being a troll by rewarding a model pupil rather than giving one of his mercurial classmates a chance.

For a while, the ceiling of McTominay’s career seemed to be “versatile, workmanlike cult hero,” like a taller Ji-Sung Park. That would have been a good life. United fans loved him yet hated the fact that he was who they had to love. He exuded power and determination without ever quite knowing what to do with the ball. He scored some memorable goals, yet we wanted him shielding the back four instead. There was a lingering sense that he would never be good enough for some highly theoretical future era when United was good again. Still, it was a little sad when he was sold to Napoli in 2024, a victim of the Premier League’s profit and loss formulas.

We should all be so lucky. Given the freedom to play in a more natural, attacking position, McTominay quickly became the talismanic star of Napoli’s title-winning 2024–25 campaign. Once dismissed for his pragmatism, he routinely pulls off the wildly audacious, like the bicycle kick that clinched the Serie A title against Cagliari, sealed with a kiss to the crowd. That season he earned a real award: Serie A’s Player of the Season. I’ve watched countless clips of him galloping across Italian pitches, exuding the kind of arrogance he clearly had to leave home to find. His glow-up—there is no other word for it—has been one of the most entertaining, feel-good stories of world football, all sunglasses, designer suits, and vitamin D. At a time when despots dream of closed borders, here is a man delighting in the taste of fresh tomatoes. “I never ate them at home,” he told a reporter in 2025. “They’re just red water.” At Manchester United, he was once “McSauce,” one-half of a midfield partnership with the oft-vilified Fred, a duo known derisively—and affectionately—as “McFred.” Now, training ground shots of Kevin De Bruyne looking at him admiringly offer confirmation that “McFratm”—“frat’m” is the Neapolitan word for brother—is the true star of Naples.

For Scotland, as with Manchester United, McTominay’s versatility initially meant that he had to play wherever there was a need. But a few years ago, he became the focus of their attack and began scoring at an unreal pace, portending what would happen at Napoli. In November, he scored with yet another bicycle kick, inspiring Scotland to a 4-2 victory over Denmark that clinched their first trip to the World Cup finals since 1998. That dramatic entry has now been followed by a lackluster performance and a slow, unceremonious elimination. But when was the last time McTominay’s career made any sense? He finished eighteenth in the 2025 Ballon d’Or rankings, ahead of João Neves, Jude Bellingham, and Erling Haaland, and yet I can’t figure out if he’s any good. It defies logic; it’s now a matter of faith. Diego Maradona’s son recently said that if his father was the God of Napoli, then “McTominay is Jesus.” He continues to rise.