How Scott McTominay Led Scotland Back to the World Cup

That analysis was, if anything, too kind to Fred. (A fellow United fan once remarked to me that watching the Brazilian attempt to control the ball was like watching a puppy with a balloon.) But McTominay was a different story. There were moments, even when United was a poor and unambitious team, where he shone. Those instances tended to occur when he was given license to roam farther up the field. McTominay is tall—six feet four—and deceptively quick. In 2023, Manchester United was losing by a goal to Brentford when McTominay was sent on as an attacking-midfield substitute, and scored both a late equalizer and a winner in the final minutes. His habit of scoring decisive goals did not begin in Italy. Nevertheless, United never knew quite what to do with him. In the summer of 2024, McTominay was sold to Napoli, for around thirty-three million dollars. Most observers thought Manchester United had got a good deal.

Since then, in Naples, McTominay has made a mockery of his sale price. What accounts for this transformation? For sure, Serie A can no longer match the furnace of the English Premier League; the Italian league is widely considered to be the third- or fourth-best division in Europe. But it is still a highly competitive environment, in which McTominay has dazzled. (And, crucially, the form that he has shown in Naples has transferred to his performances for Scotland, for whom he has also proved a pivotal figure.) Much of this success can be traced to Antonio Conte, the shrewd and fiery manager of Napoli, who seemed to know McTominay’s exact strengths, and has deployed them to the team’s advantage. Conte, who left the club at the end of this season, instilled in McTominay a confidence that he was lacking in Manchester, putting him at the heart of the Napoli project. The fans adore him. He is known by many of them as “Scotto,” or as “McFratm”—“McBro,” roughly translated—on account of their inability to pronounce his surname correctly.

Paul McGuinness, an English football coach, spent many years training boys in Manchester United’s youth system, including McTominay. He has watched his protégé’s recent flourishing with pride, but not surprise. He told me that when McTominay was twelve or thirteen years old, he was placed in a school with other United prospects of different ages, and although he was one of the younger members of a group that also included Marcus Rashford and Jesse Lingard, “he was never one of the shy ones in the corner.” As a player, he was also “brave, very brave—despite physical frailties.”

One can never say for sure which youth players will become stars, McGuinness explained to me. But the key to understanding McTominay’s success was knowing what happened to him as a teen-ager. As a twelve-year-old, he was the same size as his age-mates, but by fifteen he was small. (“He still looked more like a twelve-year-old, really,” McGuinness said.) Because he lacked size, he had to be inventive when in possession of the ball—a quality that is now one of his defining characteristics. When McTominay finally grew, in his late teens, the spurt happened so quickly that he was sidelined with knee problems for many months. At the under-eighteen level, McGuinness remembers, McTominay hardly played a game. But McGuinness also remembers how, instead of being discouraged, McTominay spent his time in the gym, getting stronger. He had a “positive attitude.” Whatever success he now enjoys, McGuinness says, is down to his “drive and personality to overcome upsets.”

The last time Scotland reached the World Cup was in 1998—a tournament that France won on home soil. McTominay was not yet two years old; I was eighteen. That summer, I was sitting for some consequential end-of-school exams that would determine where I might go to university. One of the tests clashed with the opening game of the World Cup: Scotland’s group match against Brazil. I adored the 1998 vintage of Brazilians—Ronaldo was the best striker I had ever seen, and the speedy right back, Cafu, remains one of my favorite players of all time—but I also wanted to see if Scotland could spring an upset on the tournament favorites. I snuck out of the exam hall ten minutes early to catch the last portion of the game. Scotland fought hard, and might have snatched a point after scoring a penalty kick to tie the game 1–1, but, in the seventy-fourth minute, Cafu attacked, causing enough panic in the Scotland box to force a calamitous own goal. Brazil won 2–1.