ERIK TEN HAG has vowed that he can make Marcus Rashford the best striker in the world and overshadow Kylian Mbappe.
The Manchester United attacker was left heartbroken as Paris Saint-Germain superstar Mbappe and his jubilant France team-mates celebrated on Saturday night.
But his Old Trafford boss, who will fight any move by PSG to capture Rashford, offered him a ray of brilliant sunshine.
After working with him for just over four months Ten Hag declared: “From the first moment I recognised huge potential.
“And now to get out the potential, I believe when Marcus’s positioning is on the back of the defending line there is almost no better player in the world.
“There is Mbappe in this moment, a type like him.
“But when he’s getting in that position he’s great and you see he’s really improved also out of possession.
“You see the second goal against Wales when he’s winning the ball for the team and Phil Foden finished.
“I see him do that all the time, the first press, he was doing a really good job there for England.
“For us the headed goal against West Ham United, I don’t think he makes goals like that so often but he’s investing in it.
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“I triggered him a little bit, he worked with our specific coaches on it, on finishing with headers and then you see he got the benefit from it.
“So when I say he is the one who plays on the shoulder from the defending line, make sure you’re coming in such situations and it’s really difficult to stop him.”
Ten Hag can only hope that the forward, who was considering his future last summer after two miserable years of injury and poor form, will invest further in the Dutchman’s plan for him.
His deal expires in July along with those of David de Gea, Diogo Dalot, Luke Shaw and Fred.
Ten Hag has made clear all five will have one-year extensions triggered but he wants all of them to commit for far longer.
In the build-up to England’s World Cup quarter-final defeat to Les Bleus, PSG club president Nasser Al-Khelaifi repeated his plan to make an offer that could more than treble Rashford’s £225,000-a-week pay packet.
Al-Khelaifi stressed: “We’re not hiding it, we spoke before. He’s another amazing player. And for free?”
Yet Ten Hag now sees a 25-year-old who is having football fun again — apart from Saturday’s agonising defeat in Qatar.
Ten Hag revealed: “That’s one of the first things I said to him, was come to training and smile.
“We bring him exercises that hopefully bring players joy.”
Asked if he can persuade him to re-commit, the United manager said: “I can’t answer that question.
“He has to make a decision and only what we can do is to show him that this is the best club to be at.
“That is what we can do — it has to do with the culture of the club, but also in the way we are working, working together.
“It has to do with the way we play, the way we train, offering the right environment to progress further on and it’s also a financial issue as well.
“If we do that, about the ambitions and how we want to fulfil the ambitions, these talks we will have with him.
“Then it is up to him to make the decision. It’s one-and-a-half years, he will be here.
“We are talking with them to extend their contracts but we are in control because on all the players we have option — and we will exercise these options.”
