Nicky Butt's Bold Advice to Mainoo: Skip the Third-Place Game

Nicky Butt has never been one for half-measures. As England lick their wounds after a brutal World Cup semi-final defeat to Argentina, the former Manchester United midfielder has lit a fuse under the national setup – urging Kobbie Mainoo to refuse to play in the third-place play-off and insisting Thomas Tuchel’s time in charge must end immediately.

‘I’d just refuse to play’

Mainoo, 21, muscled his way into Tuchel’s final World Cup squad on the back of a superb second half of the season at Old Trafford under interim boss Michael Carrick. He arrived at the tournament as one of the most talked-about young midfielders in Europe.

He leaves it without a single minute on the pitch.

Seven games. Seven times on the bench. No involvement in a run that ended in heartbreak against Argentina on Wednesday night.

Now, with Tuchel expected to ring the changes for Saturday’s third-place decider against France (10pm BST), Mainoo is tipped to finally start. For Butt, that would be a mistake.

“I do not know what is going on there, there’s something not quite right with it,” Butt said, laying bare his frustration at how the United youngster has been handled.

“Now they’re going to play the bomb squad in the stupid third-place game.

“I’d just refuse to play if I was Kobbie Mainoo. I’d say I was injured. It’s a nonsense game, especially when you’ve been treated like that.

“He’s not played a minute of football, now to go and start this pointless jumped-up friendly and potentially get injured for the whole season… no.”

The message is blunt. In Butt’s eyes, a player who has been overlooked all summer should not be risked in what he clearly views as a glorified exhibition, particularly with a new club season looming.

‘No way he can stay on’

Butt’s anger does not stop with Mainoo’s treatment. It is aimed squarely at Tuchel and the direction of the national team under the German.

For him, the semi-final defeat to Argentina was not just painful. It was unforgivable.

“There’s no way he [Tuchel] can stay on. Not a cat in hell’s chance after that,” Butt said.

“If he stays on, John McDermott [the FA’s technical director] needs to be sacked as well.

“There’s no way you can keep him now. He’s not a Sir Bobby Robson or Kevin Keegan, someone that the nation loves.

“You’re talking about a manager that’s come in and played negative football, crazy negative football, in the semi-final against a beatable Argentina team.”

That word – negative – hangs over Tuchel’s campaign. England reached the last four, but for critics like Butt, the manner of the exit matters as much as the stage.

“And it shouldn’t really matter, but people will go against him because he’s German as well, so he’s going to have a nightmare.

“He’s an unbelievable club manager, so just let him go. He won’t want to stay. He might say he does, but deep down he’ll be thinking, ‘pay up, I’m out of here’.”

It is a brutal assessment of a coach whose reputation at club level remains elite, yet whose international tenure, in Butt’s eyes, has unravelled in one night.

Howe, Pochettino… and a distant dream of Pep

If Tuchel goes, the obvious question follows: who next?

Butt already has names in mind – and he is not shy about ranking them.

“If we were nine months down the line, I’d definitely be going for Pep Guardiola. But Pep can’t leave Man City a month ago, saying he needs a rest from football, and then go straight back in. He can’t do that.”

The Guardiola dream, then, is parked. The reality, as Butt sees it, lies closer to home and across the Atlantic.

“Eddie Howe would be brilliant. I’d love him to go in, it’d be great.

“Mauricio Pochettino’s got an unbelievable relationship with John McDermott. When McDermott was the academy manager at Tottenham, Pochettino was the manager, and they had a really, really good relationship.

“I was in and around it with the Manchester United academy, we would do training camps there so I’ve seen it first hand.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if that happened and I wouldn’t be against it at all. He’s a very, very good manager. A likeable person, plays good football everywhere he goes.”

Howe brings structure, intensity, and a reputation for improving players. Pochettino offers high-tempo football and a proven track record of developing young talent, underpinned by that existing bond with McDermott inside the FA.

Both, in Butt’s mind, are better suited to the England job than Tuchel.

The England problem no one can quite explain

Butt circles back to a deeper issue – why so many top managers seem to change once they step into the England dugout.

“But we all said the same about Tuchel, yet when they go into that England dynamic, they just change, it’s crazy. I can’t put my finger on why.”

That, more than anything, is the lingering question.

Why does a manager hailed as “unbelievable” at club level lean into what Butt calls “crazy negative football” with a squad stacked with talent? Why does a rising star like Mainoo fly around the world to watch from the bench, only to be thrown into a game his former team-mate labels “pointless”?

Saturday night in the third-place play-off will not answer any of that. It may not even matter to Butt whether Mainoo plays or not.

The real decision, the one that will shape England’s next cycle, rests with the FA: stick with Tuchel and his bruised authority, or rip it up and hand the keys to a new voice before the whole project drifts further off course.