Scotland's McTominay Mentors Young Players with Tough Love

A boy once deemed too small and too quiet to make it big has become the voice demanding excellence from Scotland's next generation.

Scott McTominay stands 6'4" now, but at 16 he was just 5'6" and barely played for Manchester United's under-18 team. He describes himself back then as a "silky number 10" who flew under the radar, starting only two of 22 matches in his first under-21 season.

Then came the growth spurt and something else. A boldness grew with his height, fueled by senior players who pulled him aside and delivered brutal truths behind closed doors.

"There was a lot of senior pros saying, 'Listen, you've got to up your game or you've got no chance,'" McTominay recalls. One training session, he argued with Michael Carrick and Ashley Young over tight calls favoring the veterans. Manager Jose Mourinho called him immediately.

"He dressed me down," McTominay says. "It was like 'who do you think you are, you've done nothing'. I thought it was over before it started."

It wasn't over. It was just beginning. Mourinho made him his debut in May 2017, later inventing a special award just for the youngster: manager's player of the season.

Why This Inspires

Now McTominay delivers that same demanding love to Scotland's teenage players like Tyler Fletcher and Findlay Curtis. He quotes Michael Jordan's philosophy that every fan in the stands might be watching for the first time, so giving anything less than your best could disappoint someone forever.

"I'm demanding and quite hard on some of them," he admits. "They need a little bit of tough love sometimes. The things that get said are ruthless. Sink or swim."

Assistant coach Steven Naismith watched McTominay's transformation firsthand. "He kept himself to himself at the start," Naismith remembers. "But over the years, he just matured."

The midfielder who entered Manchester United's program at age five, who left his Lancaster home as a boy for the club's residency program, who endured being overlooked and underestimated, now refuses to let the next generation waste their potential.

That refusal to stop when things get tough became Scotland's backbone.