📅 August 12, 2026
United 1-1 Leeds (5-4 pens): Carrick Picked a Team Nobody Predicted, and That Was the Point
We published a projected eleven yesterday. Seven of it was right. The four that were wrong tell you everything about what Michael Carrick actually wanted out of Croke Park.
Manchester United drew 1-1 with Leeds United in front of 82,000 in Dublin, the largest crowd ever to watch a football match in Ireland, and won the shootout 5-4 to take the BoyleSports Cup. Joshua Zirkzee scored the goal. Noussair Mazraoui settled the penalties. Marcus Rashford never left the bench.
The team sheet nobody predicted
Carrick named this: Lammens; Dalot, Yoro, Heaven, Amass; Santos, Tyler Fletcher; Amad, Zirkzee, Dorgu; Mbeumo.
We had Maguire and Shaw in the back four, Tielemans next to Santos and Bruno Fernandes at ten. All four were on the bench. In their place came Ayden Heaven at centre-back, Harry Amass at left-back and Tyler Fletcher in central midfield, with Zirkzee pushed into the ten.
That is not a manager trying to win a friendly. That is a manager three days out from AC Milan in Wroclaw and ten days out from Hull City, protecting the players he intends to start at the MKM Stadium and handing 82,000 people to a group of teenagers instead.
There is a harder read available too. Amass and Toby Collyer have both been reported this summer as players United would listen to offers for, with their route to first-team football described as going through the under-21s. Amass started a sold-out Croke Park and Collyer was on the bench. Either the reporting is wrong, or this was a shop window. Both are worth watching over the next three weeks.
Zirkzee took his chance, in both senses
The goal came on sixteen minutes and it was a good one. Bryan Mbeumo got to the byline and cut it back low, and Zirkzee arrived to sweep it in first time. No fuss, right place, finished properly.
Zirkzee has spent a year being the forward United could not find a role for, behind Mbeumo, Cunha and Sesko in the pecking order and behind the argument about whether he is a nine or a ten at all. Carrick played him as a ten last night and he scored. That is not a solved problem, but it is a data point, and Zirkzee has not had many of those recently.
Leeds levelled on twenty-nine through Brenden Aaronson, and the half finished level. Daniel Farke had made six changes of his own, with James Trafford starting in goal, so both managers were treating this the same way.
The hour mark changed the game
Carrick had already made three changes at the break, with Tynan Thompson, Toby Collyer and Daniel Armer replacing Dorgu, Santos and Heaven. The real shift came just after the hour. Bruno Fernandes and Noussair Mazraoui arrived on sixty, then five more followed a minute later: Tielemans, Cunha, Jack Fletcher, Luke Shaw and Dermot Mee.
The difference was immediate. United went from a young side holding their shape to a side actually creating things, with Fernandes and Tielemans combining to give Cunha the kind of shooting practice he had not had all night.
Fernandes thought he had won it. The finish went in, the flag went up, and it stayed 1-1.
They still have not played together
Look at those substitution times again, because they answer the question we have been asking for a week.
Andrey Santos came off at half-time, replaced by Toby Collyer. Youri Tielemans came on in the sixty-first minute. United’s two big midfield signings have now gone three matches without sharing a pitch.
Against PSG, Tielemans came on for Santos. Here, Santos was already in the dressing room fifteen minutes before Tielemans got up. A combined eighty-five million pounds spent on a midfield rebuild, and the pairing everything is supposed to be built on has never actually happened.
There is an innocent explanation. Carrick is managing minutes in pre-season and the two of them are certainties for Hull, so there is no urgency to rehearse it in a friendly. There is a less innocent one, which is that he is not sure they fit together and would rather not find out in front of 82,000 people.
Milan on Saturday is the last chance to know before it counts.
The shootout
Pre-season penalties decide nothing, which is exactly why they are fun.
Calvert-Lewin went first and scored. Luke Shaw levelled it, Harry Wilson missed for Leeds, and Matheus Cunha put United ahead. Anton Stach pulled it back, Jack Fletcher restored the lead, and Fernandes then missed to let Leeds off the hook. James Justin’s was the one that finally cost them, and Mazraoui stepped up to finish it 5-4.
United get a trophy nobody will remember by Christmas, and a group of young players who took penalties in front of 82,000, which is worth rather more.
Rashford stayed on the bench
The one disappointment. Rashford was named among the substitutes and never came on, four days after joining the squad in Dublin and with the number 14 reportedly waiting for him.
It reads as caution rather than a message. He has done very little since the World Cup, and there was no sense in giving him half an hour of a friendly when Saturday in Wroclaw is available and better prepared for. Anyone who bought a ticket hoping to see him will feel differently, and that is fair enough.
What it actually told us
Three things.
The kids can hold a game. Heaven, Amass and Tyler Fletcher played an hour against a Premier League side and went in level. That is not nothing for a squad that conceded fifty goals last season and needs its academy to produce cover.
The senior spine is being protected. Maguire, Shaw, Tielemans and Fernandes all started on the bench with Hull ten days away. Carrick has clearly decided who is playing on 22 August.
Zirkzee is not finished at this club. One goal in a friendly does not change a career, but he looked like a footballer with a job to do rather than one waiting to be told what his job is.
AC Milan in Wroclaw on Saturday, and that is the last one. After that it counts.
Full 2026/27 fixture list with results and kick-off times in ET on our Fixtures page. Our squad preview and projected XI went up before the game.