📅 September 30, 2026

Mazraoui Injured for Morocco as United’s Full-Back Crisis Deepens

By Mav Jones · Manchester United fan writer

Mazraoui goes down for Morocco

Just when it looked like the international break couldn’t get worse for United’s defence, Noussair Mazraoui went down holding his lower back in Morocco’s 2-0 win over Lesotho on Tuesday. He landed awkwardly on a challenge in the 68th minute, tried to carry on for a moment, then signalled to the bench that he couldn’t continue. Achraf Hakimi came on in his place and Morocco saw the game out comfortably. There’s no diagnosis yet and nobody has put a timeline on it, but the sight alone is enough to worry Michael Carrick after the week United have just had.

Why this one hurts more than it should

Mazraoui is a right-back by trade, but he’s been the closest thing United have had to emergency left-back cover all September, filling in there in the cup win over Brighton while Luke Shaw was out. That cover mattered because Patrick Dorgu is already gone, his hamstring scan confirming a tear and around ten weeks out. Shaw is the only recognised senior left-back left in the squad, and he’s already missed three matchday squads this season without United giving a full explanation why.

Put simply, United went into this international break with three full-back options and could come out of it with one certain starter. That is not where a club with a Champions League trip to Atletico Madrid in three weeks wants to be.

What it means for Spurs

United are back against Tottenham at Old Trafford on 10 October, then it’s Atletico away on the 13th and Leeds away on the 18th, three matches in eight days. If Mazraoui’s scan shows any real damage, Carrick could be down to Shaw as his only specialist full-back for that whole run, with makeshift cover filling the rest. Given how thin the back line already looked after Dorgu’s injury, a bad update on Mazraoui makes the case for signing a free-agent defender outside the window even stronger than it already was.

We’ll know more once Morocco or United confirm what the scan shows. For now it’s another name added to a list that already had Dorgu, Bruno Fernandes and Benjamin Sesko on it, and this is the one that could hurt United’s back line the most.