Someone call the police! Scott McTominay just got robbed by Rory McIlroy at the Sports Personality of the Year awards
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I’m not the patriotic sort, but seeing Rory McIlroy awarded Sports Personality of the Year almost exclusively for telling a load of American lads in popped-collar Ralph Lauren polos to “shut the f**k up” did make me proud to be British. The official line was that he won “The Masters”, which, in fairness, does sound very impressive, and that he helped drag Europe to a monumental Ryder Cup win – but we’re not stupid, are we?
The reason they put ‘personality’ into the very title of the award is that part of the criteria is showing who you really are. Case in point: seeing your wife getting heckled by a bunch of investment-firm dude-bros who’ve been on Miller Lites since breakfast, and deciding to forget the golf and fully get ‘into it’ with them, says a lot more about him as a sportsman than his ability to hit a ball with a stick.
I could not possibly care less about golf, but I can tell you in near-forensic detail that at 9pm on Sunday, 28th September, I was sat on my sofa shouting, “Aye, get that up, you!!!!” as he sank a 15ft putt on the 14th hole. It’s not athletic achievement that does that to you – it’s personality. So, fair play to him.
However! As he was parading what is, let’s be real, one of the funniest-looking trophies on the planet, some 4,000 miles away in Saudi Arabia, something equally moving was happening. Scott McTominay was being physically restrained by his teammates from hitting Fikayo Tomori so hard he’d have physically burst. It was a semi-final, you see, and another one that Napoli would win to put them within touching distance of yet more silverware.
You may recall that last Serie A season ended with a shock Scudetto win for Antonio Conte’s team of outcasts and broken toys. Victor Osimhen’s dream move to a European giant didn’t happen, so he decided to take a gap year in Turkey instead. Khvicha Kvaratskhelia didn’t leave that summer but spent the months casting lustful eyes towards Paris, right up until the transfer window re-opened in January. It left Conte holding the bag in a job he desperately needed to go well after the messy end to his Tottenham tenure.
The headline signing was Romelu Lukaku, who, despite a decent season with Roma, Chelsea were thrilled to get for the full release clause. Fourteen goals weren’t going to win a league title, but the very next day another Premier League castoff arrived to sing for the club. Scott McTominay – once half of a midfield so traumatically dull that Manchester United fans still bristle at the mention of “McFred” – is now ending 2025 immortalised in a series of Neapolitan wall murals. Instead of his old nickname, they read McFratm (brother) and McTerminator (hard as steel springs).
Across the calendar year, he has moved into the top 1 per cent of goalscoring midfielders in Europe. His 0.36 non-penalty goals per 90 means he’s scoring in more than one in every three games – only Phil Foden is currently ahead of him.
He racks up an astonishing number of touches in the box (3.2 per 90), beats defenders one-on-one at rates comparable to some of the continent’s elite wingers (2.37 per 90), and trails only Bruno Fernandes in the number of goal-scoring chances he’s creating (2.49 per 90). I wish I’d coined the term ‘Diego Maradominay’, but Napoli fans beat me to it.
They’re two points off the top as things stand, but he’s already personally demolished league leaders Inter this season.
Marshaling his defence as he so loves to do, he plucks a loose ball out of the air and effortlessly breaks the first line of pressure with a single pass.
If he has a trademark, it’s what comes next. Carrying his momentum from the edge of his own box, he follows the ball out wide and skirts past every opponent who hasn’t yet realised the trouble they’re in.
He moves beyond his own midfield, beyond his forwards, and before anyone has a clue, he’s clean through on goal. What follows is so breathtaking that even a still image feels like it would deface a work of art.
But it’s not even the best Scott McTominay goal you’ve seen recently. I have absolutely zero insight to add on his overhead kick against Denmark – beyond gawping at it for maybe the 200th time in the month since he scored it.
Steve Clarke was already better at utilising him than every single Manchester United manager, but he’s smartly taken a few pointers from his time in Italy and encouraged him to get into these sorts of positions almost whenever he wants.
To further illustrate ‘what Naples does to a midfielder’, on the left (below) is his seasonal heatmap from his final year in England. Simultaneously a bit of everything and yet somehow nothing, the 10 goals he scraped off the abattoir floor of Erik Ten Hag’s tenure should have made the club fight to keep him. On the right, given a clear identity and a permanent license to get into the box, he’s been reborn as a league champion.
But we’re not here to talk about the stats, are we? This is about personality.
By his own admission, his time at Manchester United saw him misprofiled as a player, and the identity he struggled to find on the pitch was reflected in who he was off it.
Now he’s practically a living meme of what getting off Hell Island and moving to the continent can do for your personal brand. He’s met the pope, sips tiny cups of the most intense coffee imaginable, and sat front and centre on his team’s open-top bus parade with a scarf tied around his head and a cigarette dangling effortlessly from his mouth. La dolce vita, indeed.
I have to be responsible and say that smoking is bad – but also, that might be the coolest anyone has ever looked.
He rocked up at Wimbledon this summer looking like a former classmate of James Bond whose evil empire now owns every expensive watch and yacht in the Western world.
And his entourage that day? Some gaunt-looking model who never says anything out loud? A bunch of hangers-on turning the whole day into ‘content’? Nah – just his mum.
If you want to win Sports Personality of the Year, then yes, ok, you need some sort of monumental sporting achievement. I’d personally argue that winning Serie A, being Napoli’s player of the season, making the league’s Best XI, and dragging Scotland to a first World Cup in nearly 30 years is pretty good – but maybe that doesn’t compare to… [googles “Lando Norris”]… driving the fastest car in the fastest car sport.
But come on. Personality?! I can’t find another human being on earth who’s had a better 12 months for developing their own identity. He’s gone from wearily watching Antony do his ‘fidget spinner’ trick from a seat on the bench to becoming the structural lynchpin of the Italian champions. And he’s done it while transforming from Carhartt tracksuit bottoms to Armani suits in the exact same time. If you’re worried that’s an incredibly snobby observation, rest assured I’m wearing one of those two things as I type this – and it isn’t the fucking suit.
So yeah, fair play Rory – the golf was really good this summer – but you ain’t him. Nobody is.
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