Sitting in a hotel room at United’s San Diego base, the Estancia La Jolla, during the club’s summer U.S. tour, Wan-Bissaka explains his tackling pedigree. “I was never taught it, just happened naturally,” he says. “I realised I was all right at tackling around 18, but it caught the eyes of the coaches when I was training with the first team at Palace. That’s when I realised it was a special trait.”
Wan-Bissaka is very laidback, but his enjoyment for stopping opponents is clear. “You can see the frustration,” he says. “But it’s been mentioned so many times they don’t bring it up. I can tell when they’re getting wound up, but I don’t think anything of it. The aim is just to finish the game and help the team.”
Do his own United team-mates bristle at such interventions during sessions at Carrington? “In training it’s full contact, but I wouldn’t say I tackle like that in training,” he says. “I save it for match days.”
There was a prolonged period last season when Wan-Bissaka had no match days to save for. Before the World Cup, he played only four minutes of football, all as a late substitute against
Liverpool in August.
It was not until December 21, for the visit of
Burnley in the Carabao Cup, that Wan-Bissaka appeared again.
Diogo Dalot was Erik ten Hag’s chosen right-back in that span of nearly four months, while Wan-Bissaka was completely left out of 16 squads.
Last summer Ten Hag had wanted to sign a new right-back and was open to selling Wan-Bissaka, but football director John Murtough lobbied for him to be considered again. Gradually, Wan-Bissaka has won Ten Hag round.
Wan-Bissaka admits he thought his time at United might be over. “You have that feeling,” he says. But for me, I always have faith in myself to get out of situations like that. I had my head screwed on and I was ready to do what it takes.”
What it took was listening to Ten Hag’s instructions and applying himself in training. Sessions on the 2022 pre-season tour to Thailand and Australia were punctuated by Ten Hag shouting “inside” to his full-backs, a demand for attacking runs within the width of the 18-yard box.
Wan-Bissaka at first struggled to adjust to this. But United’s winter camp in Spain in December provided an opportunity to press his case while Dalot was playing for Portugal in Qatar. When Dalot returned injured, Wan-Bissaka had his chance.
“The manager wants all the players to give their all and do what he wants, that is something I had to adapt to,” he says. “He will tell you where to be at certain times, when to go in, when to go up, and when to stay. It’s helped me and I’m comfortable doing it now.”
There were low moments for Wan-Bissaka while he went unselected. “It’s quite hard to motivate yourself to train hard,” he says. “Because you be telling yourself, ‘What am I training for, when I’m not gonna be playing?’ But I just had the mindset: ‘I’ll train for myself,’ just to get the best out of myself.
“It’s obviously never good. But I just had to deal with it. I had support around me, my family, telling me every day: ‘Just keep working hard, your time will come’. So that helped me get through each day.”
Wan-Bissaka did not knock on Ten Hag’s door for answers. “From what I could see, it was just his preference,” he says. “I wasn’t really aware. Everyone in their career goes through that, it was just my time. You can go and ask but I’m the type to just get on with it.”
His time out lit a fire inside him, though. Asked how he turned round his United career, he says: “I could say many things, but one is setbacks. Not playing and gaining that hunger to fight for my position and wanting to play, wanting to impress the manager and help the team.
“It was a hard time and the only thing you can do during a hard time is keep working. I got my head down and then got the chance.
“It can go both ways. You can just sit there and complain about it and not care, or you can actually try and I thought the best way was for me to try.”
Wan-Bissaka describes Ten Hag’s management style as “straightforward”, adding: “He will just say it how it is, really. A lot of one-on-one chats. He says what he wants, he has demands, and we have to give that 100 per cent.”
In one sense, the repetitive drills Ten Hag works on in training are not dissimilar from Roy Hodgson’s methods at Palace, when Wan-Bissaka first broke into senior football. But there is a crucial difference. “We do some attack v defence, but obviously with Ten Hag he is focused on the attack, whereas at Palace it was the defence,” he says.
With that in mind, Wan-Bissaka wants to be getting more goals and assists. “Yeah definitely, especially if I am going to be in those positions. It’ll be good to be pushing them numbers.”
Wan-Bissaka is speaking during his third tour with United, which took in New York, San Diego, Houston and Las Vegas. His first, in 2019, was to Australia, Singapore and China. It opened his eyes to the scale of United’s reach after his £50million move from Palace.
He says it was “good to see how big the fanbase is around the world” but the attention took some getting used to.
“As soon as we landed at the airport, it was a shock to me,” he says. “It’s everything, all eyes are on you. It was just different to what I’m used to you, everything is more intense.”
Zaha, who made the same move from Palace to United in 2013, had given him a heads-up. “He told me what to expect, mainly that the fan base is just crazy here. You understand it more once you actually go through it.
“It can be hard, especially outside of football. You go for a meal or something with family and fans are coming up wanting pictures and autographs and stuff. I don’t think they understand when is the right time to approach or not.
“Some of it is difficult, but that’s what comes with the job… I did have good help, I think I had prepared myself. When it happened it’s hard to deal with it, but you just block it out and focus on the main thing, which is football.”
As part of that, Wan-Bissaka has reduced his social media use, and has never been on Twitter. He saw Maddison’s tweet on SportBible and wondered if it was real at first. “I don’t do tweets, I can’t keep up,” he says. “It kind of helps. Twitter can be a dark place, so I avoid it.”
Those who know Wan-Bissaka say he has come out of his shell at United in 2023, being more jovial with people and starting conversations directly rather than staying on the periphery. Friends have moved up from London so he is not travelling down as much, and he works with his own personal trainer and masseuse in Manchester. He is close to
Marcus Rashford and
Jadon Sancho.
His contract runs to 2024 but United have the option to trigger a year extension. “I haven’t heard anything yet,” he says, before adding: “I’m happy here.”
