Rasmus Hojlund’s Napoli Revival Is A Cautionary Tale For Man United

NAPLES, ITALY – OCTOBER 01: Rasmus Hojlund 2 -1 goal during the UEFA Champions League 2025/26 League Phase MD2 match between SSC Napoli and Sporting Clube de Portugal at Stadio Diego Armando Maradona on October 01, 2025 in Naples, Italy. (Photo by SSC NAPOLI/SSC NAPOLI via Getty Images)

SSC NAPOLI via Getty Images

Rasmus Hojlund struck a philosophical note after scoring for Denmark against Greece on Sunday night.

“A wise man once said, ‘Goals are like ketchup. Once they come, they keep on coming’,” he wrote on Instagram.

One can only assume said wise man was not employed by Manchester United, who allowed the Dane to join Napoli on loan in the summer transfer window.

The deal includes a conditional obligation to make the transfer permanent for €44million (£38m) next summer if Napoli qualify for the Champions League, which hithertho seems a cast iron guarantee with the Partenopei top of the table.

Hojlund scored twice in Denmark’s 6-0 demolition of Belarus last Thursday then netted the opener in a 3-1 win over Greece, which left his country top of their World Cup qualifying group with 10 points after four matches, ahead of Scotland on goal difference.

The goal against Greece was his eighth in nine appearances for club and country this season, a remarkable return for a player who looked lost last term.

He scored 14 minutes into his Napoli debut against Fiorentina, then bagged both goals in the win over Sporting Club in the Champions League two weeks ago.

Four days later, he netted the winner as the reigning Serie A champions came from a goal down to beat Genoa 2-1 at home to move top of the league along with Roma.

To put the figure into context, Hojlund has scored as many league goals for Napoli as he has for United in this calendar year and he needs just another two Serie A goals to equal his Premier League tally from last season.

“He’s a 22-year-old who wasn’t getting much of a look-in at Manchester United,” Napoli manager Antonio Conte said earlier this month.

“He has major room for improvement and needs to work hard, but he absolutely has the chance to become a star talent, and he’s demonstrating that potential.”

The Dane has been similarly complementary of his manager, crediting Conte with helping him rediscover the confidence he seemed to have lost at Old Trafford.

“Conte is exactly what I need right now in my career,” he said. “We met at the right time.”

Timing was at the essence of Napoli’s decision to sign Hojlund, who was brought in as a replacement for Romelu Lukaku after the Belgian was ruled out for three months after sustaining an injury in pre-season.

In his first campaign in Naples, the Belgian was instrumental to the Azzurri winning a second Serie A title in three years, scoring 14 goals and registering 10 assists.

Manchester United cast-offs are a hit in Serie A

Lukaku is one of several players who have gone on to thrive away from United, a club that has become a paragon of dysfunctionality, mismanagement and neglect.

The Belgium international won the Scudetto in his second season at Inter Milan and repeated the feat with Napoli last season, while his fellow United teammates Matteo Darmian and Henrikh Mkhitaryan won the league with Inter in 2024 and reached two Champions League finals in the past three seasons.

David De Gea and Chris Smalling both performed well for Fiorentina and Roma respectively, but their impact pales in comparison to Scott McTominay’s.

In his first campaign in Italy, the Scotland international scored 12 goals to inspire Napoli to the title, including a superb effort on the final day of the season, and was named Serie A MVP.

The parallels between McTominay and Hojlund are impossible to ignore, with both players becoming a scapegoat for United’s decline.

In truth, while neither performed at the levels they have reached with Napoli, they were largely a victim of the circumstances at a club that has long failed to address the malaise that set in after Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement 12 years ago.

Hojlund’s return of 26 goals in 95 goals in all competitions for United is modest but not terrible, yet he never lived up to the €75m price tag the club paid Atalanta in the summer of 2023.

A more pertinent question perhaps is what convinced United to part with that kind of money to begin with.

Hojlund, after all, had scored just 10 goals in 34 games in all competitions in his only season in Italy before moving to the Premier League.

Should United have kept Hojlund?

According to SofaScore, the Dane underperformed his 5.6xG (expected goals, a metric used to determine how likely a player is to score a chance) last season and missed six clear-cut scoring opportunities.

His most alarming statistic, however, was his astonishingly low 1.0 shots per game.

This figure pales in comparison to Serie A strikers: Lukaku averaged 1.78 shots, while Inter Milan’s Marcus Thuram and Atalanta’s Mateo Retegui were far more trigger-happy at 2.03 and 2.78, respectively.

Hojlund averaged just 2.56 touches in the opposition box per 90 minutes – half the rate of Thuram and Retegui – and had the lowest efficiency among the quintet, registering the worst overall conversion rate (12.5%) and big chance conversion rate.

And yet, not much has changed at Napoli, at least from a statistical standpoint.

Hojlund still averages 1.0 shots per game in Serie A, but is finding himself in the right place at the right time and finishing his chances – he is currently marginally outperforming his 1.18xG.

What has changed is the service he receives, largely thanks to fellow summer signing Kevin De Bruyne.

“Playing with an exceptional talent like Kevin de Bruyne is special,” Hojlund said after the Belgian set up both of his goals against Sporting Club.

“I just need to get into space and he’ll get me the ball.”

Would have United been better off addressing the lack of service rather than replacing Hojlund with Benjamin Sesko? CBS analyst Peter Schmeichel believes so.

“The signing of Benjamin Sesko was a little bit weird to me because we have Rasmus Hojlund, who has been starved of service for two years,” the Dane, who won the Treble in 1999, told BBC podcast Sacked in the Morning.

“You only have to see what he’s doing at Napoli with Kevin de Bruyne and Scott McTominay to play with – he’s scoring goals.

“I’ve consistently said this for two and a half years – Rasmus Hojlund will be a 25-goals-a-year striker for Manchester United, but he needs service.

“We let him go on the stats that he scored very little goals last season and bring Sesko in at the time we bring in Matheus Cunha and Bryan Mbuemo, who would give Hojlund first-class service.”

Sesko has two goals in the past two Premier League starts, but the more Hojlund scores and the longer United struggle the doubt will linger.