{"id":183993,"date":"2023-01-11T22:32:06","date_gmt":"2023-01-11T22:32:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/facundo-pellistri-had-been-waiting-two-and-a-half-years-for-those-10-minutes\/"},"modified":"2023-01-11T22:32:06","modified_gmt":"2023-01-11T22:32:06","slug":"facundo-pellistri-had-been-waiting-two-and-a-half-years-for-those-10-minutes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/facundo-pellistri-had-been-waiting-two-and-a-half-years-for-those-10-minutes\/","title":{"rendered":"Facundo Pellistri had been waiting two and a half years for those 10 minutes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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While sitting among the substitutes in Old Trafford’s home dugout last night, if Facundo Pellistri wanted an example of how long he might have to wait to make his Manchester United debut, he only needed to look at his side’s goalkeeper.<\/p>\n

Tom Heaton’s United bow eventually came last season \u2014 five months into the veteran goalkeeper’s second Old Trafford spell, as a second-half substitute in a dead rubber against Young Boys, nearly 20 years after signing his first professional contract at the club. And now, Heaton was finally making his first start.<\/p>\n

Thankfully, the 21-year-old winger would not have to wait as long as Heaton did. Now, 827 days after arriving in Manchester, his moment had finally arrived. And though this was just a late cameo in a Carabao Cup quarter-final against Charlton Athletic, it was also the 10 minutes that Pellistri had waited nearly two and a half years for.<\/p>\n

Even then, the first couple of them were relatively uneventful. Pellistri’s initial touches on the ball as a United player were nothing to bring a crowd to its feet. The next few were, though. The next three of them, to be precise.<\/p>\n

Leading a counter-attack, sprung after Harry Maguire’s header to clear a Charlton Athletic free kick away, his first touch was fine but put him in danger, turning him into the path of a rapidly approaching George Dobson. Yet Pellistri’s second touch took the ball away from Dobson, evading the challenge entirely, and his third set him back on his original course.<\/p>\n

It was an ‘elastico’: a piece of skill, in other words, that whipped a coo of appreciation around Old Trafford and sprung one of the stranger United careers of recent times back into relevance.<\/p>\n

At this point, it is only right to highlight that Pellistri was playing against League One opponents who, for nearly 90 minutes, had made enough of a nuisance of themselves to keep the score within one. Upon the Uruguayan’s entrance, Charlton had to push their tired bodies in search of the equalizer to force extra time. The game was becoming stretched.<\/p>\n