On Thursday night, Marcus Rashford could play his first Champions League game for Manchester United in almost three years as they face Sabah.
If the attacker features against the Azerbaijani side, he will have number 9 on his back whereas he wore 10 when he was sent off in the 4-3 defeat to FC København in November 2023 – which makes the date of 10-9 all the more fitting.
Of course, it’s not fully accurate to say that Rashford has ‘moved’ from 10 to 9 – since last playing a game for United wearing 10, he has appeared in the Champions League wearing 9 for Aston Villa and 14 for Barcelona, while Matheus Cunha is in his second year as the Red Devils’ 10.
A case can be made that he has done it the wrong way, as his initial journey of 39 to 19 suggested a future as a central striker while now he is firmly cast as a left-sided forward.
Nevertheless, in bucking the overall trend where 10 is a destination rather than a depature point, he can be bracketed with a few notable others who wore it and then 9 for the same club in the squad-numbers era.
The first example is one in which I had a vested interest at the time, as it involved my first ‘favourite player’, Arsenal’s Paul Merson.
He was given 10 when the new system came in in 1993 but two years later, when the Gunners briefly broke the British transfer record to sign Dennis Bergkamp from Internazionale for £7.5m (Stan Collymore’s move from Nottingham Forest to Liverpool for a million more was almost done, but not yet completed), the Dutchman request his favoured digits at Highbury.
In his autobiography Rock Bottom, Merson recalled how he found out about this new development through the media like everyone else. After a season where he had missed a few months recovering from addiction issues, he was able to rationalise the disappointment and said he didn’t mind what number he had, as long as he was in the first XI.
Initially, there was speculation that he might be given the number 7 made vacant by Kevin Campbell’s move to Nottingham Forest – such a proto-David Beckham switch would have been fitting, given Merson had made 10 his own while playing as a striker but was now most often found on the wing. However, that shirt ended up going to another new signing, David Platt, and instead Merson was given the 9 that had previously belonged to his old strike partner Alan Smith, forced to retire due to injury.
Number 8 was of course the property of Ian Wright, who wore 9 exactly once for Arsenal, on his debut against Leicester City, and never again – 8 and 10 up front with 9 behind was somewhat reminiscent of Barcelona in 1993-94, though of course only on rare occasions.
Three years on from that was one of the highest-profile moves from 10 to 9 – Ronaldo at Internazionale.
It’s part of a story that deserves, and will get, its own dedicated post in the not-too-distant future but the main points are that, when the Brazilian striker joined from Barcelona in 1997, the Inter 9 was worn by Iván Zamorano and he was happy to take 10.
Then, in 1998, thanks to the generosity of his Chilean colleague, Ronaldo was able to be reunited with the number in which he had made his name with Cruzeiro, PSV, Barcelona and Brazil.
Back in north London a year after that, there was another such move, one that possibly provided closure for the player involved.
When Alan Shearer joined Newcastle United for a world-record £15m in 1996, one of his conditions was that he be allowed to wear number 9, which at the time belonged to Les Ferdinand. The former Queens Park Rangers man made ‘an October 9th move’ while Lee Clark was an even bigger loser, having to give up 10 and take 20 instead.
Ferdinand joined Tottenham Hotspur a year later and, with right-sided midfielder Darren Anderton established as their number 9, the centre-forward again took 10.
Ahead of the 1999-2000 season, however, Tottenham manager George Graham undertook a tidy-up operation that saw, among other alterations, Anderton move to 7 with Ferdinand reunited with the number 9.
The other English top-flight example also involves a reunification – at the same club where the player had originally worn it.
First signed on loan from Rangers by Everton in 1995, Duncan Ferguson took the number 9 that had become free wen Tony Cottee re-signed for West Ham United.
The Scottish striker soon became a fan favourite and was signed permanently, but in 1998-99 he moved to Newcastle – where, with Shearer still 9, Ferguson wore 20.
Less than two years later, he was back at Goodison Park: with his successor as 9, the aforementioned Kevin Campbell, still present, Ferguson took 24 for 2000-01 before moving to 10 for 2001-92 after Stephen Hughes’ departure.
Campbell joined West Bromwich Albion during 2004-05 and then, at the beginning of the following campaign, Ferguson was able to reclaim 9 – one of quite a few Everton switches within the 1-11 bracket.
