Nick Powell: ‘The Manchester United wonderkid tag feels so pointless now’

“I believed I was the best 17 or 18-year-old in the country. But seeing what other people have done in their career, against what I have done, I find it laughable that the ‘wonderkid’ thing has stuck. The tag of wonderkid feels so pointless now.”

It is inevitable, sitting opposite Nick Powell and trying to get a better understanding of who he really is, that the conversation will gravitate towards Manchester United and the time in his career when he seemed to hold the keys to the football universe.

The man sitting here today will be 30 on his next birthday — older, wiser, with the first flecks of silver appearing above his ears and all sorts of parental duties waiting for him when he gets home to his three young daughters.

He is, in the parlance of the sport, a senior pro these days. And yet, in another sense, he is still defined by his time with United — his signing, at the age of 18, and being released, in his words, “like rubbish getting thrown out” — and some of the misconceptions that, until now, he has never properly tackled head-on.

We are sitting in an upstairs room at Stockport County’s training ground on a stretch of road, just off the M60 motorway, that will be familiar to many football people in this part of the country. Manchester City’s old training headquarters is next door. United’s is left at the crossroads. “Just across the fields,” says Powell, with his knowledge of the local geography.

And it is some story how Powell has chosen Stockport, one of League Two’s upwardly mobile clubs, when he could have made far more money elsewhere and had numerous offers from teams higher up the football ladder.

The background, he explains, is that one of his friends invited him to a Stockport game at Edgeley Park in December 2021. They lost 3-1 to Grimsby Town. But Powell liked what he saw. 

“My friend knew the owner (Mark Stott) and said to me, ‘I can get you a conversation with the club, what do you think?’ My first thought, without being rude, was, ‘Hell, no.’ I’d just been player of the season in a Championship team. Stockport were in the Conference (the National League). I said, ‘We’ll see when they get in the Football League’.”

Eighteen months later, Powell is watching on television as Stockport lose a penalty shootout against Carlisle in the League Two play-off final. He has been released by Stoke City, two divisions above, and various offers are on the table.

Saudi Arabia has been mentioned, with all its financial incentives. Five clubs from the Championship have registered an interest. There are others in the U.S. and Australia. Wrexham, newly promoted to League Two, want to make him their poster-boy signing.

“By this stage, I’d been to watch Stockport a few times,” says Powell. “We used to get some food, watch the match. I enjoyed the League Two atmosphere. I met Mark a few times and it just resonated with me, in a strange way.

“It was an eye-opener to see the…