Update: |Why Manchester United gave JJ Gabriel his U18 debut News

The hype surrounding JJ Gabriel has swelled after his two goals for Man United Under 18s against Leeds United.

Angel Gomes is still only 24 but he has been in the news for ten years. Gomes was 14 when he scored so stunningly against Basel in an indoor tournament that he went viral.

Not long after that, the photo of an eight-year-old Gomes, knee-high to a grasshopper, with Cristiano Ronaldo and Nani surfaced. Joseph Junior Gabriel, also 14, has had his own picture with Ronaldo: Cristiano Junior.

Gabriel posed with Ronaldo’s eldest son in the Old Trafford press conference room in February 2022 when they signed a scholarship with the Manchester United academy. The post on Ronaldo Junior’s verified Instagram account has a modest 203 likes but that number is bound to swell after Gabriel’s debut for the club’s under 18s.

The youth team eviscerated Leeds United 13-1 at Carrington on Saturday afternoon and Gabriel emerged to get two goals in three minutes. The “top talent”, in the words of one experienced agent, is United’s youngest scorer at under 18 level.

United are understandably apprehensive about the attention a schoolboy in Year 9 is now generating. Gabriel already has 122,000 Instagram followers and was in a hospitality box at Manchester City recently.

He signed a contract with Nike at the age of 11. He did a Nike shoot at Altrincham aged 12. Gabriel announced last month that he had penned a long-term deal with Nike. His ‘unveiling’ post with Cristiano Junior amassed a staggering 55,653 likes.

The United academy centre half Jack Kingdon, on loan at Rochdale, told me last month that the club “develop you as a person and a player. It’s not just on the pitch, it’s off the pitch as well”. Gabriel will benefit from the kid-gloves approach United swear by. The match report from the Leeds game on the United website omitted Gabriel’s first name.

When Shola Shoretire was promoted to the Under 18s’ training squad in Austria in 2018 and the Manchester Evening News filed a story, the club got in touch and politely requested that his name be omitted due to his age. The exposure was great enough then but schoolboy footballers are embracing their profiles even more now. Kai Rooney, also in United’s academy and aged 15, is verified on Instagram and has more followers than the United first-team defender Ayden Heaven.

Gabriel is too young to have an agent but already has a team of advisers. Sources familiar with Gabriel’s development say they have toyed with the possibility of the teenager leaving United at a time where academy-level moves between England’s biggest clubs is becoming rife. Harrison Parker moved from United to City in what sources described as a “revenge move” after United recruited the Fletcher twins, Jack and Tyler, in 2023.

Sources say United have fast-tracked Gabriel into the under 18 set-up partly to ensure he stays. Club sources stressed that Gabriel would not have been promoted if he didn’t have the quality and pointed out his two goals vindicated that call. It is also common practice for United to blood the next batch of under 18s in the final months of a season ahead of them staying there next season.

A Carrington source suggested earlier this season one academy player was named on the United first-team bench to convince him to sign a professional contract with the club. The parent of at least one teammate bristled at that privilege afforded the youngster.

The suspicion was that Omari Forson’s bizarre start in the Premier League against Fulham last year was partly influenced by the deadlock in contract negotiations. Forson left for Monza and has only played seven times for Serie A’s bottom side. Forson first toyed with the prospect of leaving United five years ago.

United have always been reluctant to sing about their academy from the rooftops on their website and social platforms. Their coverage of the youth team has significantly subsided amid the cuts to the club’s workforce. MUTV did not even televise their FA Youth Cup quarter and semi-finals against Arsenal and Aston Villa.

They will still struggle to conceal Gabriel after his impact at the weekend.