Rangnick suggests Man Utd players should vote for next captain amid questions of Maguire’s future

Harry Maguire is facing further questions of his standing as Manchester United captain after seeing Ralf Rangnick stop short of recommending him as skipper to incoming manager Erik ten Hag, with the Red Devils’ interim boss suggesting that a player vote should determine who fills the armband.

An £80 million ($100m) centre-half inherited a prestigious role at Old Trafford in the wake of Ashley Young’s departure to Inter in January 2020, with a leadership position passed his way within months of completing a record-setting transfer from Leicester.

Maguire boasts the experience required to accept such responsibility, but he has struggled for form in recent times and, with a knee injury currently keeping him on the sidelines, Rangnick has stated that a squad poll should be held ahead of a big captaincy call for a new head coach in 2022-23.

Quizzed on whether he will be urging Ten Hag to stick with Maguire as United’s on-field leader when a change is made in the dugout this summer, Rangnick has said: “I understand your question but again it doesn’t make sense because we don’t know what kind of players will be here, what the group will look like.

“I can only tell you what I have done in the past when I was head coach or manager because in Germany it’s called Mannschaftskapitan – the captain of the team.

“I strongly believe the captain should be elected by the team.

“We always had a board of four or five players – we called it the Spielerrat [players’ council] – elected by the players. The player with the highest amount of votes was the team captain at the end. That was how I did it.

“I know a lot of head coaches don’t do it that way. That’s what I would do if I was still the manager next season, but in the end I’m not. This is