Chido Obi joins Willem II on loan as Man Utd teenager follows familiar Old Trafford path

Chido Obi has left Manchester United on loan for the 2025/26 season, joining Dutch Eredivisie side Willem II after being shut out of the first-team picture entirely last campaign. The 18-year-old striker, once heralded as one of the most exciting young forwards in English football, made zero senior appearances in 2024/25 and was pushed back to the under-21s.

Obi’s arrival at Old Trafford had generated genuine excitement. He joined after turning down a professional contract at Arsenal — where he had trained with the first team at 15 and once scored 10 goals in a single under-16 fixture — and within five months of signing he became United’s third-youngest Premier League player ever, behind only Angel Gomes and Shola Shoretire.

His debut came under Ruben Amorim in early 2024, shortly after Obi scored a hat-trick in a 5-1 FA Youth Cup win over Chelsea. He was handed his first senior outing in stoppage time during a loss at Tottenham, though he did not touch the ball. He went on to make eight appearances that season — seven from the bench and one start, a full 90 minutes in a 4-3 defeat to Brentford — without registering a goal or an assist.

Rather than serving as a launchpad, those eight outings proved to be the ceiling. Last season, Obi was absent from the senior squad entirely and featured instead in the FA Youth Cup final against Manchester City, lining up alongside fellow teenager JJ Gabriel, who has since emerged as the club’s next hotly tipped prospect.

The pattern is one United supporters have seen before. Gomes and Shoretire, the two players Obi leapfrogged in the record books, both eventually departed Old Trafford without fulfilling their early promise. Kobbie Mainoo remains the rare exception — a homegrown talent who broke through and held his place.

Obi’s situation was further complicated by comments made by Amorim in December 2025, less than a month before the Portuguese coach’s difficult tenure ended, when he publicly criticised an “entitlement” culture among the club’s younger players.

At 18, Obi retains time to rebuild. A full season of regular football at Willem II in the Eredivisie offers him the kind of sustained playing time that was never available to him at Old Trafford, and the Dutch league has historically served as a productive development environment for young forwards. Whether he can translate that opportunity into a future at United remains to be seen.