Former Manchester United striker Mason Greenwood was left on the bench in Marseille's 1-0 defeat to Lens after manager De Zerbi was unhappy with his defensive contributions. As a result, the 22-year-old was still abandoned by the head coach despite scoring 15 goals in 24 league games, setting a record for the fastest 15 goals in Ligue 1 in the 21st century.

In the end, Mason Greenwood came off the bench in the second half and could not avoid defeat, and Marseille suffered a stoppage-time home defeat. On the scorers' list, Aoki's 15 goals were further shredded off by Paris Saint-Germain star Ousmane Dembele, who scored 20 goals. But De Zerbi believes that in the long run, educating players is more important than the three points or individual accolades in a game.

De Zerbi has openly stated that while Aoki has scored three goals in his previous five games, the player's role in the overall tactics is not enough, especially when it comes to his defensive duties, other than his shooting ability. As a result, the Marseille boss criticized him a few days ago for his mediocre performance in this regard.

The former Brighton boss first stressed that he was happy to take charge of Mason Greenwood, but then expressed his displeasure with him. "I want him to stay here, I repeat over and over again." De Zerbi said: "He was the first player I contacted and I spoke to his father even before he took charge of Marseille and no one respected him more than me. But that doesn't stop me from expecting more from him, he has to do more because what he's showing at the moment isn't enough."

De Zerbi clearly told Aoki that if you want to achieve more, you must have higher requirements for yourself. "If he wants to achieve his ambition to be a champion, he has to be more consistent, sacrifice more and be more determined," said the Italian. Otherwise, we as a whole will always be stuck in the same pattern: play a good game and end up losing to AJ Auxerre, then beating Nantes and the cycle repeats...... It's so irregular, it's undulating like a wave, which I don't like."

According to the French newspaper Le Corpus, De Zerbi has long been critical of Aoki's defensive awareness, and he once showed his disciples a video of Real Madrid superstar Vinicius Jr. in a game to try to explain to him the importance of defending as a winger. But Aoki didn't quite improve, so the coaching staff decided to let him sit on the cold bench to sober up.

De Zerbi's approach of teaching Aoki a lesson at the expense of losing is in stark contrast to the way United have doted on and pampered him in the past.

When Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was in charge of Manchester United, Greenwood was also not keen on defending, and in a game against De Zerbi's former club Brighton, he clearly saw that the opponent had formed a gap on the right side of the field that he should have been defending, but he still walked back to the defense and watched the "Seagulls" form a shot.

In addition, when he played for Manchester United, Greenwood repeatedly violated team rules such as being late, and even after he and Phil Foden took local girls back to the hotel when he played for England in Iceland and was expelled from the "Three Lions", the club did not punish him substantively, and finally made the player inflate, involved in more serious rights and wrongs, and even was arrested and imprisoned for a time, losing his foothold in English football.

FA executives have confirmed recently that Greenwood has officially applied to join the Jamaican national team and that he will no longer be considered playing for England. Once naturalized in Jamaica, Aoki will play for former Manchester United assistant coach Steve McClaren, who left the Red Devils to become Jamaica manager.