Martin Smith: He's been through the mill but Harry Maguire will return stronger

Those who know Harry Maguire best will have a deeper understanding of his character, strengths and weaknesses but they will probably say the same.

Dead steady.

That’s why the 27-year-old is so respectfully remembered at Sheffield United where he began his career - he still feeds the needy in Mosborough where he grew up.

It’s why he’s captain of Manchester United

None of which means that he couldn’t get himself in trouble on holiday after a day in the sun and on the beers. Prison cells around the world are full of generous and helpful young men whose mothers love them.

So how did he end up on charges of ‘aggravated assault’ and ‘attempted bribery’ while on holiday in Greece?

A good day out, decent food, a few drinks in the sunshine and stroll around town with your mates and family.

What could possibly go wrong?

Apart from everything.

Especially when the many-headed football rivalries monster is awakened by sunshine, booze and the need to express its bile.

Harry Maguire is not part of this, in many ways he embodies all the opposite qualities.

But in that moment on that territory he becomes fair game to the monster.

He will have been in this situation before. He knows that the club he now plays for is one of the most popular - and unpopular - on the planet.

He also knows that for some people being a football supporter is about the hate that produces songs about the Hillsborough 96, the Bradford fire, the Munich air disaster.

Harry Maguire, a man of proven good character and temperament may already have lost the captaincy of his club and, at least temporarily, his England place.

Some of the newspaper coverage hasn’t helped, national tabloids copying and pasting their rivals’ lurid and contradictory stories onto its own website without edit or check.

Unsubstantiated talk of a ‘three-day bender’ and a bill for £63,000 supposedly after he and his mates ‘scoffed lobster and Champagne’ only for the reader to discover further down that Maguire only paid a fraction of the bill for beers he’d had.

He may of course be guilty as charged, good people make mistakes sometimes.

No matter what the court finds, Maguire has been through the mill and will have learned huge lessons.

But he’ll be back for club and country.

Calm, strong, responsible and much, much wiser.