If you look at the number of passes he plays per game it's much lower than a typical Scholes game. Even though the amount of possession England had against Belgium for example was very high. Maybe experience will help him anticipate and pick up the ball more from the defence but he doesn't look to do that much atm. To do it consistently over a 90 you need incedible concentration, anticipation and spatial awareness. He's good at those things but Scholes was generational. He's more about receiving the ball from midfield, going past/turning his man and driving towards the box. Maybe pre 2007 Scholes but not the Scholes we tend to think of now.
If you're going to go all the way up to Scholes, who is arguably our best passing midfielder of literal all-time, then whatever the outcome with Mainoo, it will take years to determine whether he has it in him to be that bracket of passer, you're not going to determine that from a small catalogue of games, even if he were firing them off 50+ yards in all of them. A frame of reference for what a player might go on to become is observing the best of them in the sides for their age group (the unders), where you're likely to see their full game on display.
It's a rare youngster indeed whose entire game comes with them straight out of the unders - even those capable of a lot more than they initially show tend to have to find their feet and get a foothold as a locked in starter before they feel assured enough to be fully expressive and expansive in their play. It will be a rare person that will say to you this Mainoo is displaying absolutely everything he was capable of in the unders.
This is his true game in microcosm:
Dotted throughout it are a number of longer range passes, and it's not even the point he's hitting the mark, rather, the technique and weight on the passes that let you know this is clearly something he is capable of. Scholes-esque? The game has changed a lot since then and short passes with lower risk of turnover are supposed to be the first point of call, so instinctively getting on the ball and hitting long is not going to be the mentality, we also don't have the wingers or the movement we did in Scholes' day to be spraying the ball around with that kind of frequency, so the long balls come in time and are going to be more infrequent. But again, for me, it's more about organic addition with that kind of expansive play. When it feels right to him, he will start to spray the ball as he did in the video above, I'm sure of it.
I think it's also apparent how well he hits weighted through balls in that vid. We have seen glimpses of it, but not enough to be classing him as a playmaker, despite him clearly having the capacity as he displayed with England, setting up one goal effectively, and playing others in for chances on another two occasions. It's still not 'satisfactory' because people want to see more attempts and a playmaking machine rather than a player who is selective and clever in when he even attempts those passes and is more than happy to keep it simple in the interim.
I'd say it's very clear by now that his game is transferable also. He's shown time and again he can break free and release, and he sets himself up with ample time to go longer if he desires, so it's not about pace of the game, rather, his desire to attempt the plays. I wouldn't say he's gun-shy, but I also don't think he's fully settled and expressing himself yet, either, which is understandable especially as he's said that he's got to get used to adult game and has been adapting to it despite looking like it's all effortless to him.
My biggest takeaway from younger Mainoo in the unders is his physicality and tussling is considerably higher than what we see of him as a pro. He is very shrewd in picking and choosing his moments to wrestle and jostle with full-grown men and it has affected his game somewhat because he'll go around rather than through a lot more than he did in the unders. It tells me that when he's a grown man himself, we'll see the exact same of him in the adult game and that will be a very different proposition for the opposition than what's there at the moment. Tactically, it'll open up the field a lot more for others too. In time there's a lot more to come than we've seen.