Muted joy in wake of tragedy
Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho said his team would give up its Europa League trophy if it would bring back the 22 victims of Monday’s terror attack in Manchester.
“If we could, we would obviously exchange the people’s lives for this cup, immediately,” Mourinho said at Stockholm’s Friends Arena.
“We wouldn’t think twice. Does this cup make the city of Manchester a little bit happier? Maybe. But we just came to do our job.
“We came without the happiness we should bring with us, because when you come for these big matches, you come happy, you come proud. And we didn’t. we just came to do our job.”
The game was preceded by a minute’s silence, which was interrupted by applause from both sets of fans, and United’s players wore black armbands.
Mourinho agreed with European governing body UEFA’s decision to allow the match to go ahead, but said the victory would always be associated with sad thoughts about what happened in Manchester.
“It’s really hard,” said the Portuguese, whose prematch news conference on Tuesday was called off.
“That’s why yesterday we didn’t want to have the press conference, because we had to prepare ourselves to do our job and to try to forget events that are obviously much more important than playing football.
“But the world goes on. It doesn’t stop and we have to do our work. I agree with the UEFA decision to play the match.
“When we have questions like your questions that make us return to this tragedy, obviously it takes happiness from our achievement.”
French midfielder Paul Pogba, who opened the scoring in the game, dedicated the triumph to the victims, saying: “We played for the people who died.
“These things are terrible all over the world, in London and in Paris,” said Pogba, who was playing at Stade de France on the night of the 2015 Paris terror attacks.
“We went out focused to win and we won for Manchester and the country,” he told BT Sport.