FRIENDS REUNITED

ENGLISH ACTION

Scots icon Fergie has kept a low profile since his retirement in 2013 after 26 years as Manchester United boss.

He didn’t want to cast a shadow as David Moyes and Louis van Gaal struggled to recapture his glory days.

But United boss Mourinho has now encouraged his old adversary to take a greater role at the club again.

The pair crossed swords when Mourinho was in charge in his first spell at Chelsea.

The Portuguese coach said: “When he left here, he wanted to leave and not come back – perhaps for his own comfort.

“Maybe going back is to suffer a little. But after I arrived hhe c a me in aagain. He came bback to visit the people he wworked with for sso many years.

“A nd he trtravelled with us ononce again. I said to him: ‘It doesn’t mmake sense that we’re playing in London and go on a private train while you, Sir Alex, will go by car.

“You’re not going by car, no. Go by train with the team’.

“But he is so respectful that he becomes even a little shy in this approach.

“We have to make him feel loved. In our head there are no ghosts, no complexes, no such thing.”

Mourinho was speaking before today’s v i sit to Middlesbrough and his next step will be to entice Fergie into the dressing-room.

He said: “There have been times, at the end of a game, when Sir Bobby Charlton and execut ive di rector Ed Woodward come down. Sir Alex, who is with them, does not come to the dressing room.

“He has to be perfectly at ease to do it as a person of his dimension and who represents so much to the club.

“It’s the same relationship we had in the old days. A phone call, an SMS, sympathetic details like we always had with each other.”