‘All the fatigue goes when you play a game like this’
Juan Mata insists United are ready to cap an arduous campaign with Europa League victory ‘My head is focused on trying to win trophies here and still having a contract here’
The interview is being wound up when Juan Mata fields a final question and not even Manchester United’s habitually upbeat No8 can hide his sense of deflation as he recalls the squad’s usual routine the night before Europa League away ties this season. “We’d be round the table together having something to eat and then the TV would be put on and we’d watch the Champions League,” Mata said. “And, yeah, we’d be wishing next season that we are there.”
United travel to Stockholm today ahead of the 64th and final game of a marathon campaign, and if there is anything that should ensure Mata and his team-mates do not allow fatigue to cloud their minds against Ajax, it is the prospect of another season huddled together in some unheralded European outpost wondering what might have been.
As much as United crave a second trophy to add to their EFL Cup success in February, the Europa League final also offers their only remaining route into next season’s Champions League after finishing a distant sixth in the Premier League. It has taken 14 matches across seven cities encompassing 14,358 air miles, from Istanbul to Rostov-on-don in southerly Russia via Odessa on the north-western shore of the Black Sea, to reach this point and the prospect of falling at the final hurdle would be a crushing blow.
Mata is bullish about United’s prospects against Ajax but there is also an acknowledgment that a second successive season without Champions League football, and another debilitating campaign in the Europa League, would make a title push harder next term.
“Yeah, it’s true,” Mata said. “The Champions League is the best competition and it’s one this club should be playing in every season. Now we are playing in the Europa League and if we win it as I did a few years ago [with Chelsea], it’s a double bonus, as it’s a trophy and a Champions League spot, so it’s very important for us.
“But [either way] we still want to play European football. Hopefully it is Tuesday and Wednesdays, instead of Thursdays, but if it’s Thursdays we will play Thursdays and it wouldn’t be an excuse not to try to win the title. Obviously you don’t have as much time for recovery as you should, and we have lived that this season. But I think the club and the money [they have] will help us try to get a bigger squad and prepare for a different competition.”
Mata won the Europa League with Chelsea in 2013, a year after lifting the Champions League with the club. He has also won the World Cup and European Championships with Spain, as well as two FA Cups, the League Cup and the Copa del Rey. He knows better than most what it takes to get over the line, which is why he will be treating tomorrow’s final as the most important of his career. But do United have enough left in the tank to get past a young, exuberant Ajax?
Graeme Souness claimed last week that Jose Mourinho had been giving his players an excuse not to play well by complaining constantly about tiredness and United’s congested fixture list, much to the manager’s displeasure. But Mata is adamant fatigue will not be an issue. “It’s been a long season, but when you have a game like this, the very last game, all the fatigue and tiredness in your legs and body goes away because the desire of playing and winning it is much bigger than any possible fatigue,” Mata said. “So for me that is not an excuse.”
Mata has been one of United’s most consistent performers this season and one of those Mourinho has been able to depend on, which is ironic given that there were plenty who did not expect him to survive under the manager who sold him to United from Chelsea in January 2014.
So how did that first conversation back together go? “It was a joke about how different the weather is here from London, or something like that!” Mata says, laughing, although he remains slightly baffled that it is a topic of conversation that still crops up. “I cannot control what people will think,” he says. “But I can control myself, and my head is focused on trying to win trophies here and still having a contract here.
“There are no problems with the manager. So I think people will think less about these things this summer. We had so many conversations during the season. We have a good relationship. We didn’t have an argument or anything like that. In the beginning there was too much talk but I believed in myself and my ability to play football.”
So what is Mourinho like away from the cameras?
“It depends on the day,” Mata joked. “No, sometimes he can be very funny, especially with the Spanish lads. He speaks Spanish fluently, and he makes jokes normally. He hasn’t changed [from Chelsea]. The circumstances have changed, the club, a different squad, but that’s it.” Mourinho has not been afraid to scold players publicly and his exasperation with the likes of Luke Shaw and Anthony Martial has perhaps only served to deepen his respect for Mata’s professionalism.
The Spaniard, in truth, is hard not to warm to. As intelligent off the field as he is on it, he defies most stereotypes about footballers, and for all the talk about foreign players often struggling to settle in Manchester, Mata has immersed himself in the city’s culture.
He once stunned supporters by lauding the work of Chinese contemporary artist Cai Guoqiang, which he had been to see at Manchester’s Whitworth Art Gallery, and he likes to visit Matt and Phreds, a jazz bar in the city’s northern quarter, although Ander Herrera is the only United teammate he has succeeded in dragging along so far. Mata’s father is also a shareholder in Tapeo & Wine, a Spanish restaurant in the city that the player often frequents.
Now 29, Mata has a year left on his existing contract with United but there is an option to extend by another 12 months and he wants to stay as long as he can.
“Yes, I’m happy here,” he said. “I’ve always said that since I came here it has not been the greatest moment in the club’s history. It’s been a different approach and a new stage after Sir Alex Ferguson. We’ve had a few managers, different players coming and going, but I feel really happy to be at this club. I feel privileged to play for Man United. It is something when I’m old I will always be proud of.”
He will be prouder still if United triumph tomorrow.