MOURINHO MELTDOWN WRECKING BALL JOSE CLAIMS. . .
United’s US tour not worth watching Club have let him down on transfers Half of this line-up won’t survive season
WHEN Jose Mourinho left the stadium they call The Big House, Manchester United’s tour, their pre-season plans, their transfer business, their squad, just about everything in fact, felt like one big mess.
As if a 4-1 defeat by Liverpool in Michigan’s cavernous stadium had not given Mourinho enough problems, he decided to take a wrecking ball to anything in his sights.
United’s tour of the US? Not worth watching. Transfers? The club have let me down.
Nemanja Matic has had abdominal surgery that will rule him out of the start of the season, revealed Mourinho, taking the number of first-team players unavailable to him this weekend to 17.
One of them, captain Antonio Valencia, came back from holiday out of shape according to the manager. Another, Anthony Martial, should have returned to the tour after the birth of his baby — but he has not.
Oh, and the match officials for Saturday’s game obviously came from the baseball leagues.
It was an extraordinary diatribe even by Mourinho’s standards. By the time he had vacated the stage en route to Miami for United’s final tour game against Real Madrid, it was difficult to know where to start.
It felt as though everything was unravelling before a ball has been kicked in anger and no one was safe from his indignation.
You can imagine the marketing men at Old Trafford recoiling in horror as Mourinho put into words what we have all known for a while on this trip. United may have finally pulled a huge crowd of 101,254 in Michigan after three disappointing attendances in Phoenix, Santa Clara and LA, but the 55-year-old admitted fans are being short- changed by the lack of genuine stars on show.
He claimed half of the outfield players in the starting XI will not even be at United this season — a fair assumption considering the line-up.
I t’s understood that International Champions Cup organisers Relevent Sports have contacted United to voice their concerns over the lack of big names out here.
There are echoes of 2004 when Sir Alex Ferguson had to rush out Paul Scholes and Ruud van Nistelrooy to a pre-season tour of the US after a below- strength United were booed in Chicago.
‘The atmosphere was good but if I was them I wouldn’t have come,’ said Mourinho. ‘I wouldn’t have spent my money to watch these two teams.
‘I watched Chelsea versus Inter earlier and people had decided the beach was better. The stadium was empty.
‘These people here came to enjoy the clubs they love in Europe. That is fantastic. But this is not our team, not our squad. This is not even 30 per cent of my squad. The majority of the players that played are not going to play. Some of them are not even going to belong to the squad. We are not playing here to improve the team or the dynamic. We are playing here to just survive and have some not very ugly results.’
Maybe clubs like United will think twice in future about scheduling high-profile tours like this so soon after a World Cup.
Paul Pogba, Romelu Lukaku, Marouane Fellaini, Jesse Lingard and Ashley Young are on holiday after the tournament in Russia.
Victor Lindelof is due back at Carrington today and Mourinho revealed that Marcus Rashford and Phil Jones have cut short their summer breaks to help the team. As quickly as he can get players back, however, the United manager is losing others to injury.
Matic had surgery in Philadelphia and has flown straight home to Manchester to recuperate. Valencia is already there after tearing a calf muscle in the game against San Jose Earthquakes.
‘Antonio Valencia came from holiday, and I think too much holiday for him. His condition was not good when he was back,’ said Mourinho.
Luke Shaw pulled out of Saturday’s game and then Chris Smalling was injured in the warmup. He had to be replaced by Eric Bailly, who was not even among the substitutes at the start.
Bailly limped away afterwards with a swollen ankle, as did Ander Herrera. With Sergio Romero, Marcos Rojo and new signing Diogo Dalot completing the casualty list, it is not surprising Mourinho has no idea how his team will line up against Leicester at Old Trafford in 11 days’ time after a final friendly with Bayern Munich in Germany.
He fears that the absence of so many key players in America has forced others to risk themselves
‘Antonio Valencia had too much holiday. His condition wasn’t good’ ‘The referee must have been called in by mistake from baseball’
unnecessarily. ‘The accumulation of matches is killing progressively my brave boys, because I have some brave boys,’ he said.
‘We have four or five players that are “dead” because they care for the club. They try to give everything, even risking themselves because they don’t want to let all the kids play by themselves against Milan, Liverpool and Real Madrid.
‘I just hope the boys on deserved holidays take care of themselves a little bit and somebody wants to do what Rashford and Jones do, which is to be back a little bit earlier to try to help the team because for the beginning of the season we are going to be in trouble.’
Martial is one of the players Mourinho has in mind. The Frenchman left for Paris last week to be at the birth of his baby son and has not returned.
‘He has the baby and after the baby is born — beautiful baby, full of health, thank God — he should be here and he is not here,’ said the United manager.
United were soundly beaten in Michigan. Xherdan Shaqiri’s wonderful bicycle kick added to Daniel Sturridge’s strike and two penalties that left Mourinho bristling.
‘The referee was called in by mistake,’ he said. ‘They must have been called in by the baseball federation because they didn’t have soccer in their heads. It was fun.’
Fun is not a word you would associate with this tour and, with Mourinho in this kind of mood, the concern for the United hierarchy is that it could get a whole lot worse yet.