Jose’s swipe at lack of support

JOSE Mourinho appears to have taken aim at United over the structure of the club’s football operation.

The Portuguese has laid low since his sacking by Ed Woodward a week before Christmas but he gave an exclusive interview to beIN Sports yesterday – and suggested some clubs need to change the way they operate due to the times we live in. He suggested clubs now need to have sporting directors in place. “In the modern world, in modern football, news is when you have problems,” Mourinho said. “That’s news and in modern football, I don’t like to say that it is a problem between the coach and the player, I think it is a problem between the coach without a structure behind him and the player.

“We are not anymore in the time when the coach by himself is powerful enough to cope and to have a relationship of education, and sometimes confrontation, with players that are not the best professionals. The coaches nowadays, they need a structure, they need the club organised in a certain way where instead of being a manager, there cannot be a direct relationship between the player and the coach anymore because, step by step, it is going to arrive into a situation where you must have hard decisions.

“And who is to blame? The clubs without a structure to create a situation where the player is not anymore in a situation of a direct relation with the manager, but, yes, a relation with the structure.”