Former manager of Manchester United, José Mourinho, has lamented the lack of support he received during his tenure at the club, suggesting that better results could have been achieved with greater trust and backing, similar to what Erik ten Hag is currently experiencing.
Mourinho, who led United from 2016 to 2018 and secured Europa League and Carabao Cup victories during his tenure, expressed his sentiments in an interview with The Telegraph.
He attributed the challenges he faced in achieving results to his strained relationship with then-chief executive Ed Woodward.
“My relationship with [former chief executive] Ed Woodward was good. Good as in the personal point of view,” Mourinho said. “Even now, we send an SMS. But from a professional point of view, it was not the best. I am who I am. I am a football man. Ed comes from a different background and what Ten Hag had in his time at Manchester United, I didn’t have.
“I didn’t have that level of support. I didn’t have that level of trust. So I left sad, because I felt I was at the beginning of the process. In some moments, I felt if they trusted me and believed in my experience, things could be different.”
Mourinho added that there are members of United’s squad now that he wanted to get rid of during his tenure owing to their lack of professionalism.
“There are still a couple of players still there that I didn’t want five or six years ago,” he said. “I think they represent a little bit of what I consider not the best professional profile for a club of a certain dimension.
But I did my job there. Time always tells the truth. I would love Manchester United to succeed.”
During his tenure at United, Mourinho experienced conflicts with key players like Paul Pogba and Bastian Schweinsteiger. Schweinsteiger recently revealed that Mourinho unjustly ostracised him from the dressing room. In an interview with The Telegraph, Mourinho shared his empathy for Pogba’s predicament regarding a four-year suspension for a doping violation.
“I am not enjoying Paul’s situation at all,” he said. “The only thing I say is that it happens to almost everybody in some moments of your career: you lose a little bit of the sense of who you are and what you have to be.
“The season after France won the World Cup, I think Paul came back different. The World Cup brought him into a dimension where football was not the most important thing for him.”
Ten Hag’s position at United is uncertain after Jim Ratcliffe’s investment and the club’s subsequent restructuring.
Despite reaching the FA Cup final for the second consecutive season, their victory over Coventry City required penalties after squandering a 3-0 lead against the lower-tier team.