The pair first clashed in 2009 when Mourinho was manager of Inter Milan and Guardiola was at Barcelona and the rivalry has continued ever since.
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The Portuguese tactician said that the match will be taken as a joke as the state of the pitch is a threat to his players’ fitness.
City are scheduled to play Borussia Dortmund in Shenzhen, China on July 28 before facing Arsenal in Sweden on August 7. ‘The pitch and the conditions of my players are more important than results in pre-season.
“We don’t want to expend too much energy in training because of the humidity but we stay here, we play, and then go back to Manchester for two more weeks of preparation before the first official game”.
Captain Vincent Kompany is in Beijing with the squad after recovering from an injury-blighted campaign in 2015-16, but did not train with the rest of the players as he is undergoing his own intensive programme to regain full fitness.
“The ones in the first plane were lucky because the plane was great and we land safely and we were in the hotel in good conditions to have dinner”. I just hope their motivation doesn’t go down from the last few days.
While both laughed off the suggestions that they would refuse the pre-match show of respect, there may yet be no handshake as the match is in serious jeopardy. Of course, I shake his hand. Why should we have a problem?
“We worked together at Barcelona and we worked against each other in Spain”.
Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho has admitted to having concerns over the “very bad” pitch conditions for his side’s friendly meeting with Manchester City in Beijing. We play on the Thursday, you travel a lot.
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United manager Mourinho was openly critical of the playing surface in China ahead of the game, and said his players would be fortunate to avoid injury. So what I want is to go to Manchester and start training with the whole group and play against Galatasaray and play Everton before we play Leicester and try to be in the best possible condition for the Premier League. I don’t understand the question to him [Guardiola] and I don’t understand the question to myself. “Everything he got I see nobody offer him, he had to fight for it”, he said. The plane was not good. “But it’s a friendly game – a really friendly game”.
