The United boss said unhappy players will be allowed to leave before the close of the summer transfer window, but Mourinho does not expect Mata to be one of them.
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The midfielder said on MUTV: “They are a very good team, and they had already played four games [in pre-season]”. It happens year after year. Apart from that we know other clubs are also involved and for us it is not kind of ‘are we going to win the race or to lose the race?’.
“The team with four matches in their legs against the team with one match”.
“The way he grew up playing the sports he did before football, especially martial arts, he was prepared in terms of his muscles, and the mental point of view in a different way to the traditional football player, in his DNA, his motivation”. “We started training three weeks ago and we feel very good”.
“But 10 days of work, people are really exhausted, matches against high quality opposition that, I repeat, are in a much advanced stage of their preparation”.
Of course, it would be wrong to read too much into friendlies, even when they’ve got such glamorous branding around them, but there are some things you can’t help but notice.
Mourinho refused to cast judgement on players, despite Sam Johnstone, Antonio Valencia and Marcos Rojo all making individual errors which led to Dortmund goals. But at the same time I think it is intelligent to understand that times are different and realities are different.
Manchester United would pull one back through a Henrikh Mkhitaryan to make it 3-1 in the 59th minute.
“At this moment they are much, much, much sharper and you can see that easily, so it is hard to judge my players”. The quality and mentality and personality is there. “It’s easy for me”, he added. A team working for about a month and another working for a maximum of 15 days.
On interest in Juventus’ Paul Pogba.
“Until 31 August the market is open for every one of my players that is not happy, but to be fair I think he is [happy]”.
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The manager said: “Sometimes people say the team has no leaders, it’s this, it’s that, but what we need is everybody with the same kind of mentality”. That didn’t stop this lot making hay whilst they still can.
