Despite their 4-1 loss to Borussia Dortmund in their opening game of the International Champions Cup, Mourinho is remaining calm and is confident that United are on track.
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David de Gea, Wayne Rooney, Paddy McNair, Chris Smalling, and Marcus Rashford are some of the United players that featured in the tournament who made the trip to China.
“They started training a couple of weeks before us and they didn’t have so many players like we did in the Copa America and the Euros”.
While speaking about the opponents, Jose Mourinho said, “They [Dortmund] are a team that has played five matches and a team that has five matches in their legs”.
Dortmund celebrate after their thumping victory against United at Shanghai. I know in pre-season the team in the advanced stage of preparation looks better. He wanted to play every game. We established the profile of four players to improve the squad, to give us more options, especially adapted to my way of thinking about football.
It’s been a while since Manchester United won any important trophy and the owners are hell-bent on changing that. Manchester United has more fans here than Dortmund and they are expected to cheer for the English team.
“I want to bring the motivational levels up and bring the confidence back, but being intelligent and know that the reality we face in the Premier League is different than 10, 20 years ago”. You have seen we had some chances but we are just not fit enough yet.
“I think 3-2 would be more natural than 4-1 but Dortmund showed the good quality they had, individually and collectively”.
Juan Mata’s position has come under particular scrutiny due to the fact that Mourinho sold him as Chelsea manager in January 2014, but the Portuguese was insistent that the Spaniard has a future at Old Trafford with the arduous fixture list ahead of the club this season. Pep Guardiola’s team will then travel to Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, to complete the three-match ICC series against Dortmund on Thursday.
Instead of accompanying his Manchester United team-mates on their pre-season tour of China, Zlatan Ibrahimovic will receive a tailor-made preparation program.
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Rooney said he joined United from Everton in summer 2004 because Ferguson was in charge and he won all but one of his major honours while playing for him.
