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Former Manchester United coach, Jose Mourinho, has opened up on his time at the club and claimed that there was never any direct contact between the manager and owners during his time at Old Trafford. This starkly contrasts to his time as Chelsea coach in 2004.
The Portuguese boss, who was recently sacked by Roma, spoke of the poor lines of communication that existed in the corridors of power at United.
Whilst speaking on Rio Ferdinand’s VIBE with FIVE podcast, he stated, “for a coach not to have a direct communication with the ownership, and for a coach not to have a structure that shares the same principles and the same ideas, was not easy”.
The 61 year old coach went on to claim that this lack of being on the same page, would have “consequences at many levels”.
Reflecting on his time at the club, Mourinho claimed that the media killed him but did not understand the context that he was working in.
Elaborating further on the issue he said, “the coach was in a hybrid position” and that “in the years before, everything was very very clear” between the ownership, Sir Alex Ferguson and David Gill.
However, this is not what the Champions League winning boss found.
Speaking furher on the matter he revealed, “it was changing and then the structure was not very fluid”.
The former Chelsea manager would later speak glowingly of his arrival at Chelsea and would paint a contrasting picture between what he found at both clubs.
According to Mourinho, Chelsea “were almost there” when he arrived in 2004. “They had done a job previously. They had a very good vision in transfer market. The empathy between the structure was good. That structure was not complex, it was very simple. Roman (Abramovich), Peter Kenyon, Jose. There was a big trust in that”.
Mourinho of course, would fall out with the United hierarchy in December 2018 and would be sacked from his role after a poor summer window and start to the season.
It must be stated that he is not the only manager to critique the structure of the club.
Louis van Gaal has been a vocal critic of how the club was run during his time at the helm.
Talking to the BBC in 2019, the former Ajax man claimed, “the structure is not so bad but the right hand has to be a technical director with a football view, not somebody with a banker’s role”.
“Unfortunately, we are talking about a commercial club, not a football club. I spoke to Ferguson about this and in his last years, he also had problems with it.”
All United fans will hope new owners INEOS can learn from previous mistakes. Things look good on that front so far as they have already appointed respected football people like Omar Berrada and Jean-Claude Blanc and look like sealing a deal for Dan Ashworth become the club’s new sporting director.
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