Mourinho has had another dig at Wenger and Klopp after signing Pogba

José Mourinho has had another dig at Arsène
Wenger and Jürgen Klopp, suggesting they are
not at clubs big enough to make a signing like
Manchester United’s world-record £89m
capture of Paul Pogba .
Last Friday the United manager branded his
counterparts from Arsenal and Liverpool “not
ethical” after they questioned the fee his club
were reportedly set to spend on bringing Pogba
back from Juventus.
And following United’s announcement in the
early hours of Tuesday morning that the Pogba
deal was officially done, Mourinho told MUTV:
“I know the discussion, I understand that,
sometimes in football, things happen and the
club breaks the record, but this is only possible
at clubs like Man United.

“When I heard some of the comments and
heard some of the managers criticising that, I
don’t think they ever have this problem
because, to have this problem, you need to be
at one of the top clubs in the world. So at Man
United it can happen.”
While Mourinho feels the “unbelievable”
Pogba “has everything”, he has stressed it may
take time before the 23-year-old France
international is fully firing in the United side
and has vowed to protect him if needed.
“He’s a very young player, an unbelievable
midfield player with such physicality but, at the
same time, such agility, coordination, skill. He
has everything,” he said. “What he has to learn
now is how to play with us because I always
say that in football you can be a super player,
like he is, but a team is a team and you need to
learn how to play in the team, and the team
needs to learn how to play with you. We need
to get the best out of him and this will be a
process. So if he needs protection, I am here to
protect.
“I know some people think that he arrives here
now and, the first time he touches the ball, he
scores, but I’m here to protect him and give
him the best conditions to be what we think he
is going to be, which is a football player for
Man United, a reference for this club. I’m so
happy.

"He doesn't look like a star. He
looks like a kid who is back to his
old school"
José Mourinh

Four years after leaving the club for Juve,
Pogba has returned to United as one of the
biggest stars in the game. Asked if the player
seemed happy to be back in Manchester,
Mourinho replied: “I can feel that when I speak
with him for the first time. I’m feeling now
when I see him at the training ground with
people he knows since he was a kid. He doesn’t
look like a star. He looks like a kid who is back
to his old school and is finding people that he
cares about and people that love him a lot.
“So I believe that, after a couple of days, he will
feel like he never left the club. So I think at
adaptation level, he’s not a new player – he’s
just a kid back home again.”
Mourinho – who has also signed Zlatan
Ibrahimovic, Henrikh Mkhitarayan and Eric
Bailly following his appointment in May –
added that he is happy with his squad. “It’s the
first time I’ve worked with such a number of
players because I’m used to working with 20
plus the keepers, and we have in the squad 23
plus the keepers. So we had to make decisions
and let some players go on loan, and try to sell
others,” he said.
“This group of 23 is a great group and I think in
this moment – and I told them this – there is a
little bit of frustration for the ones that I have
not selected. They work hard to be in the
match and they aren’t, and this is going to
happen in the next two or three weeks because
we have just one Premier League match.
“But, in September, the Capital One Cup starts,
the Europa League starts, we start playing three
matches a week and then everybody is
involved and the squad is good. The empathy
between the guys is really good too, so I’m
happy with the squad.”