Portuguese newspaper Record have featured an interview with coach Ricardo Formosinho.
For the past few years, the 64-year-old had been working in the Premier League, where he was José Mourinho’s assistant at Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur.
Formosinho claimed the coaching staff did a great job at the Red Devils, as they picked up trophies, despite not winning the Premier League. And when quizzed about the problems faced at Old Trafford, especially with players, he had a quick answer to it.
“I’m not going to mention names but we had a lot of problems, one of which was players who went on vacation normally and arrived… World champions. It was very difficult to live in this climate of tension.”
Manchester United only had one player in France’s World Cup squad, and that was Paul Pogba. On Monday, the midfielder’s agent Mino Raiola once again created drama by saying the Frenchman’s time in Manchester is over.
Formosinho was questioned about other problems they had, and this time, he blamed a transfer.
“In the last year we lost a great man and leader of the dressing room: Zlatan Ibrahimovic. He was an irreplaceable reference. We really missed him.”
Then Record mentioned that Manchester United started winning when Mourinho and his staff left the club, and Formosinho claims that’s a normal thing to happen.
“In the first phase, yes, which is normal as an immediate consequence of the change. The players understood that it was a breath of fresh air, they wanted to please the new coach but… it didn’t take much to conclude that the problem was more complicated than changing coaches. The truth is that the team was no better than the one we left there. And they continue not to win.”
Formosinho followed Mourinho to Tottenham Hotspur, but left the London side last summer, and he’s now focused on becoming a manager. He claims he had offers from Asia, the Middle East and ‘even from Europe’, but none of them attracted him enough, and the pandemic has been making things harder to find the ideal job.
