MANCHESTER // Alex Ferguson approached Jose Mourinho with a special request recently: could he travel with Manchester United’s players on the team bus?
“Don’t ask permission,” Mourinho told him. “You can just come. Choose your seat. If you choose the seat where I am then I’ll move.”
Ferguson respected Mourinho’s position and was careful not to take his eventual replacement’s seat.
Mourinho, talking in an interview in the new edition of the United We Stand fanzine, enjoys a productive relationship with the man who managed the club between 1986 and 2013.
He invited him for lunch at the Carrington training ground so that Ferguson could be reunited with his old members of staff.
Before the recent home game against Middlesbrough, Mourinho specially made his way through the labyrinth of tunnels underneath the Old Trafford main stand to where Ferguson was sitting at his own table in the directors’ lounge to wish him a happy 75th birthday.
Ferguson was always made to feel welcome by previous managers David Moyes and Louis van Gaal and was hand to dispense advice to interim manager Ryan Giggs in 2014. Many of his former players keep in touch with the man who was in charge at Old Trafford for 26 years and several have been invited to attend games with him at Old Trafford.
Ferguson’s success was partly based on his redeveloping the youth system at Old Trafford, which helped them win 13 Premier League crowns, two Uefa Champions League titles, as well as many other trophies.
After several of their rivals followed suit and began to surpass United in youth recruitment, United set about a reorganisation of their system, bringing in new scouts and coaches, including two from Manchester City.
Yet Mourinho expresses frustration about the structure of youth football in England.
Asked why his home country of Portugal, with a population of only 10 million, could produce so much talent that they are European champions, Mourinho told United We Stand: “Because the competition at youth level in Portugal is very good.
“I’m not saying the formation of players is good everywhere. We don’t have magic coaches. We don’t have any special powder which makes players. Competition makes players.
“At the age of 13, 14, 15, the kids in Portugal play already 15 times Benfica against Porto, Porto against Sporting and Sporting against Benfica to decide the champion of Portugal. Here (in England) until they are 16 they play for peanuts. They play friendlies.”
Mourinho is impressed by several of the youth players at Old Trafford, although he does not consider any of them ready for the first team. His priorities obviously lie with the first XI, but he is in regular communication with the changing roster of youth team coaches.
Mourinho will shortly come up against one he was in contact with when he took over. Warren Joyce was in charge of United’s reserve side until November when he accepted the manager’s job at struggling Championship club Wigan Athletic.
Wigan will visit Old Trafford in the FA Cup for club’s next home game on January 28.
That is after the small matter of Sunday’s Premier League clash against Liverpool.
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