Schweinsteiger the first casualty in Mourinho’s Manchester United reign

By on August 6, 2016

Jose Mourinho was brought to the helm at Manchester United to make sweeping changes. That he is doing, for certain, and ruffling more than a few feathers in the process. As is typical Mourinho style, the Portuguese manager will undoubtedly be prepared to displace numerous Manchester United players in an attempt to stamp his authority on his squad, and he has already selected his first victim: Bastian Schweinsteiger.

The World Cup winning midfielder was reportedly exiled from his teammates before Mourinho even took charge of his first preseason friendly, being forced to with the reserves as Mourinho paves the way for the impending arrival of Paul Pogba.

Predictably, Mourinho’s treatment of the German legend has been met with backlash from multiple figures in German football and made front-page headlines. Not that Mourinho would mind; though his combativeness often spells his downfall, it’s also a cornerstone of his managerial style and makes his coaching tenures fascinating to watch.

This latest war of words has already evolved into a nasty battle between Mourinho and Bayern Munich president Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, all in the span of a few short days.

Regarding Schweinsteiger specifically, Mourinho has played down the issue.

“What is happening is what is happening in every club in the world, which is that the manager decides his squad and chooses a certain number of players to face the season. That’s it,” he said, per ESPNFC.

“I normally like to work with 20 players plus the three goalkeepers, which is what I do for 15 years. But we have so many players, so many competitions, especially the Europa League, which changes the profile of the season a lot.

“You have the big risk of traveling a lot, playing Premier League. So I made the decision to play with 23 players and two goalkeepers, which is a lot. I had to make my decisions, it’s simple.”

Rummenigge, however, believed Mourinho’s actions would dissuade other players from joining Manchester United and FifPro executive Dejan Stefanovic went as far to claim that Mourinho should go to jail.

Mourinho, in response, somehow twisted an innocuous question about Leicester City into a withering critique of Munich’s monarchy at the top of German football and the impossibility of a Bundesliga version of last year’s Leicester City title.

“This is the only country where everyone wants this to happen,” Mourinho said, per The Guardian. “This is the only country where the football structures allow this to happen. In the other countries, the powerful clubs don’t want this to happen. In the other countries, they do not want to have to share the money. They don’t want to share TV rights.

“In the other countries, they want to be comfortable and know they will always be the top dogs in the Champions League. They want it to be a competition of two, three or four and if possible a competition of just one. So this is a special country.”

Although Mourinho never once mentioned Munich by name, his criticism couldn’t have been more pointed.

“You have, around Europe, people who when you listen to them it looks like they are the Mother Teresa of football but they are not,” he continued. “You go to many countries and clearly, they are happy the way they are. It is not just about them being powerful. It is also to go to the clubs that can be direct competition and every season steal their best players so they don’t want a league. In this country, we want a league. Everybody wants a league. An amazing story like Leicester brings even more credibility to the Premier League and that’s why the Premier League is the Premier League.”

At this point, it’s almost hard to believe that there’s an actual player at the heart of this raging battle. Schweinsteiger, for his part, should take his money off the table as quickly as possible, lest he forgets the plight of Juan Mata, who suffered a similar fate at Chelsea. Mourinho doesn’t believe Schweinsteiger is mobile enough to execute his demanding tactics in the middle and has clearly shown him the exit door.

Although AC Milan and Inter Milan have shown early interest, according to reports, it’s an unfortunate exit for a move that was meant to be a triumphant last hurrah for the thirty-two-year-old.

Photo credit: Matt Janzer [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.