Former Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho has revealed that he didn’t get the level of support at the club that current incumbent Erik ten Hag is getting, saying his professional relationship with Ed Woodward was ‘not the best’.
The former Chelsea and Real Madrid boss spent two-and-a-half years in charge of United between July 2016 and December 2018. He was replaced by Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, with Ralf Ragnick and Ten Hag the others to have taken the job since Mourinho’s dismissal.
There has been uncertainty over the future of Ten Hag for the last few months, with his situation not helped by almost being knocked out of the FA Cup by Championship side Coventry City on Sunday. United were pegged back from 3-0 up at Wembley before eventually coming out as winners on penalties.
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Mourinho has now opened up on his relationship with the club, both during his time at Old Trafford and since leaving. He feels that Ten Hag is being treated differently.
“My relationship with [former chief executive] Ed Woodward was good,” Mourinho said in an interview with the Telegraph. “Good as in the personal point of view. Even now we send an SMS. But from a professional point of view it was not the best.
“I am who I am. I am a football man. Ed comes from a different background and what Ten Hag has in his time at Manchester United I didn’t have. I didn’t have that level of support. I didn’t have that level of trust.
“So I left sad, because I felt I was in the beginning of the process. In some moments, I felt if they trusted me and believed in my experience things could be different.”
Mourinho did lead United to a second-placed finish in his second season in charge of the club, but was sacked just six months later after a poor start to the next campaign. The decision came after back-to-back defeats against Valencia in the Champions League and Liverpool in the Premier League.
