MANCHESTER, Sporting Alert – New manager Jose Mourinho has found his managerial spark once again and is looking forward to his first preseason with Manchester United for Tour 2016.
Mourinho, who took over from Louis van Gaal after the Dutchman was sacked at the end of last season, has been busy putting everything together for preseason and he’s buzzing to see everything come together.
The former Chelsea manager, who was fired in the middle of last season after a poor start and a relationship breakdown with the Blues, believes the preseason tour will be an important experience for both him and his players.
Manchester United is slated to have a very intense preseason campaign, with the Premier League side playing two matches in the International Champions Cup in China against Borussia Dortmund on July 22 and Manchester City three days later.
The Portugal coach is hoping the trip will offer some time for bonding.
“I hope to see a group, from an emotional point of view, coming together and getting to know each other better and understanding each other better,” Mourinho said on Manchester United official website at www.manutd.com.
“It’s important from a football point of view, but also from a human qualities point of view, that’s very important.
“The fact that we won’t travel with every player, from a tactical point of view, breaks a little bit the objective of a pre-season tour, but that’s the way it is.
“We cannot make miracles and the players cannot go directly from the Euros to pre-season. They need their break and we need them for the next 10 months.”
He added: “It will be a bit strange, especially for a new manager that needs to know the players and to work with the players, but I think the pre-season tours are also for the club dimension, the club projection and club connection which, in this case, is the Asian market, commercially and for the fan-base, it’s a lot about that.
“From that perspective, I expect a group that understands the dimension of this club and understands what Man United fans around in the world, in this case Asia, are expecting from us.”
