Last weekend, Manchester United central defender Phil Jones left England’s international friendly against Germany midway through the first half. He received six injections, claims United manager Jose Mourinho, before limping off, and inciting ire in the Red Devils boss. Mourinho launched into a major tirade against the England Football Association, and is relationship with Three Lions Manager Gareth Southgate has never been worse.
Mourinho gave an epic rant at his weekly news conference on Friday.
This is a classic club versus country row, as we often see shortly before or after international breaks, and it’s getting extremely heated.
“I have been a manager since 2000 and in 17 years I don’t have one single player that had injections of anesthetic to play a friendly. Never. Never,” Mourinho said.
“I am not an angel and I had players be injected to play official matches, crucial matches but a friendly, to get six local anesthetic injections to play a friendly, I’ve never heard of that, but Phil Jones had it and had it before the match and after 25 minutes he was out and he is out (for Saturday’s match against Newcastle United).
“I am just telling a fact. He was injected in the afternoon of the match, he didn’t feel good during the warm up. Between the warm up and the start of the match he had five more local injections to play the friendly.”
Mourinho also went on to say that any of the players who didn’t see action for England this past international break, due to fitness concerns, probably won’t play in this weekend’s league action. He added that if they do, it’s very suspicious.
“I expect that every player who was injured last week is not playing,” Mourinho continued.
“If a player was injured and the player is ready to play [this weekend] there is something that is going wrong, so Phil Jones was injured and obviously he is injured for Saturday. If any player is ready for Saturday there is something strange.”
England were also without the services of Tottenham Hotspur trio Harry Kane, Dele Alli and Harry Winks, as well as Manchester City duo Raheem Sterling and Fabian Delph.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and the Tribune company’s blogging community Chicago Now.
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