When Manchester United sacked Jose Mourinho on Tuesday, you didn’t hear any of the players that he had been managing publicly speak out in support of him. Mourinho was known to have his differences with some of the roster, and with a few players the quarrels became rather public.
There are three players with which this was especially true- Paul Pogba, Luke Shaw and Anthony Martial. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer took the reigns of the team on an interim basis starting Saturday, and the first match was a laugher- a 5-1 rout at Cardiff City. After the blowout, Paul Pogba went to the media mixed zone and expressed his thanks to Mourinho.
Pogba said that some things didn’t work well, but the important thing was that they won trophies.
Well, technically United did win trophies, plural, albeit minor ones with the 2016-17 Europa League and EFL Cup. It was a nice thing of Pogba to say, as it paints a nicer picture of the Mourinho era than it actually was. Luke Shaw took this idea up a notch by saying Mourinho won three trophies, as he included the Community Shield.
And the English left back says that more people need to show Mourinho greater respect for that.
“It’s not very nice when something as big as that happens at the club but I think we as players and as a team show respect in what happened,” Luke Shaw said.
“People might be quick to forget what Jose did for United — the three trophies he won — he did a lot. One of the trophies was one we had not won before. He took us to three trophies in one season so those people need to respect him and remember what he did for not only us as a team to win those trophies but the fans as well.”
To be completely accurate though, the main reason United hadn’t won the Europa League competition previously was because most of the time they weren’t relegated to it. Usually, they were playing in the Champions League instead.
Luke Shaw, much like Pogba, showed a lot of class and professionalism with his statements. It will be interesting to see if Anthony Martial follows suit or not.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, regularly appears as a guest pundit on WGN CLTV and co-hosts the “Let’s Get Weird, Sports” podcast on SB Nation.
He also contributes sociopolitical essays to Chicago Now. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram. The content of his cat’s Instagram account is unquestionably superior to his.