Jose Mourinho, Manchester United coach, has indicated that young players in his team; Anthony Martial, Jesse Lingard, Marcus Rashford and Luke Shaw, lack maturity.
In an interview with Univision, Mourinho said promising footballers of this generation are “spoilt” and are not prepared for life because they enjoy a lot of privileges.
He said: “Maturity. When I say that, I mean maturity at a personal level. We (talking to the interviewer, Bulgarian great, Hristo Stoichkov) are more men, we are more mature, we were more prepared to face life. We were less protected. In England, they call it ‘spoilt’. Today, we’re talking about ‘spoilt kids’. Our children are more ‘spoilt’ than we were.
“I think kids these days have a different social life than us, and players have around them an ‘entourage’, and I mean a personal entourage, the people that surround them, that protect them more, give them more affection, more excuses. They reach maturity more slowly.
“For example, this kid, Luke Shaw, who is currently the national team’s left-back, when I arrived here two years ago, he didn’t know how to compete. He had great potential, yes, but he didn’t know how to compete. When we talk about Luke Shaw, Martial, Lingard, Rashford, we’re talking about kids with great potential but still lack a word I can’t say but that you like a lot… they lack a bit of that.”
However, a sport news website, Sport witness, stated that the United boss, who granted the interview in Spanish, could have been misquoted by the writer at some point.
According to the website, Mourinho, who spoke in Spanish during the interview, had wanted to say ‘cojones’, which means ‘balls’, but the interviewer mentioned ‘character’, to which though the coach agreed to.
The former Chelsea manager was also quoted to have said that young players “lacking personality and that natural aggression”.
Sport witness further debunked reports making the rounds on some major global news sites that Mourinho said Shaw doesn’t know how to “behave.”
