Friday, July 14, 2017

FULL TRANSCRIPT OF MOURINHO'S PRESS CONFERENCE ALONGSIDE LINGARD, AHEAD OF LA GALAXY CLASH. .


LINGARD, ON HIS ROLE
“I think everyone plays their part in the team, you have to try and be involved in as many goals as possible. I’m working on it.

“I’m 24 now and I’ve been around a very long time, there is a lot of responsibility playing for best club in the world.”

LINGARD, ON NEW PLAYERS.
“Yeah they’ve settled very well, it’s an easy squad to integrate with, Romelu and Paul are very close.

“Romelu has settled in well, we know what he do with the goals he scores.If he can bring that here it would be a big help.

“Romelu is very strong and physical and I think he will cause defenders problems this season, we’ve seen it in training.”

MOURINHO, ON MORATA.
“I don’t like to speak about players who aren’t ours, because Morata is not our player.

I am nobody to speak about players from Real Madrid.
“Yes, we have had interest, that is obvious and it’s public.

We have not come to an economic agreement, that is obvious as well.
“But it’s a Real Madrid’s right to ask for their players the amount of money that they want.

We do not determine what the price is of a player of Real Madrid, Real Madrid do that. And we didn’t arrive at an agreement with Real Madrid.

“I do not criticise Madrid and I am not going to criticise my board because my board has made the offer, and they have tried to reach an agreement during a time, and they didn’t come to an agreement. It’s simple.”

MOURINHO, ON THE PRE-SEASON.
“Pre-season is a mixture of factors, ingredients, if you stay in Manchester the facilities are good, we are at home but commercially is not good and that is another really important fact for the players to be together 24 hours for two and a half weeks and welcome to the new people, try to make them adapt as soon as possible.

“Here we have everything, the facilities are very good, the organisation is very good, it’s not chaotic, still since 2004 I’m searching for the first mistake, it never arrives, it’s amazing, the players like to come to here, by the social point of view it’s good because this country gives us soccer people freedom, they can walk outside, sit some place and have a drink together, they can go shopping and have a little social life.

MOURINHO, ON THEIR OPPONENTS.
“Opponents are good because American teams are in the middle of their competition, so it’s good to have tired people against fresh people, they will play at a higher speed and intensity plus altitude in Salt Lake City is a different factor for us and then we train against some of the best clubs in the world, against some of the best players in the world and that’s good for us going back into the Champions League, a diff reality to the Europa League, which is very difficult to win but in the Champions League we are going to find the four or five best teams in the world and in Manchester City, Real Madrid and Barcelona we are going to get that.”

MOURINHO ON HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH LUKAKU.
“I didn’t negotiate, it was Mr Woodward who negotiated with Romelu, his agent and the Everton board, the only thing I did was to call him when the situation was almost there just to guarantee him that he would be an important player in my team.

“It’s quite a great experience the fact we worked together already for a few months and during the time when I was at Chelsea and when he was at Everton our relationship was always very close despite it not working well for us together.

“He’s intelligent, he’s polite, we kept the contact, the feeling and now we are back together in different moments and I have no doubts it is going to work.”

“Hopefully goals, he’s the kind of player that everybody knows he’s a striker so we’re not speaking about a multi functional player or create doubts about positions on the pitch, he’s a strier and normally strikers score goals.

“The reason why he was so important and difficult to get is what he did in the Premier League because obviously there are other good strikers in football but the Premier League is a very specific habitat, a different habitat, normally they need some time to adapt and Lukaku plays in Premier League for the last four or five seasons.

“So now he comes to a club with a different responsibility than Everton or WBA, and I think he comes in the right moment because he is young but still has years of experience with the Premier League and Belgian national team, it’s his first Champions League competition which was his main motivation so the fact we qualified also played an important role.”

MOURINHO ON THEIR RIVALS IN THE LEAGUE.
“Every club in the Premier League is powerful, has money to buy, to refuse to sell, and people don’t focus on the power to keep the players and refuse to sell.

“I think the market is so strange, the prices are absolutely out of context, so the clubs with not the power to sell, refuse to sell, are one step ahead and there are many clubs in the Premier League who refuse to sell their best players and that is fantastic and makes the competition so hard.

“Every match is a difficult match, in every match you have the risk to lose and that’s why the Premier League is the Premier League.”

MOURINHO, ON TITLE CHALLENGERS.
“First of all I think after the champion, Chelsea, I think Manchester United is the second club that we can say most successful last season and Arsenal the third, for me that’s absolutely clear, to finish second, third or fourth is like being... because there is only one winner.

“Arsenal won a competition, we won two-and-a-half, I like to say, so the other clubs won nothing so they have to improve.”

MOURINHO, ON NEMANJA MATIC.
“I can’t say any word about a player who is a Chelsea player, it’s the same with Morata, we have to respect the player, the club, the owner, the manager.

“I don’t want to be disrespectful, we don’t have our door closed, we are not happy with just Lukaku and Lindelof, we need more, we wanted four, so I would say 50% of the job is done but I don’t want to say that because everything is so difficult.
MOURINHO, ON POSSIBLE ADDITIONS.
“I would not like to be in Ed Woodward’s position negotiating because everything is really difficult, so maybe we don’t get two, we get one but we need one more to give us more options.

“We have players that belong to the squad but cannot play for next few months, Rojo, Ashley Young, Luke Shaw, if Zlatan stays.

“We need two more players I would say, at least one but I don’t want to say Matic or any other name because I don’t think it’s correct.”
MOURINHO ON ZLATAN.
“Possible, it’s open (re-signing Zlatan). Of course we wanted to be honest and open and let everything for him to make the decision.

“At the same time let’s make a decision that makes us all happy and if that is for him to stay and for us to wait, let’s say in December maybe, because I don’t think before December he can get back to competitive football but why not wait for a player who gave us so much, we are changing ideas and it’s with Mr Woodward and Zlatan’s agent but the final decision is the best for the player.”

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