Former Portugal defender Fernando Meira has defended Jose Mourinho’s time at Manchester United and laid the blame squarely on the players at Old Trafford.
Mourinho fell out with most of his players and the Manchester United hierarchy before he was sacked in December last year following a demoralising defeat to Liverpool at Anfield.
The Portuguese took charge of Tottenham last month and is set to return to Old Trafford for the first time with his new team tonight since being sacked by Manchester United.
Mourinho’s cautious approach towards the end of his time at Manchester United has been blamed for his eventual sacking, but Meira feels he did not have the calibre of players he needed to succeed at Old Trafford.
The former defender, who played under the Spurs manager at Benfica, also believes the Manchester United players more or less stopped playing for the Portuguese towards the end of his reign.
“Some people don’t understand how he didn’t have success at Manchester United”, the Portuguese told The Athletic.
“Manchester United is a great club, and Mourinho a great coach, but you need great players and great personalities and he didn’t have that.
“No one at the level of a Rio Ferdinand, a Roy Keane, a Paul Scholes, a Ryan Giggs. That makes an enormous difference to the attitude of the group.
“The players clearly didn’t want to win for Mourinho — and that is really ugly.
“Happily, what goes around comes around and you see now that Manchester United are nowhere in the English league.”
Mourinho has a hundred per cent record since taking charge of Tottenham and would likely enjoy piling on the pressure on his successor Ole Gunnar Solskjaer with a win over Manchester United.
