Happened to have bought L'Equipe this morning. So I propose this transcription about MU part of the whole ITW with more context and answers.
Q: Is PSG better structured than Manchester United ?
JM: I don't know. I know Manchester United, I know it's a club with an incredible history. With ambitions that are in accordance with his past but not his potential as of today. I told 9, 10 months ago that after winning 8 championships, finishing 2nd with MU might be my greatest achievement. Now people are understanding.
Q: At United, did you train like in Porto, for example ?
JM: No there's no exercise I do today I did in Porto. But in Porto, there was this empathy through the whole structure. If you stay in a player-coach relationship, it doesn't work. Everybody needs to be on the same page.
Q: That's what went missing in Manchester United ?
JM: For Manchester United I can only say 2 things. One is that time spoke for itself. Two, problems are still there.
Q: Were you a Paul Pogba victim ?
JM: No.
Q: Problems weren't the players ?
JM: Problems are here, you can think about players, organization, ambition, I only say that I can't say yes if you ask me if Paul Pogba was the sole reason.
Q: Conflicts with Anthony Martial are the same as the ones you knew with Karim Benzema in Real ?
JM: With Karim, it wasn't a conflict, I only wanted to help the player [a player with amazing talent] to change his mentality, to help him reach his maximum. To become a killer, a lethal striker. I really liked working with Karim.
Q: Less with Anthony ?
JM: It's a boy with a different personnality. The only thing I could say, it's that I hope he will reach a dimension that is in correlation to his real potential.
Also, the mighty question about the Mourinho 3rd year (and some potential United words)
Q: How do you explain your 3rd year syndrom ?
JM: In Chelsea, the 3rd year, I was 2nd in the League, I lost in UCL semis in penalty shoutout and we won the Cup and the League Cup. Not bad for a 3rd year ! In Madrid, we lost in UCL semis, we lost in Cup final and we were 2nd in the league. Finally in United, we got out of a difficult UCL group with Valencia and Juventus, and in the league you are right results were not good.
Generally, players can feel somewhat of an erosion. Especially when you're asking them a lot. When I say that the second season was fantastic, I say that because the potential and the goals were in tune [How the interview is written you can only guess he's talking about United].
Why ? Because I pressed, like an orange, a lot, to achieve it. When you have a group of players very professional, ambitious, working hard, talented, a structured club, you don't have this erosion.
When you're nearly alone, you don't have the full backing of the club, [so the coming part is very hard to translate and very weirdly written in french actually] so some players are going to search for the opposite of a coach, the nice guy. I don't want to be the nice guy, because the nice guy, after 3 months, is becoming a puppet and it doesn't end well. But you don't need to be the always negative coach (lol). You need to find this balance. In fact, the problem for the coach is the same as the teacher in school. I understood it, one day, when a player told me : "Coach, please, if you want to critize me, don't critize me in front of other players." "Why?", I asked him. "Because you're attacking my status". It's hell of a change ! A team, it's a team. A group of players, it's a group of brothers. The coach is here like a father, it's a family, and in a family you're talking openly. When a player say something like that, you need to change the way of act. The nice guy, is not a coach. But you can't be permanently a man of conflict. You need to find a position, the one I could have had with very mature groups. When you're not the boss, you're not the one with the power. You need to be the leader, the leader.
Cheers (and sorry for grammatical mistakes)
. Mourinino is a nasty , bitter , yesterdays man . Anything he has to say now or in the future in relation to Man Utd is irrelevant . The club may have the wrong owners , wrong boardroom , wrong management , wrong players but it is still better off without that virus around the place .