Matic: "I arrived at United with the anger to win trophies like I had at Chelsea, but step by step I started to feel that trophies were not the focus"

Licha-Vidic said:
We did our best every single year, the players, the coaches. In my first year, we finished second. We were leading in January but Man City won.
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We were 12 points behind in January. We were never close to City the entire season. Not sure what he's on about.
 
Glazers and Woodward were all about the balance sheet. How many jokes were made a decade ago with all the fecking sponsorship deals the club used to boast about. Official Noodles sponsor. Official Asian Energy Drink sponsor. Official Kitchen Accessories sponsor. Official American Snack sponsor.

They did more promo shoots for all that than actual training during the given week. All that money yet none of it went to anything worthwhile other than galactico signings or giving exorbitant contracts to existing players to ‘protect their value’

Maddening just thinking about it.
 
briansy said:
People moaning about Matic is music to the owner's ears. He speaks the truth with no agenda. Why not pay attention to what he is saying rather than attempting to trash his credibility?
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The owners don't give a feck what we think, even if they did, they've been thick as feck if they read anything in this thread that would be music to their ears.
 
The answers to this BS are interesting. How do people think United became one of the wealthiest clubs in the world even before SAF joined, how do they think players' wages and transfers have been largely paid? Also United isn't more commercial than the other wealthy clubs, our players aren't in more ads, they don't do more interviews.
 
JPRouve said:
The answers to this BS are interesting. How do people think United became one of the wealthiest clubs in the world even before SAF joined, how do they think players' wages and transfers have been largely paid? Also United isn't more commercial than the other wealthy clubs, our players aren't in more ads, they don't do more interviews.
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How do you assess that?
 
dubplate warrior said:
The club desperately needs a new stadium and hasn't had any investment in terms of its infrastructure for 20 years. New stakeholders come in and do exactly that and get criticised for it. You can't win.
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The club desperately needs to compete on the pitch. A new stadium won’t be doing that anytime soon, if ever.
 
svn said:
We were 12 points behind in January. We were never close to City the entire season. Not sure what he's on about.
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I think he’s confused it with the year we were second under Ole.
 
Why are people attacking Matic over these comments? Has he said anything that comes as a surprise here, or something that isn’t similar to what other people have said?

Also Matic was one of our better signings in the last decade, which in itself shows what a mess we’ve been that a Chelsea cast off with his best days behind him was still a decent signing for us.
 
Cloud7 said:
Why are people attacking Matic over these comments? Has he said anything that comes as a surprise here, or something that isn’t similar to what other people have said?

Also Matic was one of our better signings in the last decade, which in itself shows what a mess we’ve been that a Chelsea cast off with his best days behind him was still a decent signing for us.
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The general rule is it's ok for us to say this sort of shite, but if anyone else does it, it's disgraceful.
 
HTG said:
How do you assess that?
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A combination of the amount of commercial deals and the portion of commercial deals in clubs revenues? As an illustration right now if I'm not mistaken United has a total of 26 different sponsors while Bayern has 33, Real Madrid has 36, Liverpool has 23 or Barcelona 38.
 
JPRouve said:
The answers to this BS are interesting. How do people think United became one of the wealthiest clubs in the world even before SAF joined, how do they think players' wages and transfers have been largely paid? Also United isn't more commercial than the other wealthy clubs, our players aren't in more ads, they don't do more interviews.
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Somehow those clubs have managed to be commercial giants and serving up quality and results on the pitch.

Think blaming that aspect of the club for our football failings over the past decade is a massive cop out
 
JPRouve said:
The answers to this BS are interesting. How do people think United became one of the wealthiest clubs in the world even before SAF joined, how do they think players' wages and transfers have been largely paid? Also United isn't more commercial than the other wealthy clubs, our players aren't in more ads, they don't do more interviews.
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Matic twerking for the +1 respect and interaction baiting.
 
JPRouve said:
A combination of the amount of commercial deals and the portion of commercial deals in clubs revenues? As an illustration right now if I'm not mistaken United has a total of 26 different sponsors while Bayern has 33, Real Madrid has 36, Liverpool has 23 or Barcelona 38.
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Seems a bit arbitrary when we want to judge Matic‘s comments. Not saying he’s right. I just don’t get how you can comfortably claim he’s not. He can at least compare United and Chelsea on this matter. Roma and Benfica aren’t small clubs either. So I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss him. Because the number of sponsorships in itself says very little.
 
I honestly hate the Glazer bros. Putting accountants in charge of one of the largest football clubs in the world is insane.
Trying to take part of the big decisions themselves without any knowledge or experience whatsoever is insane. Makes a ton of sense the focus was on the commercial side. Growing the brand. Football was always second most important to these guys. At best.
Feels surreal we actually have guys in charge now that care about football and know a thing or two about it.
 
HTG said:
Seems a bit arbitrary when we want to judge Matic‘s comments. Not saying he’s right. I just don’t get how you can comfortably claim he’s not. He can at least compare United and Chelsea on this matter. Roma and Benfica aren’t small clubs either. So I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss him. Because the number of sponsorships in itself says very little.
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The problem is that what he claimed goes beyond him whether we talk about Chelsea or United, lets say that he didn't do more than 2 commercial jobs himself and ignoring his own Puma campaigns, is it true for his higher profile Chelsea teammates? I can already tell you that it's not the case Hazard was in every single ad campaigns of Chelsea's main sponsors, as were Drogba and Lampard before him. During his three years specifically the likes of Oscar, Diego Costa, Courtois and later Kanté were all in a number of "commercial jobs'" alongside Hazard.

But just think about this, you don't actually believe that during his three years at Chelsea they only participated to two media, sponsorship events? That's why I use the arbitrary number of sponsors because all the main sponsors do the same thing for all big clubs, they all at least have photoshoots involving the most popular players, while others also add commercials.
 
JPRouve said:
The answers to this BS are interesting. How do people think United became one of the wealthiest clubs in the world even before SAF joined, how do they think players' wages and transfers have been largely paid? Also United isn't more commercial than the other wealthy clubs, our players aren't in more ads, they don't do more interviews.
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United basically invented the commercial side of football, in Britain anyway, as you say it's how they paid for everything prior to tyhe PL and CL era's
 
I've only seen snippets but Matic appeared spot on. He had the right mentality.

Onana just says stupid things and often does stupid stuff. Looking forward to moving on from him to be honest.
 
VP89 said:
I've only seen snippets but Matic appeared spot on. He had the right mentality.

Onana just says stupid things and often does stupid stuff. Looking forward to moving on from him to be honest.
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He quite obviously didn't, since he claims that he lost hunger. Funnily enough, it gives context to his performances for Chelsea during Mourinho's last season or his similar magical decline during Mourinho's last season at United.
 
Eh, dead horse kick or something. Just more shite to beat the club with.

And of course you’ll do more commercial things at United than at Chelsea. I don’t even think the scale of the clubs is the same.

Commercial endeavours and winning culture aren’t even mutually exclusive. This thing has just become an excuse for managers and players are like to explain away their shortcomings
 
If this was coming from someone else then I would understand it. But coming from Matic who could barely walk on the pitch when he was 30, and was regulary dropped in a midfield consisting of players like Fred, Mctominay, de Beek, etc.
 
Always makes me chuckle to see United fans being defensive when anyone outside the club says something negative about United, despite us all acknowledging the club has been a total shit show for years
 
Amar__ said:
If this was coming from someone else then I would understand it. But coming from Matic who could barely walk on the pitch when he was 30, and was regulary dropped in a midfield consisting of players like Fred, Mctominay, de Beek, etc.
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Seriously. The lad started play like shit less than six months into his career at United and for people that forgot we were around the top of the league, so his excuses doesn't work. It just exposes his own mentality.
 
Tiber said:
He also arrived as a declining footballer. Signings like him haven't helped
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Yeah he was part of the decline. 6 match purple patch and then just an average top10 midfielder. Proffessional yes, but part of the declining standards.
 
acnumber9 said:
If anything it has gotten worse. Post season tours and the whole discourse with the club this season has been money.
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That really irks me. Even Amorim. "This is United, we have to win bla bla bla". And then all you hear about is how we maybe can get two cheap players this summer, cuts, layoffs, new stadium. No one even tries to sketch out how the alleged sporting ambition is supposed to happen.
 
His first game he looked exactly what we´d been missing.
 
JPRouve said:
He quite obviously didn't, since he claims that he lost hunger. Funnily enough, it gives context to his performances for Chelsea during Mourinho's last season or his similar magical decline during Mourinho's last season at United.
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I've only read the snippets but was this here or Chelsea?
Losing hunger can be perfectly normal at some stage but he was a player that always set a standard here for the bare minimum at least. Dishing out fines to late comers like Pogba and others was what we needed among other things.
 
VP89 said:
I've only read the snippets but was this here or Chelsea?
Losing hunger can be perfectly normal at some stage but he was a player that always set a standard here for the bare minimum at least. Dishing out fines to late comers like Pogba and others was what we needed among other things.
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He said that he lost hunger at United and he set nothing at United, he was terrible for the vast majority of his time and it started within 6 months of his tenure when we were around the top of the league. The lad is full of it.
 
We understand the difference clearly and people were saying it as early as 2005.

Chelsea, and subsequently Man City, are clubs plucked from relative obscurity and pumped with billions to try and win trophies for some billionaire's football fun. United are the opposite - a club with a phenomenal success story which built them into an iconic brand, so were instead bought to be a cash cow for some billionaire who has no clue about football. That's been the difference in "focus".

We were fortunate enough post 2005 that, players we broke the bank for pre-2005 when we had ambition to get the best talent like Rooney, Ronaldo and Ferdinand, were still awaiting their sensational primes and we were able to compete with Chelsea and were more successful than them. We were also lucky that Giggs, Scholes, Neville and Ferguson had some gas left in the tank and that Fergie and Gill still had such an eye for talent when making cheap signings like Vidic, VDS, Evra, Park and Carrick. We were of course very lucky that Fergie was such a genius that when that team got older and some players left and we got the point where we were constantly missing out on the best talent (Hazard the best example) he was still able to deliver titles with more average United sides.

Now he's gone, those players are gone, the eye for talent has been replaced by commercially focused / panic signings when we look like we won't make the top 4...look where we are. Unable to compete with Man City for 10 years. Things may improve long term under SJR though and we look like we are at least trying to move back into the other direction.
 
Matic shouldn't have said that but

just because it's hard to hear doesn't mean it's isn't true.
 
JPRouve said:
He said that he lost hunger at United and he set nothing at United, he was terrible for the vast majority of his time and it started within 6 months of his tenure when we were around the top of the league. The lad is full of it.
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He lost his hunger but isn't that because he said the club's targets were different?

Also youre just making things up now. He was definitely not as bad as you're claiming, we have all seen his tenure here. He certainly did set a base standard of professionalism too, which was sorely needed with some actual clowns at the club failing to even turn up on time.
 
There were players at club like Cavani, Lukaku, Telles who were around for about 2 seasons and failed to win anything. Matić is interesting one as he was at the club as many as 5 years and won zero trophies. Just happened to play for us in that 5 year/seasons period without a trophy. Shame as we did get to few finals (Fa Cup 2018, Europa 2021).

He's not first person to talk about United being commercial club as we know (van Gaal and few others I'm sure). He's not wrong. Those comments on Onana are harsh but it was unneccessary from Onana to say we're "way better" than Lyon as well. It sounds arrogant and I wouldn't like it as Lyon fan/player either.
 
VP89 said:
He lost his hunger but isn't that because he said the club's targets were different?

Also youre just making things up now. He was definitely not as bad as you're claiming, we have all seen his tenure here. He certainly did set a base standard of professionalism too, which was sorely needed with some actual clowns at the club failing to even turn up on time.
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That's his excuse and no I'm not making things up, Matic was bad during the second part of 2017-2018 and atrocious during the first part of 2018-2019, then he played well for a few months during Ole's interim but went back to his previous level with the added issue of injuries. In total Matic has been good for barely an entire season out of 5.
 
Honestly was never a fan of Matic during his time at United. Quality in those first few seasons at Chelsea but was slow and horribly and immobile for us most of the time from what I remember.
 
KD6-3.7 said:
Honestly was never a fan of Matic during his time at United. Quality in those first few seasons at Chelsea but was slow and horribly and immobile for us most of the time from what I remember.
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Another quality player we got when he was reaching his 30s/or was in 30s (van Persie, Schweinsteiger, Ibra, Matić, Cavani, Varane, Casemiro, Eriksen). RvP was worth it bringing us title and few of others were on free but ultimately we were getting players who were on a decline.
 
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