José Mourinho regrets his treatment of Bastian Schweinsteiger at Manchester United and said he apologised to the former Germany player. The midfielder moved to the Major League Soccer club Chicago Fire this week following a largely unsuccessful spell at United, having joined from Bayern Munich in 2015.
Mourinho froze out the 32-year-old after taking over as manager last summer and the 2012 World Cup winner dropped so far down the pecking order that United wrote him off as an asset in their accounts only for him to make a surprise return.
Schweinsteiger made four appearances after being brought back into the first team either side of new year, scoring in the 4–0 FA Cup win over Wigan, but was last week granted a move to the US – a deal Mourinho said he could not stand in the way of having accepted he mistreated the midfielder. “He’s in the category of players that I feel sorry for something that I did to him,” the manager said. “I don’t want to speak about him as a player, I don’t want to speak as I buy or not to buy. I want to speak about him as a professional, as a human being.
“The last thing I told him before he left: ‘I was not right with you once, I have to be right with you now.’ So when he was asking me to let him leave I had to say ‘yes’ you can leave because I did it once, I cannot do it twice. So I feel sorry for the first period with him, he knows that. I am happy that he knows because I told him. I will miss a good guy, a good professional, a good influence in training – a very good influence.”
Asked if he regrets the way he treated him, Mourinho added: “Yeah, I do.”
Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Ander Herrera, Paul Pogba, Chris Smalling and Phil Jones missSaturday’s game against West Bromwich Albion, meanwhile. Ibrahimovic and Herrera are serving domestic suspensions while Pogba has a hamstring injury. Jones and Smalling were forced out of the England squad after sustaining what Mourinho called “long-term injuries”. Wayne Rooney is available, however.