Jose Mourinho claims Manchester United can’t compete with “no limits” Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain in transfer market
Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho says Manchester United are finding it difficult to compete in the transfer market with Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain who he claimed have “no limit” financially.
United are the richest club in the world yet while Mourinho expects to spend big on new players next summer, he says the Premier League club can’t do so to the same extent as City and PSG, both of whom are backed by billionaire owners from the Gulf.
The Portuguese manager, whose team trail City by 15 points, argued that even Uefa’s Financial Fair Play rules don’t hinder their rivals’ spending plans and pointed to City’s purchases of goalkeeper Ederson and full-backs Danilo, Benjamin Mendy and Kyle Walker this summer.
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“If you belong to one of these clubs where there is no limit, you just buy what you want and there is no limit, no Financial Fair Play, there is nothing,” he said.
“Do you think the club [United] can spend £600m and buy six players of £100m? The club cannot do that and I cannot expect the club to do that so I am not being critical.
“Without taking any credit from Manchester City and Pep and his staff and the players – they obviously deserve lots of credit for what they are doing – but Pep arrived and he has the goalkeeper of England. He doesn’t like him so he buys the goalkeeper of Barcelona. He doesn’t like him so he buys another one.”
“He has [Pablo] Zabaleta and [Aleksander] Kolarov, two very good players, but more than 30, he wants to replace, he doesn’t do it with two. He does it with three. One from Tottenham, one from Monaco and one from Real Madrid, as an example.”
Mourinho has spent £319.5m on new players since taking over at Old Trafford in 2016, an outlay only exceeded by Pep Guardiola who has splashed out £391.4m in the same time.
“Can we buy six or seven players at the same time, can we invest £600m or £700m?” said Mourinho.
“No. No. So, it’s difficult”
“What PSG did this season with Neymar and Mbappe, they got two of probably the best four attacking players in the world, they get two at the same time.
“And then players like Di Maria, Draxler, Lucas, Pastore, they are second choices, so you know, money makes a difference.”