Mourinho’ s Reaction to Manchester United ’ s 1- 4 Defeat By Borussia Dortmund

Jose Mourinho admitted the fact Borussia Dortmund were far more advanced in their pre - season preparations was always likely to be the deciding factor in Manchester United ’ s opening game of Tour 2016 presented by Aon.
Gonzalo Castro scored twice for the Bundesliga side with Pierre Emerick Aubameyang’ s generously - awarded penalty and Ousmane Dembele ’ s wonderful solo strike earning a 4- 1 victory. Henrikh Mkhitaryan got off the mark for the Reds with a tap -in against his former club but it proved in vain.


United boss Mourinho was keen to stress beforehand the result was not important at this early stage of the pre -season , and Dortmund’ s superior fitness told in sweltering conditions .
“I think in pre -season the team that wins is always
the team that is in an advanced stage of the preparation, ” he told MUTV . “Always . Never the
best team, always the team that is in advance. It
was too obvious .

“The team with four matches in their legs against
the team with one match . The team working a lot of months against us with a maximum of 15 days , some of them arrived three or four days ago . There was a huge difference in preparation . Nobody likes to lose. We’ re not happy with that but happy with the 90 minutes we have in our legs . It was very important to compete in difficult circumstances with the weather and the opponents and that was good for us .”
Dortmund were always likely to provide a stern test
and the German side certainly showed their attacking prowess.

“There are different tours , ” said Mourinho . “Some
people prefer to play against lower quality teams and win to get confidence out of it . Sometimes it ’ s confidence out of context and out of reality . When you ’ re playing a team like Borussia Dortmund, that
starts before us and , of course , are one of the good teams in Europe , it is obviously more difficult .
The players are frustrated as nobody likes to lose .
Even if you say it’ s not a problem , you don ’ t like to
lose – even in friendlies. In reality , I was expecting a very difficult match. ”
The tour now moves on to Beijing with Manchester
City providing the opposition on Monday , but it is
still very much a case of work in progress for
Mourinho as he gets to know his squad .

“At the moment, I’ m not even creating a team, ” he
stressed. “So many players are not here . We’ re creating individuals’ form and trying to bring these
players to a good condition . For the new signings
and all of the players , they had a chance to play 45, 70 or 90 minutes . It ’ s very , very important and I can imagine it will take a long time to recover from this effort in the game . In this weather , in reality , at this stage of pre -season for them individually it’ s good.”