Manchester United started Tour 2017, presented by Aon, with a comfortable 5-2 win over Los Angeles Galaxy at the StubHub Center.
Jose Mourinho spoke to MUTV and reporters at a post-match press conference in the US to offer his thoughts on the game, the main talking points and the standout players. Here are his key quotes...
POSITIVE OPENER
"It was good and there were no injuries apart from Tim [Fosu-Mensah]. The most important thing for me was to compete and the second important thing was to see the players on the pitch in a system which we only played twice last season, so it is far from being our system but we have been working in the last two days to improve. Positionally it was good."
GALAXY WERE A GOOD TEST
"Their coach didn't play to win, he played to give the experience to his players. He played like us, two teams, let's play. Obviously in the second half they had players with more experience and better quality and were more difficult to beat, but I think the 5-2 for us means exactly the same as for them, we don't care about it. It was a good training session and I thank him for that and I thank the Galaxy players for the competition they gave us."
THREE AT THE BACK
"We have trained for five days and in these five days we trained for two days in the relation to this system [three at the back]. The improvements are in relation to four hours of work so I couldn't expect much better, it's something we have to keep working on in case during the season we decide to play three at the back. We did it twice against Rostov and maybe we want to do it more times."
LUKAKU JOINS THE ATTACK
"To compare Rooney and Lukaku is incomparable and Rooney for us was not a striker, Lukaku is more a target man with his back to the opponents. It's a point of attack for everyone who has the ball in defensive lines, he’s really fast and a good thing for me today is he showed he's a team player and was not worried about himself, he was worried about the improvement of the team."
RASHFORD LED THE LINE
"It's just the natural evolution of the kid. An accumulation of minutes on the pitch. You change your body when you're a young kid, he's already taller than when I arrived 13 months ago, he's three centimetres taller and he put some muscle on but without any kind of specific work because his speed is the most important quality. Today he was in a different team to Lukaku [first half and second half]. We will also try both in the same team which I think can also work."
MARCUS WILL SCORE MORE
"Last season in this period everyone was saying it would be difficult for me to play him but he was one of the top appearance-makers of the team last season which is good for his evolution. He played in the Europa League, important matches, and he's learning a lot. He’s a great pro, has a great attitude and last season he maybe was not scoring a lot of goals and missing some chances but it was not a drama because that's part of the evolution. We know he is going to score more goals than last season."
CAPTAIN CARRICK
"We don't have a vice-captain, a captain is enough and Michael is obviously the captain. I don't like the criteria for the captain to just be the one who has spent the most time at the club because sometimes you have somebody with the armband just because he arrived before other players. We are going to try and feel and make decisions. We have people that, step by step, we have to prepare because Michael will be the captain for one year, maybe two if he decides to do that and his body resists to the demands of the Premier League and Champions League. But for the season we will have only one captain."
