LONDON, United Kingdom, Aug 8 – Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho has dedicated his side’s Community Shield success to their former boss, Louis van Gaal.
The FA Cup winners beat Premier League champions Leicester City 2-1 in the traditional season curtain-raiser at Wembley on Sunday thanks to solo effort from Jesse Lingard and a late header by new signing Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
Van Gaal was in charge of the Red Devils when they beat Crystal Palace in the last season’s FA Cup final, also at Wembley, but was sacked just days later after the English giants could only manage fifth place in the league.
Mourinho also had a word for seven players that were not selected in the squad for Sunday’s clash, telling BT Sport: “I want to dedicate this to eight people; for the seven people who were not selected – Ashley Young, Phil Jones, all of them – and also to Louis van Gaal.
“He won the FA Cup. Without him, we wouldn’t be here now celebrating.”
Although pleased that United won their first piece of silverware of the campaign, the Portuguese coach was far from happy with their performance.
Mourinho insisted that there is still hard work to come ahead of their Premier League opener against Bournemouth on August 14.
“I think it’s an important victory but we have lots of work [to do]. I would not be ambitious if I said we had a fantastic performance, because it was not a fantastic performance,” he declared.
“It was a possible performance for the moment of the season, some of these guys who played today had only one week of training.”