Jose Mourinho is driven away from his accommodation after leaving his job as Manchester United's manager, in Manchester, Britain on Dec. 18, 2018.PHIL NOBLE/Reuters
Manchester United parted ways with manager Jose Mourinho two days after a defeat to its rival Liverpool compounded the club’s worst start to a Premier League season.
The club confirmed Mourinho’s departure, halfway through his third year at Old Trafford, in a brief statement on its website Tuesday morning. United thanked the Portuguese manager for his work and wished him “success in the future” in announcing that he had left the club, three years to the week since Chelsea fired him for a second time.
Mourinho has worked at some of the world’s top soccer clubs – in addition to Chelsea, he has coached at Real Madrid, Inter Milan and Porto – and had long coveted the chance to work at United. He described his appointment in the summer of 2016 as a “special honor.”
Throughout his time in Manchester, Mourinho had struggled to justify that reputation. Although his first season ended with two trophies – the Europa League and the League Cup – and his second brought a second-place finish in the Premier League, his reign was a turbulent one.
He consistently expressed his dissatisfaction with the club’s recruitment policy, despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars on playing talent, and his relationship with his players had grown increasingly sour over the past 18 months.
Paul Pogba, the most expensive player in English soccer history, proved a particular issue. Mourinho has oscillated between encouraging the midfielder, who led France to the World Cup over the summer, and criticizing him in public. He offered him the club captaincy and then ostentatiously stripped him of it.
Pogba was not, however, the only member of the squad to lose faith in his manager. Mourinho has struggled to find common ground with the likes of defender Luke Shaw and forward Anthony Martial, too, bringing him into yet more direct conflict with his direct superiors, who regard United’s young players as valuable assets.