Paul Pogba to Manchester United is quite a coup for Jose Mourinho.
The deal is all but done and it’s pretty incredible that United have managed to entice one of the world’s most sought-after players to Old Trafford, especially with no Champions League football to speak of.
Along with the signings of Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Eric Bailly, it has been a very impressive transfer window for the Red Devils thus far, with Pogba being the cherry on the cake.
But not everyone is impressed with Mourinho’s shopping exploits this summer. Jurgen Klopp has made his sobering views plain whilst on Liverpool’s pre-season tour of the US. He values team building over blowing a fortune of a single player.
“If you bring one player in for £100m and he gets injured, then it all goes through the chimney.
“The day that this is football, I’m not in a job any more, because the game is about playing together.
“That is how everybody in football understands it. You always want to have the best, but building the group is necessary to be successful.”
Klopp stresses that his transfer strategy is very different from the FM style capture of big names for exorbitant amounts of money. He wants to “do it differently” and “build a team”, citing Barcelona as an example of doing it the “right way”.
“Other clubs can go out and spend more money and collect top players. I want to do it differently. I would even do it differently if I could spend that money.
“If I spend money, it is because I am trying to build a team, a real team. Barcelona did it. You can win Championships, you can win titles, but there is a manner in which you want it.
“If you all swim in the same pool, the pool is too small if you all go for the same players. There are a lot of players outside that pool, good players on to the next step in their career. We try to find them.”
Having said all that, he stressed that he doesn’t care about how much other clubs were spend their money or who they recruit, as he is focused on fashioning his own team.
“I’m not interested in other clubs. They can do what they want and spend as much as they want.
“I don’t know exactly how much we have spent. For five or six players we could have bought one player for the same money but I don’t care.”
It does sound like he cares. Even just a tiny bit.
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