Gary Neville recalled the moment, during the 2001/02 season, when Alex Ferguson changed his mind about retiring. Roy Keane turned to Dwight Yorke, who had been coasting and content with a substitute’s role, and declared, “Well that’s you fucked.”
Bastian Schweinsteiger has been fucked since the moment Jose Mourinho was announced as Manchester United boss.
US Presidents leave notes for their successor in the Oval Office door. It’s a nice little tradition. One imagines Louis van Gaal, if he left a note for Mourinho at Carrington, would have BASTIAN SCHWEINSTEIGER scrawled near the top and MARCOS ROJO not far away.
Both players sent their new boss nice ‘welcome’ texts but Mourinho is not interested in pleasantries. You help him win or you get out of the way.
“The manager decides. That’s it,” Mourinho declared earlier this month when Schweinsteiger’s removal from the first team squad was broached.
The campaign against Schweinsteiger began late last session when a senior United player told a dinner table-full of England’s top football writers all about the German’s multiple trips home, poor training standards and general indifference to the club’s plight.
On the back of Schweinsteiger’s statement to the United fans that he ‘will be ready, if the team need me’, further leaks have been made to the press.
According to The Daily Mail, Schweinsteiger was warned by teammates last season to concentrate on getting fit and stop jetting around the world to watch then fianceé [now wife] Ana Ivanovic play tennis. There are other reports that Schweinsteiger’s daily diet consisted of breakfast in McDonalds.
The 32-year-old has made some influential enemies at United.
Schweinsteiger saw the smear campaign and raised his detractors this:
https://twitter.com/jaff99/status/758763216294084609
Schweinsteiger has supported United from an early age, has said great things about the club and is fondly regarded by most fans. Right now, though, he is a slow, methodical peg and there are no holes to wedge into.
It remains to be seen what supporters will make of him cashing his £160,000-a-week pay-cheque and returning only ambassadorial duties, cheerleading tweets and classy selfies.
If, as Schweinsteiger says, he will not play for another club in Europe, Major League Soccer and the Chinese Super League could represent his best playing options. Were he to negotiate a decent severance agreement from United, he could play in the United States as early as September.
Read more