While contradicting the claims of his former counterpart Jose Mourinho, Manchester United interim coach gave his opinion that players are still less powerful than the club itself. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer believes that the footballers haven’t become more powerful than they used to be in the last decade.
While talking for the first time since his sack from the Manchester United duty in last December, Jose Mourinho recently claimed that the balance of power between the players and the manager shifted quite heavily in recent times. However, his successor at the Old Trafford seems to have a different opinion.
While talking about the recent scenario of football, Jose Mourinho quoted the legendary coach while saying “Sir Alex Ferguson used to say the day a player is more important than a club, goodbye,” and then added “Not anymore. The manager ought to be there to coach the players, not to keep the discipline at any cost.”
The former Red Devils coach also added “You need a structure to protect the manager and keep everything in place so that the players do not arrive in a situation where they feel more powerful than they used to be… Everything good I did with players is not news anymore. News in modern football is when you have problems.”
But it seems Solskjaer has a different opinion as he said “I wouldn’t say more powerful but it’s different because you know with the social media and the world and society younger players grow up in compared to what I did; I sound really old now but it is such a different era and now everything’s just on Twitter or Facebook or whatever it is straight away.”
He said “As long as it’s not malicious, that’s just the reality we live in. But they still have to have the values of a team, they want to have to improve because I have to say no one deserves to be in a better team than what they would give to the team, if you know what I mean,” and added “If they want to help the team they deserve to be here, if they don’t want to help the team they don’t deserve to be here. So those values and beliefs and principles don’t change.”