Jose Mourinho may not have a reputation for nurturing talent, but he was purring about two of Manchester United's youngsters after a 2-0 victory in his first friendly game in charge of the club.
Both Axel Tuanzebe and Andrea Periera were singled out by the Portuguese after a useful runout against a committed Wigan Athletic side.
Tuanzebe is an highly-rated 18-year-old central defender who can fill in as a defensive midfielder, whilst 20-year-old Pereira is a playmaker who was born in Belgium but represents Brazil at youth level.
The latter scored the second goal in the victory with a sharp finish in the second-half, and Mourinho praised his "amazing talent", with particular emphasis on his "incredible" vision and technique.
https://twitter.com/ManUtd/status/754313064363597825
As for Tuanzebe, he only came on for the final ten minutes of the game, but that was enough to get Mourinho raving about his potential.
"You can play 90 minutes or one minute and sometimes one minute is enough. With Axel, ten minutes is enough! The potential is there, you can see it immediately...if anyone sees him for the first time, ten minutes is enough to see the potential."
Interesting stuff. You can watch his comments below:
You can’t get away with it at this World Cup… Three teams have been knocked out of the FIFA World Cup this week, as back-to-back losses means that neither of them had any chance of advancing from their respective groups. The first two countries to be eliminated were Haiti and Türkiye, and now Tunisia has […]
The legend is back! Ronaldinho has come out of retirement at the age of 46 to sign for a third-tier Italian football team. Yep, that’s right- the Brazilian legend is coming out of retirement to sign for a Serie C side. The return to the beautiful game comes 11 years after he first hung up […]
There’s a good reason for it As you’re most likely glued to your TV screens binge-watching the World Cup matches, you were probably wondering why a country which was formerly known as Turkey has now a new name, which is Türkiye. At the 2026 FIFA World Cup, Türkiye is part of Group D, alongside co-hosts […]