Schweinsteiger
Bastian Schweinsteiger has revealed how his two-year stint at Manchester United came to a bitter end in a new interview with Gary Neville.
The heavily decorated Germany international arrived at Old Trafford in 2015 after a celebrated tenure at his boyhood side Bayern Munich.
But after initially failing to settle under then-head coach Louis van Gaal, the arrival of Jose Mourinho at the club in the summer of 2016 saw his fortunes take a turn for the worse.
The World Cup winner would later leave the Red Devils in 2017 for a final two-year tilt in MLS with Chicago Fire.
Speaking to Neville on the latest episode of the Stick to Football podcast, bought to you by Sky Bet, Schweinsteiger took issue with the nature of how his final season with the club had come to an end, and shed light on his turbulent relationship with Mourinho.
Bastian Schweinsteiger has shared details on his painful final season at Manchester United
The midfielder joined the club following a heavily decorated spell at Bayern Munich (pictured in 2013)
Head coach Jose Mourinho was quick to make changes over his first summer in charge in 2016
‘It was 2016 and I was with the German national team, we went far in the competition (the European Championship) reaching the semi-finals, so I stepped in a little later (at Manchester United) and the team were in the US for a pre-season tour,’ Schweinsteiger recalled of his start to the 2016-17 season.
‘When I arrived on the first day, I trained with Zlatan Ibrahimovic and thought it was great, a player who has the vision and is amazing to play with.
‘The next day, on my birthday, when I walked into Carrington, John Murtough was there and said that I wasn’t allowed to walk into the dressing room, the coach had said so. No warning, nothing.
‘I don’t know (why he told me). Someone could have told me there (on my first day of training) or explained it to me in a normal way, but okay, I went to the youth dressing room and trained with the under 16s.’
Schweinsteiger added that he had been ‘completely’ kicked out – to the extent that Murtough had to ‘bring him his cleats and training gear.’
‘I asked him who I was training with, and he said there was the under 16 team, so I went and trained with the under 16s,’ Schweinsteiger continued.
‘I asked him whether I could talk to the manager in the afternoon, so when I came back from training with the under 16s, where I trained so bad because I didn’t know what was going on or it was a joke, I then had a meeting with (Mourinho) in the afternoon.
The 39-year-old shared his story with Gary Neville as they discussed their former side United
The United legend dubbed Schweinsteiger’s treatment ‘illegal’ and referred to it as ‘constructive dismissal’
‘He explained to me that he didn’t see me happy here at United because when I had my injury, I did my rehab with German doctors, spending time in Germany.
‘Of course, I came back to United and was in contact with doctors and watched the games – I had a conversation with Louis van Gaal when he was coach, and he said to come on the weekends to United and remain in contact with the doctors, they needed me fit and there was an FA Cup final which I almost played. That was our agreement and I kept to it.
‘For me, I just wanted to get healthy and wanted to be able to play – I stuck to the agreement with Louis van Gaal but obviously the board thought a little differently about that.’
The eight-time Bundesliga winner explained that he had been the only one who had been moved to the youth dressing room at the start of Mourinho’s spell at the club, before he started to work on an individual programme, entirely removed from his team-mates.
‘I was training alone for at least three months with a fitness coach,’ he added. ‘I trained before and after the (first) team.
‘(Mourinho) never let me train with the first team. I guess they wanted to get rid of me. In that moment, I was still super happy at United, I loved to wear the jersey, I loved it.
‘I was thinking that maybe it was just a period, I will train now and keep myself fit and maybe one day they’ll change their mind. My dream was to always step back out into Old Trafford.’
So limited was Schweinsteiger’s contact with his first team team-mates that he ‘didn’t see them’.
Schweinsteiger (pictured in 2015) was forced to train with youth players, and then on his own
The combustible former United manager did eventually apologise to his German player
‘Sometimes I’d pass by a few or get a message,’ the former midfielder said. ‘They said that they didn’t understand the decision, but I didn’t see them.
‘I had to train in the morning or after their session to not see them.’
Neville was outspoken in his dismay at how Schweinsteiger had been handled by his former club, dubbing the actions as ‘illegal’ in his condemnation.
‘I was the PFA Union Representative, and you’re not allowed to do that, you can’t dismiss someone like that, it’s constructive dismissal in some ways,’ he said.
‘It’s probably a few years too late, you should have come and seen me at the time. I’m stunned and embarrassed at what I’m hearing because I always think, players leave clubs and people fall out, but there is a way to do things and a way to behave and act.’
Schweinsteiger did stress that Mourinho eventually apologised – even if by then, the damage was largely done.
‘After the three months of training on my own at Manchester United, one day Mourinho or his assistant came to me and said that I could train with them (the first team), and I trained with them. I think I trained well, and I liked to play with Paul Pogba and Zlatan Ibrahimovic,’ Schweinsteiger added.
This, he believes, was largely due to the difficulties the club were encountering on the pitch, and Schweinsteiger eventually featured for the side a scant four times during the campaign.
‘Later, I got my minutes but when you see other players playing in your position, you think, “I’m better than this guy.” We had Paul Pogba, Ander Herrera, Michael Carrick, Morgan Schneiderlin, and Marouane Fellaini – I thought that I wasn’t the last one in that group, for that position,’ he said.
‘Sometimes you’ll be sitting there after the game and then people come in (to the dressing room) from the board and come to shake your hands – for me this wasn’t easy because I was thinking, that my heart was broken and that it wasn’t full of red anymore.
‘The first time someone apologised was when I decided to leave United for America, and asked Jose if I could do that, he then apologised for the way he treated me in the beginning and he had to let me go because he could not say no to me in that moment.’
Schweinsteiger made just four appearances during his final season before leaving in March
He described his heart as being ‘broken’ by the experience after a passionate love for the club
In March 2017, the former Chelsea and Inter Milan coach vocalised a similar feeling, saying that Schweinsteiger was ‘in the category of players that I feel sorry for something that I did to him.
‘I don’t want to speak about him as a player, I don’t want to speak as I buy or not to buy. I want to speak about him as a professional, as a human being.
‘The last thing I told him before he left: “I was not right with you once, I have to be right with you now.”
‘So when he was asking me to let him leave I had to say “yes you can leave because I did it once, I cannot do it twice”. So I feel sorry for the first period with him, he knows that. I am happy that he knows because I told him. I will miss a good guy, a good professional, a good influence in training – a very good influence.’
