Jos\u00e9 Mourinho used a post-match press conference to remind a room full of reporters of a decision he made while at Manchester United and to celebrate a former player who has since flourished in Italy. After Benfica\u2019s 2\u20130 Champions League victory over Napoli this week, the Portuguese coach entered the room carrying a bag. When asked what it contained he replied, \u201cIt\u2019s Scott McTominay’s shirt.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mourinho leaned into the moment with some context from his United days. \u201cI put him in, I benched Paul Pogba for him at Manchester United . The least he could do was give me his shirt.\u201d The line referred back to McTominay\u2019s first appearances for United in 2017.<\/p>\n
McTominay made his debut in a Premier League match against Arsenal at Old Trafford in May 2017, coming on as a late substitute for Juan Mata in a 2\u20130 defeat. On the final day of that season he was given his first senior start in central midfield alongside Paul Pogba, with Mourinho rotating the side heavily ahead of the Europa League final three days later. Young colleagues who featured in that rotated line-up included Josh Harrop, Demetri Mitchell, Joel Castro Pereira, Axel Tuanzebe and Timothy Fosu-Mensah.<\/p>\n
The Scotland international went on to make 255 appearances for Manchester United before his permanent move to Napoli in 2024. Since arriving in Italy he has increased his goalscoring output, registering 14 Serie A goals in less than one-and-a-half seasons, a tally the draft notes is five short of his entire Premier League total over seven years. He is also the reigning Serie A Footballer of the Year after playing a part in Napoli\u2019s title win.<\/p>\n
McTominay\u2019s international story was also recounted. Born and raised in England to a Scottish father, he was eligible for both nations. As a first-team player at United he was on England\u2019s radar despite never representing the Three Lions at junior level. Alex McLeish credits Mourinho with alerting him that the player was likely to opt for Scotland. \u201cI rang Jos\u00e9 that morning,\u201d McLeish recounted recently . \u201c\u2018Come here for 12, let\u2019s have lunch and a chat about Scott and then we\u2019ll get him in the room.\u2019 He couldn\u2019t have been more accommodating,\u201d the ex-Scotland boss continued. \u201cI\u2019d sensed Scott was keen, but I thought he\u2019d still take a lot of persuading. He came in and was pretty clear in his own mind that he wanted to represent Scotland.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mourinho said he benched Paul Pogba for Scott McTominay and asked for McTominay’s shirt. at presser.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5033,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1027,1083,1028],"tags":[1304,1047],"class_list":["post-5034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-benfica","category-man-utd","category-napoli","tag-benching","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5034\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}