Mourinho regrets how he treated Schweinsteiger
Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho is usually unapologetic in his work, but he took some time to acknowledge he made a mistake in the way he treated Bastian Schweinsteiger, who recently joined the Chicago Fire in MLS.
When Mourinho first joined United, he made a point of exiling the Germany international from the first team, allocating Schweinsteiger to reserve training, booting him from the senior team locker room and reportedly writing him off as a player asset, too.
But in the months that followed, Schweinsteiger - who joined the club for £14.4 million in 2015 but was sidelined with injury - worked his way back into the first team, making four appearances under Mourinho, who admitted he regrets how he treated the 32-year-old midfielder last summer.
"Bastian is in the category of players that I feel sorry for something that I did to him," Mourinho said, as quoted by the club's official website.
"I want to speak about him as a human being and that was the last thing I told him before he left - 'I was not right with you once, I have to be right to 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'm happy that he knows because I told him and I will miss a good guy, a good professional, a good influence in training. A very good influence."
Related - Schweinsteiger thanks United: 'I will never forget my time'
Mourinho offered that he would do things differently if he could, saying, "I would let him be in the squad," and explained that the decision to remove Schweinsteiger came down to the sheer number of players he inherited from Louis van Gaal.
"We had a huge squad in the beginning," Mourinho detailed. "But, after knowing him as a professional, and as a person, the way he was behaving and the way he was respecting my decisions as a manager, yes, I regret it and it is no problem for me to admit it and he knows that because I told him."
Schweinsteiger has been received with open arms - and even a little bit of light controversy - by Chicago, and could make his debut this weekend against the Montreal Impact. Mourinho acknowledged, however, that the timing of the move puts his own team in a tougher spot down the final stretch of the season.
"I couldn't stop him going, even though, until the end of the season, we have so many matches and probably we would need him for a few matches or a few periods," Mourinho said. "I had to let him go and now publicly we wish him and his wife a very happy life in Chicago."