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July 25, 2016

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Chaos has Jose pining for home comforts

MANCHESTER United manager Jose Mourinho revealed yesterday he was ready to go home as the club’s preseason tour of China threatened to descend into farce.

The final match of its China tour is the first Manchester derby outside the UK against City today and Mourinho can’t wait for it to be over.

“It is almost the end and we can go home and train in conditions where the players are safe,” said Mourinho after a wild couple of days for his squad after they lost 1-4 to Borussia Dortmund in Shanghai on Friday.

Half of Mourinho’s players were caught on a plane on Saturday which had to make a forced landing in Tianjin because of a violent storm in Beijing.

“We were supposed to fly in two different planes,” Mourinho confirmed to reporters.

“The second group was unlucky as they had a storm and had to land somewhere else for a couple of hours.

“They then arrived at the hotel for dinner at 1am.”

Doubts over the state of the Bird’s Nest Stadium turf for the friendly against City after days of heavy rain meant a hasty switch of training venues yesterday to the nearby Olympic Sports Center to protect the match pitch.

And with more storms forecast today, the match itself could be in the balance.

“It has been really bad,” said International Champions Cup China spokesman Ben Xiaozheng. “We are hopeful the game will go ahead.”




 

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