As summer transfer sprees go, Manchester United have enjoyed a rather successful one this year.
The Red Devils have signed one of the brightest young defenders in Europe, arguably the best striker in the game, a shining star of the Bundesliga, and are close to breaking the world transfer record for the best box-to-box midfielder around. They’ve appointed European soccer’s most decorated coach as well. Change isn’t always good, but at United it will surely prove to be.
United haven’t played a competitive fixture since the FA Cup final on May 21, but there is a sense that real strides have been made at Old Trafford over the past few weeks. If it’s possible to leap Premier League places in the off-season, United have done it, going from top four challengers to presumed title contenders by virtue of their transfer market activity this summer.
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But despite the arrival of Eric Bailly, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Henrikh Mkhitaryan, as well as the impending signing of Paul Pogba, the biggest change for Manchester United ahead of the new season doesn’t concern the squad at Jose Mourinho’s disposal. It’s much more abstract than that.
Indeed, the biggest change at Old Trafford this summer is the one that has seen United garner a winning mentality. The signing of both Ibrahimovic and Pogba won’t just give Mourinho more options on the field, but will also give the entire club the edge it has been desperately missing since the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson three years ago.
Ibrahimovic in particular doesn’t do losing. The Swedish striker has carefully cultivated his career on the basis of where he views his next frontier to be, and with the Premier League now the task in-hand the former Barcelona, AC Milan, Juventus, Inter Milan and Paris Saint-Germain centre forward will stop at nothing to prove himself a success in England.
As if having Mourinho in the dugout wasn’t enough to ensure a change in mentality at United, the entire character of the club has been overhauled by the moves in the transfer market that have followed. Resilience, spirit and drive have all been lacking at Old Trafford in recent seasons, but that will no longer be the case. If United fail it will be for other reasons.
Of course, with no sample to base such a conclusion on it’s purely conjecture to make that claim, but educated and calculated conjecture. This Mourinho side might not be in the exact mould of his previous great teams, most notably at Chelsea and Inter Milan, but he will still impose a certain mentality on his players if they don’t already have it.
In a sense, the signing of Ibrahimovic is eerily similar to the signing of Eric Cantona in the 1990s. The French forward filled a position and proved himself to be one of the best strikers in the Premier League era, but his true impact was found in the mental side of the game. He changed the identity of the Old Trafford club and proved the catalyst for a dynasty. Ibrahimovic could be the same sort of figure.
Pogba, too, would bring the sort of edge lacking from the centre of the midfield since the days of Roy Keane. The Frenchman is the most accomplished box-to-box operator available right now, yet his signing is vindicated as much by what he will bring off the field as what he will offer on it. That’s a common theme when it comes to United’s transfer market activity this summer.
In the immediate term, Mourinho’s tenure at Old Trafford is certainly still something of a work-in-progress as he imposes his own stylings upon a side in need of an identity overhaul. But one thing that can be counted on is that United will have undergone a change in mentality and mindset since they last played a Premier League game. Whether that will translate directly into a change in results is another matter.
So much in soccer is decided by what happens in the head rather than what happens on the pitch. Manchester now boasts two of the sport’s greatest psychologists in Mourinho and Pep Guardiola. It’s almost time for them to unveil their summer workings.
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