Man United: Rio Ferdinand apologises to Jose Mourinho after his claim in 2019 | OneFootball

Jose Mourinho has had a remarkable career as a football manager.

In his 22 year managerial career, Mourinho has won 25 trophies, won the league title in four different countries and has won the Champions League twice.

But, speaking in 2019, he made the bold claim that finishing second during his time at Manchester United was one of his biggest achievements.

In 2019 Mourinho said: “If I tell you, for example, that I consider one of the best jobs of my career was to finish second with Man United in the Premier League, you will say, “this guy is crazy”.

“He won 25 titles and he is saying that a second position was one of his best achievements?

“I keep saying this because people don’t know what is going on behind the scenes.”

United are currently in turmoil and have missed out on qualifying for next season’s Champions League.

They currently occupy sixth and could finish as low as eighth should they lose to Crystal Palace on the find day and results go against them.

Mourinho’s comments raised eyebrows at the time but they’ve aged so well that Rio Ferdinand has now felt the need to apologise to the Portuguese legend.

Speaking on his Vibe with Five YouTube channel, Ferdinand said: “I think Jose Mourinho’s quote has aged so, so well. And me for one, I would apologise maybe to some extent in terms of the way you kind of looked at him and judged him.

“I still think there were flaws in some of the ways he handled people and handled some of the situations that he was involved in.

“But in terms of looking behind the scenes, that [quote] he said in 2019 on finishing second in the Premier League, that has aged so well.

“We can see that there’s been stuff going on that’s wrong behind the scenes, but at that time we didn’t know the extent of it. Obviously Jose Mourinho did.

“He wanted to get rid of numerous players and he wanted to bring in certain players, and obviously big wages and contracts were handed out to certain players and he’s thinking, ‘Woah, woah, woah, what’s going on?!’

“He could see the flaws in certain individuals, he could see the flaws in the way the club was set up, he wanted to change things and he wasn’t probably afforded that.

“Listen, I’d love to have half-an-hour talking to Jose just about his time there, just to work out where he was at with a bit more detail than we’ve actually ever seen, and then gauge it to where we are now – that would be very insightful.”