Jose Mourinho believes Manchester United should not drop into Europa League knockout stage

[ASFN Admin]

Jose Mourinho believes Manchester United and the other third-placed clubs eliminated from the Champions League should not be able to join Tottenham Hotspur in the knockout phase of the Europa League. And Mourinho has also described why he is proud of his record of never having been eliminated from the Champions League at the group stages with any of the clubs he has managed. Mourinho’s former club United were knocked out of the Champions League after failing to take a single point from their final two games against Paris Saint-Germain and RB Leipzig. And the Portuguese thinks that should mark the end of United’s European campaign, along with any other clubs that failed to reach the knockout stages. “It's a point of principle and if it happened to my team, I would feel exactly the same,” said Mourinho. “It is the way it is and, honestly, it brings more quality to the competition. We cannot forget that, when you have eight new teams in the competition and eight teams that belong to another level, and they drop to the Europa League of course the level of the competition is going to improve. “But from the sports point of view is when I think it's not fair that a team that doesn't succeed in one competition drops to another. It's just a principle in football that if for some reason we don't succeed, unlucky, next season. But it's the way it is and it's not a problem for me.” Mourinho now rates United among the favourites for the Europa League and is proud he always managed to guide them through the group stages of the Champions League, even when they needed to win in Juventus to help them progress.

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