Nemanja Matić has built up an impressive resume during his football career. With two premier league titles and individual honours such as being part of the PFA Team of the Season. He had a very impressive career in England and is now playing at Rennes in Ligue 1.
He has played for big clubs across Europe including Benfica, Chelsea, Roma and played 48 times for his home country of Serbia but he has revealed the worst levels of professionalism he experienced in football was at Manchester United.
Rift Between United Managers and Players
Matić made the move to Old Trafford in 2017 off the back of two Premier League winning seasons with Chelsea. He reunited with former Chelsea boss, Jose Mourinho, along with a host of other big name signings made during this period. The Mourinho era highlighted a number of issues at Manchester United. With 'The Special One' himself often ranting to the media about some of the biggest problems facing the club.
Recent reports of a rift between the players and current United manager, Erik ten Hag, the Dutchman has now banned journalists from his press conferences. The inability for any manager since Alex Ferguson to cope with the weight of expectation and translate the billions of pounds spent in to challenging consistently for trophies, has been a glaring issue for the past 10 years.
Matic: "we collected around £75,000 in fines"
Matić has recently described some of the attitude problems and lack of professionalism at the club during his time there in an interview with YouTube channel, YU Planet. Matic singled out two players in particular during his time with the club, Paul Pogba and Jadon Sancho.
At Chelsea, players acted professionally, they were punctual and were never late for training but at United it happened almost every day. Among the players who would always be late were Paul Pogba and Jadon Sancho and couple of other players.
Matic said at the time it caused tension within the team and that he along with other players formed a disciplinary committee, with fines being dished out to those who failed to turn up to training on time.
The rest of us who were always on time were angry so we decided to form a kind of an internal disciplinary committee with me serving as its president.
I put a sheet of paper up on the wall where I documented the names of individuals arriving late. During one particular season we collected around £75,000 in fines.
After another dismal performance on Saturday night in a 1-0 defeat to Newcastle, the effort levels of the players was brought in to question once again by Roy Keane, Jamie Carragher, Paul Scholes and Alan Shearer.
"We forgive Martial for the fact that he scores a goal every 14 years!"
Roy Keane gets heated discussing Manchester United's problems this season... 😤 pic.twitter.com/eEoALVR489— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) December 3, 2023
