Managing a football team’s dressing room is a real headache. Just ask José Mourinho, who has led clubs in many different countries. But his time with Henrikh Mkhitaryan at Manchester United reached a whole new level of strange. The Armenian midfielder spilled all the details in his autobiography, ‘My Life Always at the Centre’.
Mkhitaryan didn’t hold back. He remembered telling Mourinho, "You’ve been picking on me for a year and a half, ever since I got to Manchester United." Mourinho shot back, "You’re rubbish!" That’s when Mkhitaryan snapped. "No, you are rubbish!" he fired back, "And a massive one!"
Mourinho didn’t take kindly to that. "Get out!" he yelled, "I never want to see your face again!" After that, things got really awkward. During training sessions, Mourinho wouldn’t even speak to him. He treated Mkhitaryan with total silence, almost like a religious vow. But every single night, a new message would pop up on Mkhitaryan’s WhatsApp. "Miki, please leave the club," it would say. The 36-year-old player called the whole thing "grotesque."
Mkhitaryan, however, was just as stubborn. He had a go-to response. He simply copied and pasted the same message back every time. "I’ll leave if I find the right team," he’d write, "Otherwise, I’ll just wait until summer." Then, in the middle of January, Mourinho’s messages changed a little. "Miki, please leave the club so I can sign Alexis Sánchez," the coach pleaded.
Eventually, Mkhitaryan did move on. He left Manchester United in 2018 and joined Arsenal. But football, as they say, has a funny way of bringing people back together. Years later, Mkhitaryan and Mourinho found themselves on the same side again, this time at Roma. Surprisingly, Mkhitaryan even became a key player in Mourinho’s system there. Since 2022, Mkhitaryan has been playing his football for Inter Milan.