Barcelona summer signing Marcus Rashford has told presenter Gary Lineker about an all-important chapter in his Manchester United playing career at Old Trafford.
Marcus Rashford came through the Manchester United youth academy and received his Red Devils first-team debut under former manager Louis van Gaal in 2016.
The 27-year-old former Aston Villa forward had been a mainstay in the United first-team squad in the post-Sir Alex Ferguson era at the Premier League club.
Rashford had played under former United managers Jose Mourinho, Erik ten Hag and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer as a key player after his emergence at Old Trafford.
But the Barcelona star’s spell at the Red Devils was disrupted after Ruben Amorim’s arrival from Sporting CP in 2024 and Rashford lost his place in the United XI.
Marcus Rashford reveals how Jose Mourinho became a major catalyst in his Man Utd playing career
Marcus Rashford sat down with Gary Lineker and the Barcelona summer signing opened up about the key moments in his Manchester United career so far.
Following Louis van Gaal’s sacking as United manager in 2016, former Chelsea and Real Madrid head coach Jose Mourinho arrived in the Old Trafford dugout.
Rashford admitted that the ‘Special One’ was one of the three most influential United managers that he had alongside Van Gaal and club legend Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
However, the England international revealed that former United manager Mourinho stood out above the rest for how much he was “fixated” on winning at all costs.
“Influential, I’d probably say Van Gaal, Jose and Ole,” Rashford said on The Rest Is Football podcast.
“Yeah, they’re different, but because of what you [Lineker] just mentioned, we’ve had so many different managers, it’s so hard to like, it’s impossible for me to compare the managers.
“But when you’re a developing player, like at a young age, so like up until Jose, I’ve never had a manager that was so fixated on winning, before Jose.”
Marcus Rashford breaks down the key difference between Jose Mourinho and Louis van Gaal at Man Utd
Mourinho, much like Van Gaal before him, met the same fate as his United predecessors in the aftermath of Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement after he was sacked.
Rashford explained that Van Gaal shared the same stance as Mourinho with a ‘fixation’ on winning, but the Dutchman wanted to play “beautiful” football as well.
Unlike Van Gaal, however, the United player suggested that Mourinho changed his entire mindset by putting a win-first approach at the forefront of his football.
“He [Van Gaal] was fixated on winning, but he wanted to play a beautiful style of football,” Rashford added.
“Jose doesn’t care. If you win, you win, you move on to the next game. So, in the beginning, I was angry all the time. I was not [playing] well.
“Today we’ve won, but because we’ve won and he’s a manager that he’s [Jose] just a winner, he doesn’t bring up the points that you know [were] missing from that last game because we’ve won.
“But when we lost, he brings up the points then. But then after like six months, I like just learnt to like respect it and then I started to reap the rewards from him as a coach.”
Rashford was loaned to Aston Villa for the second half of the 2024-25 campaign and he has since been shipped off to Barcelona as part of a 12-month loan deal.
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