The Warm-Up: Liverpool win, and boy do we need them to

We could have done better offensively, and it was not a brilliant football game from us. We don’t have to make it something it was not. But it was a big step. Everyone knows that when we are not brilliant, we usually lose. Today we weren’t brilliant but we won.

I decided not to decide [on my future]. I was intoxicated for such a long time that I promised myself not to make any decisions before September. [It’s going] even better than I thought. When you have been as busy as I have been, you always fear a little emptiness. “But I quickly organised myself in this new stage of my life, I do a lot of sport, here I eat with my friends. I talk a lot too, I can sit for hours contemplating the horizon, I read every day, right now a book by Philip Roth called I Married a Communist.

The Curva Nord represents for us a sacred space, an environment with an unwritten code to be respected. The first few rows, as always, have been experienced like the trenches. In the trenches, we do not allow women, wives and girlfriends, so we invite them to position themselves from the 10th row back. Those who choose the stadium as an alternative to a carefree and romantic day in Villa Borghese [public gardens in Rome], should go to other sections.

The qualities that made Mourinho stand out at his first three big jobs — tactical nous, supreme confidence and the ability to get his players fighting as one, under his leadership — appear to have deserted him at United. He now cuts a sour, surly figure, his tactics look obsolete in comparison to Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp and a host of other attack-minded coaches, and his heavy-handed man-management has done little to encourage a sense of happiness and unity within the United dressing room.