In his debut training session under Jose Mourinho, Scott McTominay received a brutal piece of advice that left a lasting impact. Despite Mourinho's admiration and later accolades, the young midfielder learned the importance of first impressions the hard way.
After a training session where he clashed with senior players and questioned the referee's decisions, McTominay was "dressed down" by Mourinho.
On the High Performance Podcast, McTominay said: "When I first went over, maybe at the start of the 2017 season, I was going over to train with Jose and there were a lot of lads on international break."
"Refs [in training] are always a little bit biased to the first team vs the young lads and I was losing my temper, raising my voice a little bit too much."
"It's probably the right thing to do but also wrong thing to do. I was arguing with some of the older players - [Michael] Carrick and [Ashley] Young - and I was just saying, 'you're getting all the decisions, no wonder we're losing.'"
"Mourinho spoke to me and said you need them to like you you can't make them think you're a ******. He dressed me down to be fair and said who do you think you are, you've done nothing."
"It turned out a couple of months down the line the fitness coach told me Jose was just testing you out and I knew it. It was nice to hear [positive words] and that he was trying to test the group."
After all, this episode helped McTominay to progress in the team and become the favourite of Mourinho. Portuguese manager loved him so much that he invented his own award and named him his 'Manager's Player of the Year'.
