Jose Mourinho isn't exactly the kind of person to shy away from the limelight, give him a chance and he'll make sure the spotlight shines brightly where he wants it to. So given the chance to talk about Alexis Sanchez he's taken it.
For most football managers the match starts when the ref blows his whistle and around 110 minutes later it ends when he blows the whistle again. For Jose Mourinho the game between him and his opposition manager starts well before that.
The Manchester United manager has a knack for using any press conference to his advantage, whether it's to take the heat off his players or pile it onto an opposition manager.
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With United playing Stoke on Monday night and the former Real Madrid manager not having an opponent to wind up after Mark Hughes' sacking his press conference was instead the perfect place to not talk about Alexis Sanchez.
Asked about the Arsenal forward who he is now being linked with Mourinho said:
" If somebody speaks of one of my players to tell we are interested or we are not interested, I wouldn't be very, very happy. Sanchez is an Arsenal player, I don't know but probably this weekend he is going to defend Arsenal colours so I don't think it's correct to say things about Alexis Sanchez.
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"At the general level what I can say is myself and the Manchester United board, the owners, we don't believe a lot in the January market, we don't believe in signing a player just to sign a player, just to do something, we don't believe in that.
"What we believe really is there are some players in football world if you have the chance to sign them in January, in March or in July, you have to try and that's it.
"But in relation to Alexis Sanchez I don't say a word, the only word I can say is he is a phenomenal player, apart from that an Arsenal player and I feel I shouldn't say much more than this."
It's quite amazing how much Mourinho can say about a player that he's refusing to talk about.
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The former Chelsea manager said that the Chilean is a 'phenomenal player' and the kind of player that would be worth signing in January, all whilst rivals Manchester City are reportedly ready to pull the plug on the deal.
Could Sanchez go to United instead of City?
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