Mourinho reveals how he beat Ajax

According to 'The Daily Mail' Mourinho revealed his tactical plan when giving a guest lecture at the Faculdade de Motricidade Humana university in Lisbon. It reports that in preparation for the game, Mourinho watched his opponents no fewer than eight times, a considerable number when you take into account that for a permier league game he only tends to watch "two or three". 

From watching Ajax he developed a game plan which included trying to target Ajax's 17-year-old centre-back Matthijs de Ligt. According to Mourinho by blocking off the option of playing the ball to de Ligt, who played as the right-sided centre-back, Ajax would forced to play out through Colombian Davinson Sanchez who Mourinho believed "would have more trouble". Mourinho also implored his own team, notably Chris Smalling NOT to play out from the back. Impressively, the Potuguese managed to formulate his master plan in just 3 days, and it clearly worked as United cruised to a 2-0 victory at the Friends Arena thanks to a deflected Paul Pogba effort and a 6th goal of the competition for Henrikh Mkhitaryan.

Despite enduring a mixed first season back in the Premier League, Pogba was vital in the game, as well as getting himself on the scoresheet, the French international was also tasked with tracking the intelligent movement of Everton target Davy Klaassen. 

Portuguese paper 'Tribuna Expresso' reports that Mourinho was so confident that his side would go on to win the game that he shook hands with his assistant, Rui Faria, after 80 minutes, knowing that Ajax were a spent force. When asked about whether style of football matters to him Mourinho stated "Everyone said Ajax played beautiful football and that the beauty of the game matters and bla, bla, bla. I told my players that, for me, beauty is not giving our opponents what they want."