Manchester United arrived in Stockholm with 23 senior squad players in tow. Only 20 had a chance of making the matchday squad. Two will miss out.
Luke Shaw, Ashley Young and Marcos Rojo [on crutches] were present at the Friends Arena, last night, as their fully fit teammates got a sense of their surroundings.
There was no training session at the stadium and the players conversed for five minutes – the last two in a wide circle – before leaving the scene of this evening’s Europa League final.
#mufc were out for around five minutes. Young, Shaw and Rojo watched on pic.twitter.com/fTlbzn69JF
— Samuel Luckhurst (@samuelluckhurst) May 23, 2017
Jose Mourinho will choose 18 players to make up his match-day squad and here are the men he will choose from:
MAN UTD TRAVELLING SQUAD
- David de Gea, Sergio Romero, Joel Pereira
- Timothy Fosu-Mensah, Antonio Valencia, Axel Tuanzebe, Phil Jones, Chris Smalling, Daley Blind, Matteo Darmian
- Ander Herrera, Michael Carrick, Marouane Fellaini, Paul Pogba, Jesse Lingard, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Juan Mata
- Wayne Rooney, Anthony Martial, Marcus Rashford
Despite featuring in the 2-0 victory over Crystal Palace, young goalkeeper Joel Pereira is expected to miss out. Mourinho has twice stated that Sergio Romero will start in goal so, one imagines, the Argentine will get the nod ahead of David De Gea.
That leaves Mourinho with one spot for two young defenders.
Timothy Fosu Mensah is highly regarded in the United set-up, and by supporters, and also started in that win over Palace. He has played 11 times for United this season but has only started four times.
Axel Tuanzebe, who is also 19, may well nip in ahead of the Dutch defender to take that final spot on the bench. Tuanzebe has started United’s last four league fixtures and did a decent man-marking job on Alexis Sanchez in United’s 2-0 loss to Arsenal.
Post-match, he told MUTV: “It’s good to have the opportunity to play – the manager gives you a job and you have to show he can trust you for future games.”
The likelihood is that either defender will start the game from the bench but Mourinho has shown he will have no hesitation in calling on them if needs be.
