The tale of two 'winning team' posts from training
Nemanja Matic has gently goaded his friend Cristiano Ronaldo on social media, after playing for the winning team in United's latest training match at Carrington.
Training is hard but enjoyable work as interim manager Ralf Rangnick continues to implement his ideas on the team and, as you can imagine, everybody wants to win each day’s practice game.
Fans of Ronaldo’s Instagram account will know the Portuguese likes to share ‘winning team’ photos and, on Wednesday, he uploaded the below image to his 380million followers.
Teams for the training matches are mixed up each day and, on Thursday, six of those players were on the winning team once again, as we saw in Matic’s own post to Instagram.
Being the competitive individual that he is, Nemanja was clearly delighted by his side’s success and the Serbian went one step further by prodding his famously determined team-mate.
“Winning team!” writes Matic. “@Cristiano are you ok?”
Bruno Fernandes even got in on the act, dropping a "SIUUUUUUUUU" comment below.
We spoke to Matic after Thursday’s session at Carrington and he began by explaining his Instagram post: “It is nothing, just a simple thing [laughs]. My team won but it was a very easy game for us today. Cristiano, his team won the game yesterday, but it was tight. Today the score was 15-4!”
Goading CR7 may not be a wise move, of course, given how competitive he is, but Nemanja’s jibe only highlights the brilliant team spirit that binds our squad.
“Yeah, we are happy to be back finally, happy to be together, to train and the atmosphere is great,” says Matic.
In case you missed it, Rangnick’s Reds will train at Carrington on Friday before enjoying Christmas Day at home with their loved ones.
The squad will reconvene on Boxing Day to continue preparations for our Premier League match at Newcastle United on Monday.