Manchester United releases 11 players, Cavani, Pogba among those leaving club
It has already been confirmed that Edinson Cavani, Lee Grant, Jesse Lingard, Juan Mata, Nemanja Matic and Paul Pogba are leaving United.
Manchester United midfielder Juan Mata has said that Zinedine Zidane, Ronaldinho and Pablo Aimar are the players who inspired him the most when he was growing up.
“Yeah, Aimar one of them for sure. Zidane, Ronaldinho like I said before. I used to love watching Guti also, a midfielder from Real Madrid,” said Mata as quoted by the official website of Manchester United.
“And because my dad’s idol was (Diego) Maradona, I remember watching a lot of videos about Maradona on TV. We used to watch them together and of course he was different class. He was an artist on the pitch,” he added.
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The Spaniard, who has also been a part of national men’s senior team since 2009, calls himself lucky to be born at a time when football in the country was changing as technique was dominating everything.
“I was very lucky because I was born in a time in Spain when football was changing. The style was changing to a more technical way of playing. The strength, the height, the power was not so important,” said Mata.
“We had a generation of players like Xavi, (Andres) Iniesta, (Sergio) Busquets, (David) Silva, (Santi) Cazorla, Cesc (Fabregas) and myself in the national team. I was very lucky to be with them because I learned a lot from them and I tried to analyse the way they play. I tried to bring those parts to my own game.
“When you are surrounded by these kinds of players you can only learn. Of course, I had admiration for them and they were examples for me on the pitch,” he added.
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