So the situation with Bastian Schweinsteiger contuinues to rumble on. The former Germany captain played his last game for his country last week, captaining the side to a 2-0 win in a friendly match vs Finland. The former Bayern Munich stalwart retires from international football with a pretty damn impressive 121 caps, scoring 24 goals and winning the World Cup against Argentina in Brazil in 2014. Schweinsteiger suffered an injury riddled 2015-16 season and was not able to show United what he is capable of but he did manage to recover enough to play a small part for Germany in Euro 2016 in the summer.
Despite the German signing a 3 year deal to play for United under Louis van Gaal last summer when he left Bayern, new manager Jose Mourinho has told him it will be “very difficult” for him to play for the Red Devils again. This has been reinforced by Mourinho’s decision to leave Schweinsteiger out of the club’s Europa League squad and he is being made to train either alone or with the under 23 squad. The player however is in the club’s Premier League squad so he may still play a part in United’s season contrary to what Jose has said up to now.
United play their first Europa League game on September 15th vs Feyenoord and will be looking to get off to a fast start in the competition. As the BBC reported here is the full Manchester United squad for Europe’s second tier club competition group stage:
David de Gea, Sergio Romero, Sam Johnstone, Eric Bailly, Phil Jones, Marcos Rojo, Chris Smalling, Luke Shaw, Timothy Fosu-Mensah, Antonio Valencia, Matteo Darmian, Axel Tuanzebe, Paul Pogba, Juan Mata, Jesse Lingard, Michael Carrick, Daley Blind, Ashley Young, Ander Herrera, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Marouane Fellaini, Morgan Schneiderlin, Memphis Depay, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Wayne Rooney, Anthony Martial, Marcus Rashford.
Schweinsteiger could still come to some kind of a mutual understanding with United and leave to play in MLS possibly but that remains to be seen. It seems likely that he will remain a United player at least until the winter transfer window opens.