Sir Alex Ferguson says Portugal's Luiz Felipe Scolari criticism
of United during the week was unjust.
The Reds boss took exception to two claims made by Scolari.
Firstly, that United's assistant manager Carlos Queiroz was
attending Portugal Under-21 games in order to boost his profile as
a potential future national coach. And, secondly, that the club had
given mixed messages over Cristiano Ronaldo's fitness.
"The comment Scolari made about Carlos hanging about the Portugal
games looking for a job was a crazy thing to say," he said at his
pre-match press conference. "I am sure Scolari goes to watch Porto
and Benfica. Is he after the guy's job? I had three of my coaches
and all my scouts out at games in Europe this week and I'm sure
they are all still working for me."
Scolari also inferred that Carlos had privately informed him that
Ronaldo was fit enough to play, but to the press said that he was
still suffering from an ankle injury in order to placate United
fans concerned that the 21-year-old winger would return from
international duty injured.
"Carlos never spoke to Scolari at all, said Sir Alex. "It confuses
me that Scolari inferred Carlos spoke to him and marked his card
that Ronaldo was all right but we were giving a different story to
the press to keep Manchester United's fans happy.
"By the time I got back into the dressing room last week, Cristiano
had gone to catch a plane," he added. "Normally, when you get taken
off with a knock like the one he had, you will give the boy a scan
the following day to see if there is a problem. There was a bit of
swelling but there was no way we could assess it. What we said was
it would be up to the Portugal medical staff to do that. It was an
important qualifying game for them and if Cristiano was fit, we
were happy for him to play."