Swiss role for Rashford

Jose Mourinho has confirmed that Marcus Rashford and Luke Shaw will be involved in Manchester United’s opening UEFA Champions League fixture of 2018/19, away to Young Boys of Bern.

Speaking at the pre-match press conference in the Swiss capital, on the eve of the match and just hours after the squad arrived in the country, the boss also revealed that Diogo Dalot could make his United debut and that Antonio Valencia had not travelled with the team.

Rashford was shown a red card during United’s 2-0 Premier League win at Burnley on 2 September and received a three-game ban that restricts him from taking part in domestic affairs until the West Ham fixture on 29 September.

But the 20-year-old forward is eligible to play in UEFA competitions, and Mourinho informed the media that the England international will play on Wednesday evening.

“He’s selected for the game,” said the Portuguese, before asking for understanding that there would always be players unlucky to miss out due to the depth of quality within United’s squad.

“I just want to remind you in advance that we can only start with 11. So when tomorrow, you see the team, you could try to speak about the ones that are going to play and not the ones that aren't going to play. We have Lukaku, Rashford, Mata, Alexis, Martial - they all cannot play together, so try to be a little bit happy for the ones that are playing and not to be critical of the ones that are not playing.“

The manager explained that the decision to rest Valencia – who played in just one group-stage away game last season – was due to the synthetic turf employed by Young Boys at their Stade de Suisse home ground.

“We decided not to bring Antonio Valencia because his knee is not a knee that needs an artificial pitch at all, so we brought Luke Shaw back to the squad and to the team. I said already [post-Watford] that Luke Shaw is playing tomorrow and, apart from him, we have Diogo, Ashley Young and Darmian ready to play.”

Valencia is the only one that we need to protect, his clinical situation. Apart from that, we go with everything we have and we have to try to win.“

The 19-year-old Dalot has played twice for United’s Under-23 team in recent weeks, and will become the fifth Portuguese player (after Cristiano Ronaldo, Nani, Bebe and Joel Pereira) to represent the first team should he get on the pitch during the Young Boys clash.