Romelu Lukaku will cut his post-season break short to join up with the Manchester United squad ahead of schedule, Jose Mourinho has confirmed.
Lukaku reached the latter stages of this summer’s World Cup with Belgium, only flying home from Russia after his national side’s third-place play-off victory over England on 14 July.
The 25-year-old is entitled to three consecutive weeks of holiday at the end of the season but, like team-mates Marcus Rashford and Phil Jones, will report back early.
United open the Premier League season at home to Leicester City in just nine days’ time and Mourinho is concerned that he will be without several first-choice players.
“Rashford, Jones and Lukaku - they gave to the group and to the team three days of their holidays. They're coming back three days early to try and be available for the team,” he said following United’s 2-1 friendly win over Real Madrid in Miami.
“With the fantastic spirit we have in the majority of the players - I repeat, in the majority of the players, we have a fantastic spirit - we go with everything we have to the Premier League.”
Mourinho added: “Let's look at it from a positive side and wait for [Victor] Lindelof, Rashford, Lukaku and Jones, which are going to be four important players for us, not prepared but they will be back and that's the spirit we need.
“I think our first two or three weeks in the Premier League - Leicester, Brighton, Tottenham - I think these two weeks are going to be really hard for us because we didn't prepare for that and that's what it is.”
Even with three players cutting their breaks short, Mourinho is still without Paul Pogba, Jesse Lingard, Ashley Young and Marouane Fellaini, all of whom remain on holiday.
Antonio Valencia, Mourinho’s newly-appointed captain, and Nemanja Matic are also set to miss the opener against Leicester through injury.
