Mount taken off as United draw 1-1 with PSG in Gothenburg friendly

Manchester United drew 1-1 with Paris Saint-Germain in a friendly in Gothenburg on Saturday, a match overshadowed when Mason Mount suffered a foot injury and was withdrawn after less than 20 minutes.

The 27-year-old Mount, who joined United from Chelsea in 2023, has been hampered by injury since arriving at Old Trafford and has made just 54 league appearances — many of them as a substitute — across his first three seasons with the club; he was replaced against PSG by Tyler Fletcher.

PSG opened the scoring in the second minute through Ibrahim Mbaye despite missing many of their star players, and United levelled in the 32nd minute when Bryan Mbeumo finished after Amad Diallo had won the ball and played him in.

There were further fitness concerns early in the second half when United goalkeeper Tom Heaton suffered a right hamstring problem while rushing out to make a clearance; Heaton is 40 years old. Mbeumo came close to a second but was thwarted by the fine form of PSG’s Matvey Safonov.

Safonov left the pitch to jeers after escaping punishment for colliding with Joshua Zirkzee well outside his area — an incident that, the report noted, may well have seen him sanctioned in a competitive match.

There were late opportunities for Tyler Fletcher, Shea Lacey and captain Bruno Fernandes, with Fernandes linking up well with new arrival Youri Tielemans, a development Michael Carrick cited positively after the game. “I enjoyed it,” Carrick told MUTV, United’s in-house television station. “Good challenge. Slightly different with the way they play. We should’ve scored more goals. “It’s good for the boys sometimes to have to problem-solve and find their own way and I thought we did that. That prepares them for the season as well. In that respect there were a lot of things that maybe people don’t always see that we were quite happy with. There were some good signs there.”

Mount’s removal came while United were 1-0 down, a development that dominated attention despite United recovering to draw and produce several promising passages of play.

United have two more friendly fixtures, against bitter rivals Leeds in Dublin on 12 August and AC Milan in the Polish city of Wroclaw three days later, before launching their Premier League campaign away to newly promoted Hull on 22 August.