“I fell in love…” – Mason Mount opens up on Man United legend that influenced his game

Mason Mount will become Manchester United’s first signing of the summer transfer window following a departure from boyhood club Chelsea.

Mount, 24, announced that he will be leaving Stamford Bridge in a video message on Tuesday evening where he said that a move to United is “what’s right for me at this moment in my career”.

He will bolster a midfield that consists of the likes of Casemiro, Christian Eriksen and Bruno Fernandes, with his off-ball traits being something that has caught the eye of manager Erik ten Hag.

Despite being at Chelsea since he was 14 years of age, Mount has revealed that Cristiano Ronaldo influenced an important part of his game.

Mount delivers a wicked set-piece and could help United threaten more when picking up fouls in dangerous positions after scoring just five goals from set-pieces last term – the lowest in the Premier League.

Not only can he deliver crosses into the box from these situations but the England international can also find the back of the net directly from free-kicks.

Mount addressed a video of him replicating Cristiano Ronaldo’s free-kick against Portsmouth before explaining that he was at that fixture in 2008 and that he ‘fell in love’ with Ronaldo’s free-kicks and him as a player.

“I think everyone has seen the video of when I was younger basing my free kick off him,” he told Amazon Prime last year. “I always watched him very closely when he was at United as a young kid. I loved the way he played, his free kicks.

“I’m a massive Pompey fan, so I went to the game when they played at Old Trafford and he scored that free-kick against David James. I was actually at the game, in the corner so I saw it first hand and I think after that I kind of fell in love with the technique and what he’d done and him as a player.

“I always tried to look at him and think what can I do to put it into my game.”

Mount, however, will not get the chance to play with Ronaldo at Old Trafford after the Portuguese left the club midway through last season.

He will be familiar with certain new teammates though, having worked with the likes of Harry Maguire, Marcus Rashford, Luke Shaw and Jadon Sancho within the England setup.

Mount’s signing is expected to be announced by United on Wednesday morning before he joins up with the squad in training on Thursday ahead of the club’s eight-game pre-season, which includes four matches in the United States.