Inside Manchester United's chaotic post-season Asian tour

Times

30-05-2025

It's Wednesday night and it's party time in the national stadium of Malaysia's capital, Kuala Lumpur.
A scratch team of players from the southeast Asian football federations, known as the Asean All-Stars, have done the unthinkable and beaten Manchester United in the first match of a two-game post-season tour for Ruben Amorim's beleaguered side.
In the stadium's offices the prize for the victory, the Maybank Challenge Cup, (named after the sponsor of the friendly) is being handed around to staff for photographs.
Just down the corridor in the interview area, the smiling match-winner from Myanmar, Maung Maung Lwin, is applauded as he does his umpteenth media engagement. Down in the bowels of the stadium, Lwin's team mate Sergio Agüero (no, not that one) is beset by anxiety rather than elation.
The naturalised Malaysian, born in Argentina, is lurking around the dressing-room door, hoping that Alejandro Garnacho fulfils a promise he made during the game to give him his shirt. Instead, when United's wantaway winger departs, a pair of sunglasses covering his eyes, he simply walks past Agüero and others present.
Luckily for Agüero, one of United's kitmen saves the day, scooping Garnacho's jersey off the floor and handing it to him.
On the big red United bus, which has 'TOUR' — and the insignia of all their sponsors — emblazoned on it, there is plenty of gallows humour. 'Only after the season we've had, can we lose a post-season friendly and get booed off by our own fans,' the joke goes.
In the immediate aftermath of the embarrassing defeat there were no quips from the players. For the second time in the space of a week they were made to watch their opponents lift a trophy and, to make matters worse, the presentation ceremony was delayed because the officials had gone back into the dressing room to get changed.
The United players, who also went on a lap of honour, were angry that they had to wait in the 30C-plus heat, so they complained to the organisers, who ran into the dressing room and brought the officials back on to the pitch.
By that point on Wednesday night, Harry Maguire, André Onana and Diogo Dalot were on a private jet to India, having left the stadium at half-time.
The three players, who had played in the opening half against the Asean All-Stars, had been chosen to appear at a question-and-answer session in Mumbai the following day. When United announced they were undertaking a post-match tour to Malaysia and Hong Kong, they did not want to alienate their strong Indian following.
United have millions of Indian followers but they have never played a match there, so Onana, Dalot and Maguire skipped the second half of the first friendly and the entirety of the final match against Hong Kong, which United won on Friday night, to take part in the Q&A session in Mumbai. They arrived back in Manchester on Friday, which made them the envy of their team-mates, who are due to arrive home 24 hours later.
United insist their players understand why they had to come on this trip — the £8million raised will, to a certain extent, soften the £10million penalty the club will pay to Adidas for failing to qualify for the Champions League for a second successive season.
Privately, however, three sources have used the same phrase to describe the feelings of most of the squad at being dragged to the Far East during a time when they could have been on holiday with their families.
'They're fuming,' they said.
Players attended several events organised by some of United's biggest sponsors, including Adidas, Tezos, Apollo, Maybank and Snapdragon, during this week-long, 14,000-mile round trip.
One downbeat peripheral player advised a team-mate to give short answers in a Q&A session in Kuala Lumpur so that the appearance ended as quickly as possible.
Ashley Westwood, the Hong Kong head coach, summed up the situation perfectly when he said that the United players needed these fixtures 'like a hole in the head' but conceded that money talks.
'This trip is all about revenues, it has become a thing,' Westwood said the day before United beat Hong Kong 3-1 on a sodden pitch.
That said, the tour has been enjoyable for the players and staff in other senses. Given that this is essentially a post-season wind-down, the atmosphere in and around the W Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, where they stayed three nights, and the W Hotel in Hong Kong, which hosted them for one evening, has been relaxed and less disciplined than it would be on a pre-season tour.
That became clear on the Air Malaysia aircraft that carried the players, staff and executives from Manchester to Kuala Lumpur last Sunday evening, shortly after United had defeated Aston Villa 2-0 in the final match of a wretched Premier League season.
In the business and first-class seats saved for the players, music was played and some squad members and staff had a few drinks.
The players have not been subjected to a curfew on this trip. Joshua Zirkzee walked over the road from the team hotel in Kuala Lumpur to a Thai restaurant one night after being unimpressed by the room-service options.
Amad Diallo and Garnacho hired some scooters and whizzed around the city.
A few players went out to a nightclub after they arrived in Kuala Lumpur on Monday night, accompanied by security staff. One popular member of staff wowed those present with his left-field dancing.
Some players had a drink in the hotel bar after the loss to Asean All-Stars. Staff joined in too. Bruno Fernandes told them that he would pay for their drinks all night and he did.
In the corner of the bar stood a gold vending machine that sells 187ml bottles of champagne for £40 a pop.
If you buy five bottles, your sixth is free.
Fernandes's future has been a hot topic among the travelling party. Some are convinced he will leave, others refuse to believe it. They all agree unanimously that United need to do everything they can to keep the 30-year-old captain.
They know he is their best player and his leadership skills are valuable, particularly because morale is so low now after finishing 15th in the Premier League and failing to qualify for the Champions League.
Fernandes has been seen giving guidance and help to the younger members of the 32-man party that United brought to the Far East.
'Are you a proper United fan then?' the United employee in a white Adidas polo shirt said to two men in United shirts as he walked them down the red carpet at the stadium in Kuala Lumpur (which was stuck to the floor by red electrical tape) last Wednesday in the VVIP area.
Some of the 72,5000 fans present were guests of wealthy businesses trying to impress clients or reward employees, but some of them were genuine fans, including Daniel, an engineering student who paid £262 for his VVIP ticket, which involved a slap-up buffet dinner in a roped-off area of the stadium.
'We had [Edwin] van der Sar, [Patrice] Evra, Rio [Ferdinand], [Nemanja] Vidic, the Brazilian twins [Rafael and Fabio da Silva] …' the 25-year-old says, reciting the squad that United had when he started supporting them in 2008, as if to prove his credentials.
United's squad is much worse these days but there was no way that would put him off coming to the match.
'It doesn't matter,' he said. 'It's about loyalty. The appeal of the Theatre of Dreams is not just about the 'Theatre' — it's about the actors, who are the players, and the producer, the coach.'
Although there are 9,000 empty seats in Kuala Lumpur, selling north of 75,000 tickets (a small section of which were available for £8 and £16), is a sign that support for United remains strong.
One man in the crowd is Anwar Ibrahim, the Malaysian prime minister. As a United fan, he is unhappy with the result, unlike many of the cabinet members in attendance, who are Liverpool supporters.
That United retain a strong following in Asia is also evident, judging by the fact that more than 300 fans turned up to greet them at the team hotel, even though it had not been advertised that the players were staying there.
'This match is the biggest sporting event in Kuala Lumpur in 2025,' Christopher Raj, the chief executive of ShekhinahPR, a local firm contracted to publicise the All-Stars match, said.
'We had 600 media applications for the match but we only had space for 250. 'Today we have more than 100 media waiting for the team to turn up. They've been here for a long time.'
When the squad eventually arrived, security guards had to hold the fans and media back behind a cordon on either side of the bus. Luke Shaw signed a few shirts for local media inside the hotel lobby — about 50 yards away from the fans — but most of the players went straight through reception and up to their rooms, as instructed by security staff, who are always aware of a potential crush due to the excitement of the crowd at these greetings.
To avoid such an issue, the coach carrying the team to their hotel in Shanghai on their 2016 pre-season tour dropped the players off at the back entrance of the hotel, much to the annoyance of hundreds of people who were waiting for them in reception.
Isuandar, a 31-year-old engineer from Kuala Lumpur, was happy to get a glimpse of his hero, Fernandes, from about 50 yards away. 'I have been here waiting for hours,' he said.
'Manchester is the biggest team in Malaysia.'
TJ, who has travelled over from the UK, was less impressed.
'They can't come over and see a few kids,' he shouted as his young son beside him cried.
'It's disgusting.'
When on pre-season tour, United sometimes organise well-attended public training sessions for their fans, but they chose not to on this occasion.
It was probably for the best given the standard of football on show during the hour-long session in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday.
Zirkzee and Matthijs de Ligt, both returning from injury, did some running and stretches before the rest of the squad split into two units for the rondos.
After that, Amorim directed a pretty lacklustre training drill that began with Tom Heaton launching the ball to the halfway line, where ten outfield players would each touch the ball before someone tried to shoot.
Even though they were playing against mannequins, some of the passing — and in particular the finishing from Chido Obi — was poor. The organisers had bought the 7ft-high yellow mannequins especially for United's training session in an effort to impress Amorim, the head coach, and his staff but some were not filled with enough water and they collapsed in a heap, prompting jokes from the sidelines about a comparison between the men in yellow and United's defence in their Europa League final defeat by Tottenham Hotspur the previous Wednesday.
Obi looked far more polished by the time he and United arrived in Hong Kong, where they were met by a deluge that made the pitch for their final friendly difficult to play on.
The downpour was so great that the roof started leaking in the press room — a problem teams visiting Old Trafford will be familiar with.
Obi, 17, scored twice as United came from behind to win 3-1 in what was Jonny Evans's last game at the club. Before heading to the airport, Fernandes and Garnacho — now without sunglasses –— signed autographs and posed for selfies with fans outside the dressing room.