From pop-up karaoke rooms to limited edition kits with fountains, Manchester City’s pre-season tour of Korea and Japan includes more than just 3 friendlies.
To mark Manchester City’s arrival in Seoul, Puma opened a pop-up shop in a prime location in one of the city’s largest grocery malls and sold a kit with players’ names written in a Korean-inspired font. Fans travelled for hours earlier in the morning to queue before the shop opened, then stayed to receive briefings from Jack Grealish and some other Manchester City players at lunchtime. Long before City’s clash against Atletico Madrid of La Liga, all the pieces in the store were sold out.
These limited-edition uniforms, along with Manchester City scarves and bobs, could be seen on Seoul Subway Line Six the next day, as thousands of fans, usually in their 20s and 30s, headed to the World Cup stadium, not to watch a match. to attend an open training.
Open educational sessions, as well as encounters with club legends (in the case of Manchester City, Joleon Lescott and Shaun Wright-Phillips), have been a mainstay of pre-season tours, but are normally limited to a few hundred lucky fans. to win a contest, or rich enough to buy premium tickets.
But with tickets for Manchester City’s open practice consultation on Saturday available for just $15, enthusiasts were overpriced or couldn’t get tickets for Sunday’s big event, where maximum tickets charge more than $95, at least they had a chance to see their heroes in the flesh.
Some 20,000 fans accepted Manchester City’s offer, applauding each and every shot in outdoor training, as well as the entry of stars such as Kevin De Bruyne and Erling Haaland.
Head coaches have another strategy for those open educational consultations. Antonio Conte made his Tottenham Hotspur players run so hard in Seoul that they almost threw up at the end of a consultation in Seoul in 2022.
Diego Simeone adopted a much more comfortable technique in Atletico Madrid’s open education consultation on Wednesday, which consisted mainly of an 8-on-9 match on a small pitch, with the players divided into 3 groups so they had enough time to catch their breath. -Pop was playing in the background and an MC selected the enthusiasts for a contest on the big screen to win Atletico products. Wearing sunglasses, Simeone ended the consultation by throwing balloons into the crowd. The harsh tactical paintings had been made the day before, behind. closed doors, on the other side of Seoul.
Manchester City’s open consultation began with giant screens projecting a promotional video of the club as fog was sprayed on the VIP domain to keep fans cool. After the warm-up, the players made a few rounds of headers and passes before spending most of the time. the consultation to the training to center the ball in the area, with Pep Guardiola giving position advice one by one.
Manchester City head manager Pep Guardiola speaks to players at the open education consultation.
Tickets for that day were still lacking, and for enthusiasts who hadn’t taken the vacation to attend the open practice in person, a live stream with full observation was presented through the tour’s sponsors, Coupang Play.
It’s expensive to bring Premier League teams and other more sensible teams to the other side of the world, and the threat of not bringing back those prices is real. Roma, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Celtic were scheduled to play in Korea, but the tour organiser was unable to secure the necessary funds.
As the football calendar gets busier and clubs can only play 3 or 4 matches on world tours, these open educational sessions give bodies like Coupang Play an extra opportunity to make the most of a brief stopover of a Premier League team.
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA – JULY 30: Manchester City’s Korean enthusiasts sit down with ponchos before the season. Fake images)
City’s match against Atletico Madrid was delayed by 40 minutes due to a violent storm that cascaded the stairs of Seoul’s World Cup stadium. When the match finally started, the white plastic raincoats almost outnumbered Manchester City’s sky-blue ones. City started with their most powerful team, without Kevin De Bruyne who remained on the bench.
They lost 2-1 with the match thanks to two long-range shots from Atletico Memphis Depay and Yannick Carrasco, and several tackles forged from both sides showed it was a smart education for City ahead of next week’s Community Shield. The schedule was such that Manchester City headed straight to the airport after the final whistle.