Inside Man City’s pre-season tour: A change in club culture, ‘unbearable’ heat and making chopsticks

It was so hot in Seoul, South Korea, last Wednesday that the players involved in Manchester City’s friendly with the K-League All Stars could barely breathe.

Towards half-time, City left-back Josko Gvardiol had to lean on team-mate Gianluigi Donnarumma for support, and it turned out he was suffering from blurred vision. Marcus Bettinelli, who replaced Donnarumma in goal for the second half and has admittedly not played a minute of football since joining the club last summer, said he was out of breath just from yelling at his defenders.

“The heat was unbearable,” Bettinelli said. “I was shouting instructions and stuff, and it was taking me four or five times to get my breath back, so it was really hard. I don’t know how the (outfield) boys managed to do it, because I was stood still, so a massive credit to the lads.”

The ‘feels like’ temperature was 45C (113F) at 8pm local time, and it was hard enough to sit in the stands and watch that match, let alone play it. Severe heat alerts buzzed on mobile phones every few hours throughout the week City spent in South Korea, but mercifully the temperatures dropped somewhat for their tour’s final fixture, against Atletico Madrid on Sunday.

The weather dominated conversations throughout City’s fortnight in Asia; during the first week, in Hong Kong, a thick, dark cloud hung above the city, as it had done for the previous month, and did not shift.

Hong Kong is always humid and wet at this time of year, but this summer was different; it rained heavily for 80 per cent of each day while City were there and the ‘felt like’ approached 40C.

Somehow, it stopped raining long enough for the launch of their new away kit, which took place at Victoria Harbour and featured a floating football pitch, which had to be repeatedly squeegeed and towelled to avoid any costly slips-ups before City players Phil Foden, Ryan McAidoo and Abdukodir Khusanov stepped onto it.

Foden was the star of this tour, with fans shouting his name loudest at events and open training sessions.

On the first night in Hong Kong, he took a stroll to see the famous Bruce Lee statue, but was immediately recognised and mobbed by fans. When hundreds of supporters queued outside the fancy Rosewood hotel before the trip’s opening game against Inter, he went out and posed for every picture and signed every autograph — he even signed a dog’s sky-blue coat.

In the very first days of City’s time in Hong Kong, a fan asked their new manager Enzo Maresca for his autograph. The only problem was that it was not Maresca at all, but a similar-looking Puma employee wearing club training gear.

While the rain was usually relentless, the city’s new Kai Tak Stadium has a roof and air conditioning, meaning preparations for the match against Inter, and the game itself, went perfectly. A City-themed playlist, featuring Oasis, Inspiral Carpets and club anthems, blared out of the venue’s speakers as the players were put through their paces, with Maresca working on his game plan without a care for who was watching.

There has been a relaxed feel to Manchester City’s tour under Enzo Maresca (May James/AFP via Getty Images)

When the tour moved on to Seoul, City generally had to train in the evening, although temperatures then were rarely any cooler than in the middle of the day. Sessions in the morning were not really an option because players generally struggle to sleep on these trips.

Fans benefitted from Maresca putting on full sessions as he looked to get his ideas across to the players, but the simple fact he is the new man in charge has brought notable changes behind the scenes, too.

There was a much more relaxed feeling around the first team, with a more welcoming attitude to outsiders, including those who work for the club or their sponsors. Even before the tour began, staff had remarked upon how the first-team building at the training ground was a more welcoming place at meal times, and the access granted to players and the manager himself has been vastly different in East Asia, too.

To provide one striking example, in the six years City had been running their ‘matchday live’ show on official channels during the Pep Guardiola era, the staff producing those programmes were never given access to the Catalan or any first-team players. During the very first open training session in Hong Kong, they were able to conduct live interviews with Antoine Semenyo and Maresca himself.

The manager also sat down with travelling journalists for a coffee. The last time Guardiola did that was in 2016, his first year at the club — he told reporters after his final pre-match press conference in Manchester that he decided during his time as Barcelona coach not to do interviews so journalists could maintain their impartiality.

Access to players on this tour was provided in a way that had not been seen since before Guardiola arrived.

In recent years, City staff have had to facilitate interviews by stealth, finding time for Manchester-based journalists to speak to players after contractual obligations with local media and sponsors. On tour in Tokyo in 2023, reporters huddled around a phone at the bottom of a stairwell to ask Nathan Ake questions about his new contract — a call that had been arranged surreptitiously.

This summer, players were brought over to reporters after matches and one open training session, while Foden spoke for 10 minutes after unveiling the new away shirt. Those things simply would never have happened previously.

The chief reason for all of that is Guardiola’s right-hand man, Manel Estiarte, who ensured the players were off-limits to anybody and anything that was not stipulated in their contracts, has departed with him. Estiarte would refer to himself, half-jokingly, as “the bad guy”, with those around the club saying he was the one who says ‘no’, enforcing boundaries around Guardiola and the players.

It was part of a culture that aimed to keep the squad protected from distractions and as rested as possible, and it cannot be argued it was not successful, given City’s dominance on the pitch, but it has been apparent all summer that things have changed.

The atmosphere among the squad is said by one well-placed observer to be as fun and relaxed as it has been in years. Maresca has seemingly made a good impression with his players and the backroom staff he inherited from the Guardiola era, both in Manchester and while on tour.

Players generally got to explore their surroundings while attending the various events that City lay on during these long-haul trips. The club are keen for them to be accessible to fans as much as possible, whether that was Savinho and Claudio Echeverri at a Puma event, Omar Marmoush playing Mahjong in Hong Kong or Gvardiol and Mateo Kovacic making chopsticks in Seoul’s Jongno district.

Omar Marmoush plays Mahjong in Hong Kong (Manchester City)

Mateo Kovacic and Josko Gvardiol make chopsticks in South Korea (Manchester City)

The squad had just two days off during the trip and spent a lot of time in their hotels, playing table tennis and passing the time as best they could. There was scope for some exploring, and opportunities to taste the local street-food, but conditions did make moving around cities difficult, even more so for instantly-recognisable footballers.

Some did squeeze in a quick trip to the Chinese city of Shenzhen for a sponsorship event with car manufacturer BYD, which had paid top whack for access to City’s star players; Ruben Dias and Donnarumma were on the junket and, in previous commercials, the same company has been able to use Rodri, Foden, Rayan Cherki and Erling Haaland.

The high-end mall underneath the Rosewood did present some opportunities to get out and about, to some extent, while Dias made it to Seoul’s Gyeongbokgung Palace, built in 1395, which is a short walk from the Four Seasons hotel where the squad were staying. City brought their own chefs with them and Riyad Pasta — the dish popularised by the club’s then winger Riyad Mahrez during the 2022-23 season, featuring chicken, cheese, onions and peppers — is still on the menu.

During the closing stages of the 3-1 win against Atletico — during which the Spanish club’s players raged at the referee when replays showed that Semenyo was clearly offside in the move that led to them going two up — City fans behind the goal broke out into the Norwegian rowing routine that took this summer’s World Cup by storm.

There was a slightly surreal moment before that game when South Korean singer San did a dance and a ceremonial kick-off, and every one of the 50,078 supporters inside the stadium, City and Atletico, cheered when South Korea international Lee Kang-in came off the bench for Diego Simeone’s men — it was like the ovation Haaland got three years ago, a rare summer when City could call upon all of their big hitters.

The stadium announcer regularly shouted out the names of players who had done something notable, which really highlighted how well Semenyo has been playing, while one Korean fan behind the goal had nailed the English accent on an impassioned “Come on Cityyyyy’ that he bellowed every now and again.

Overall, the Atletico match was a livelier affair than the midweek sweatfest against K-League All Stars, where supporters fanned themselves down and were blasted by mist machines. Around 28,000 turned out for that one, a number surely affected by the extreme temperatures, and as the players laboured, one supporter was interviewed on the big screen during the second half and shouted a message of support to Tijjani Reijnders before breaking out into a rendition of Hey Jude.

City are a big pull in these parts, thanks not only to their success in recent years but also to how many events they put on in the cities that host them. These tours are always going to be more valuable to the financial department than the football side of the club, as conditions are usually less than ideal for training and matches, and this summer was a glaring example of that.

Hundreds of fans welcomed the squad when they flew in to Seoul’s Gimpo airport and it was a similar story when they departed for England on Sunday night.

The Maresca era is off and running.