SAN DIEGO — Not even the bright lights of New York and Las Vegas can distract Erik ten Hag from his mission to get Manchester United back to the top. The team are visiting some of the biggest and busiest cities in the world on their U.S. tour but, for the Dutch manager, nothing is allowed to get in the way of the football.
During the first stop in New York, club sponsor Marriott repurposed a London bus and decked it out as a traditional English pub for fans to watch the game against Arsenal. It visited Times Square — the perfect place for a photo opportunity — but with no plans to allow the players into Manhattan, it had to be driven out to the team hotel in rural Basking Ridge, New Jersey, for pictures with Raphael Varane, Diogo Dalot and Aaron Wan-Bissaka.
– Stream on ESPN+: LaLiga, Bundesliga, more (U.S.)
Commercial days on tour — when sponsors are granted time with players for marketing purposes — have been cut from three to two on Ten Hag’s instruction because football has to come first. It’s gone down well with the squad, many of whom don’t like attending them anyway. Christian Eriksen and Jadon Sancho walked into one event, posed for a quick picture, before Sancho — half joking — asked: “Are we done now?”
On preseason tours in previous years, the team hotels and training sites have been mobbed with fans but this one has been far more sedate. Eriksen, Sancho and the rest of the squad had a police escort to take them to the Delta by Marriott Hotel and security guards wearing James Bond-style earpieces scanned the lobby before they were allowed to enter, but none of it was needed.
A couple of supporters milled around the car park and managed to get an autograph from Donny van de Beek as he got back on the team bus, which is branded with the slogan “United across America,” pictures of the Statue of Liberty and the “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign.
The only other people at the New Jersey training base at Pingry School — a $50,000-a-year prep school — were a group of toddlers on a summer camp learning how to blow bubbles. It’s just how Ten Hag likes it and even when his boss is in town, there’s only time for football. When club co-owner Avram Glazer and his family turned up at Pingry, his interaction with Ten Hag amounted to a brief handshake on the way to the training pitches. There is no time for anything else.
