Manchester United plane gets ‘lost’ in China before farcical press conference

Manchester United’s pre-season tour of China has been hit by a number of difficulties after their plane got “lost” due to bad weather and then José Mourinho’s press conference before Manchester United’s meeting with Manchester City descended into farce.

Manchester United arrived safely in Beijing after their plane had to be diverted to Tianjin as it flew to the Chinese capital on Saturday. Memphis Depay tweeted a video of himself standing near the plane after it had landed in Tianjin, which is around 70 miles from Beijing.

The forward said on the video: “We are lost somewhere, we had to make a quick landing somewhere. We tried to fly to Beijing but the weather is a little bit bad so we had to land somewhere else.”

United did eventually travel on to the capital where they are due to train at around 6.30pm local time before facing Manchester City at the National Stadium on Monday evening.

But Mourinho’s pre-match press conference was moved at the last minute when the club decided the manager could not hold it in the allotted room as it was “too hot and too full”. Earlier in the day Pep Guardiola, the City head coach, held his own media briefing in the same room at the Olympic Sports Centre in Beijing.

That was at around 11.30am local time. While the room was full and stifling then, by the planned 6.30pm time for Mourinho to speak it was noticeably hotter and there were more media in attendance. This made the conditions close to unbearable and United decided Mourinho should not hold the conference in the room. A United spokesperson said: “The room was too full and hot.”

This led to some disgruntlement among the local media, some of whom wondered why Guardiola was able to speak in the room and his opposite number was not.

It also led to confusion regarding whether Mourinho would field any questions at all. After around half an hour the manager walked outside and first did an interview with MUTV, the club’s in-house station, then spoke with a large media contingent near the side of the pitch as his players waited.

With Joel and Avram Glazer, two of United’s owners present for the training session that was to follow his media duties, Mourinho was nonplussed by the episode, and repeated Guardiola’s earlier wish that his players come through the match unscathed due to the questionable condition of National Stadium’s pitch.

“It is the end and we can almost go home and train in conditions where the players are safe,” he said.

(Guardian service)