With the World Cup now in the rear view mirror the attention turns to clubs’ pre-season tour.
Long gone are the days when pre-seasons only purpose was to help fitness and tactical preparations for the upcoming season. There is now the added dimension of the commercial responsibility required for promoting the global brand that every Premier League side is, but none more so than Manchester United.
With both aspects in mind, the club have hit a home run in organising this USA tour. Following America’s strong showing at the World Cup the US population have never been more primed to embrace ‘soccer’ sufficiently to make it a major player in the US market.
At the same time, they won’t be facing clubs that they can just steam roll either. They will be playing the LA Galaxy as well as 3 major European sides (Roma, Internazionale and Real Madrid), which will give van Gaal the perfect opportunity to not only assess his first team squad but put in action plans for the season ahead.
The absence of youngsters such as Ben Pearson, Nick Powell, James Wilson, Tom Lawrence and Andreas Perreira are not of any disregard to them but a reflection of how quickly he wants to get to grips with the senior resources available at his disposal.
That said, the first team members of the squad that made it beyond the group stage at the World Cup have been afforded extra holiday time. For those that are first team members but have not travelled (e.g. Bebe), for them the writing is truly on the wall.
I fully expect them to be sold and with the remainder of the squad under van Gaal’s microscope we can expect a greater grasp of what to expect next season by the end of the tour, with transfer activity sooner rather than later to address the issues that van Gaal will no doubt identify.
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