'Mourinho would FaceTime me to ask what I'm doing'

Former Man United star Jesse Lingard tells Miguel Delaney about leaving his boyhood club, ‘what might have been’ with England, and how life at FC Seoul has revitalised his career

- Miguel Delaney

It is 10pm in a humid Hanoi, where FC Seoul have gone for warm-weather pre-season, and Jesse Lingard is talking about the need to get back into the Asian Champions League. "You want to play the Saudi teams," he enthuses.

It's a different life, and a new lease of life. Lingard says he feels "lively and bubbly", which is how teammates generally describe him. It's just, recently, that hasn't been a description that always fitted. Certainly not when he was in tears while driving away from Manchester United for the last time. Certainly not when he felt "stifled" by the rigours of the modern game.

It is an acutely relevant theme, amid constant discussion about an exhausting calendar. Lingard's experience may become a more common story, as many more players talk of almost needing a six-month break from the elite level. He has now been in Korea for a year, a period he has found "amazing".

"I didn't know what to expect but seeing the love and appreciation really settled me down and got my confidence up," Lingard tells The Independent.

He is an admirable example of a player throwing himself into a different experience. He is enthused about living by the riverfront and the local cuisine. Lingard has been showing off some Korean on one of the country's main talk shows and is an ambassador for North Face. That all comes from a status as "the K League's most important ever signing", with which he has driven FC Seoul back to the Champions League for the first time since 2019. He has since been named club captain, which represents quite a turnaround from an early period where coach Kim Gi-dong criticised his workrate.

Lingard was at that point still adapting from a period of six months without a club, but ultimately needed a knee operation.