Man Utd - now a pale shadow of a giant

MANCHESTER UNITED LOST to an ASEAN All-Star XI on their trip to South-East Asia, and manager Ruben Amorim was of the opinion that the booing they received from the large crowd in Kuala Lumpur would have done his players some good.

- Tushar Bhaduri

Whether one considers this sojourn a pre-season or post-season (the UEFA Champions League final was yet to be played), it showed the fall the 20-time English champions have suffered over the last dozen years since a certain Alex Ferguson stepped down as the man in charge.

"The boos from the fans, I think it's something that we need maybe because every game that we lost in the Premier League, they were always there (cheering us)," their Portuguese manager said after the exhibition match. "So, it's like the way of playing, if they see that it's not working, they will change the way they behave."

Though Manchester United managed to win their second match of the tour 3-1 (after trailing 0-1 at half-time to Hong Kong), it did little to brighten the mood around the club.

Forced to board the plane just a couple of days after the end of the Premier League season — which, by general consensus, was their worst campaign in more than half a century — and within a week of losing the UEFA Europa League final to Tottenham Hotspur, it was evident that it was a trip mandated by sponsors and commercial considerations, rather than any team-building requirements. Another trip, to the United States, is scheduled for July.

It was evident from the fact that three of their players were off to the airport for a day-long sponsor-driven marketing trip to Mumbai as the team was being given a rude response in the Malaysian capital — an eye-opener as fans in that part of the world are more star-struck about Premier League clubs than in most places in the world. Even though the Bukit Jalil Stadium saw a sizable crowd, the enthusiasm was nothing compared to the frenzy seen in 2009 when Manchester United last visited Malaysia.